Music streams, smartphones, and the self
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 13012132 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Wenche Nag (0000-0002-3939-4591, Telenor (Norway), corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 6 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 19-36 |
| Publication date | 2017-08-14 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Mobile Media & Communication (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2050-1579 • E-ISSN: 2050-1587 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/2050157917719922 |
| OpenAlex | W2747400826 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 10 |
| References cited | 25 |
In this article, I explore how the interplay between music consumption and self-construction is experienced by Norwegians who frequently use streaming services on smartphones. Accordingly, the interplay unfolds in a situation characterized by (a) an abundance of legally available music tracks and (b) low technical barriers for music listening, discovery, management, and sharing. This implies a major shift when compared to previous conditions for music consumption, and it provides the foundation upon which I developed the analysis. The article relies on qualitative material gathered in focus group discussions with smartphone streaming users in Oslo in September 2013. The findings suggest that the instant access to millions of songs yields a tension between intimacy and detachment in users’ relationship to music. In such an environment of numerous music consumption alternatives, freedom of choice is embraced, but apparently accompanied with a craving for scarcity. These opposing tendencies in the experience of music consumption are interpreted and acted on by the individual in the reflexive and social processes of self-construction. Thus, I propose that the self should be included into what in domestication studies has been coined “the articulations of media technologies.” The articulation of the self equips this analytical framework with a fourth pillar in addition to the previous three: object, content, and context. Moreover, the articulation of the self highlights a dimension that seems crucial to content consumption at large in the smartphone age
Active listening · Aesthetics · Art · Articulation (sociology · Consumption (sociology · Context (archaeology · Internet privacy · Political science · Scarcity · Sociology · Cinema and Media Studies · Communication · Computer Science · Gender, Feminism, and Media · History · Music History and Culture · Psychology
Rethinking Music Through Science and Technology Studies
Ubiquitous tunes, virtuous archiving and catering for algorithms
Why Live Music Matters
Sound Health
Temporal ambivalences in smartphone use
Beyond the platform
What My Music Says About Me
Mood playlists, biopower, and the “functional turn” in online media
I’m also slightly conscious of how much I’m listening to something’
Intrapersonal Interactions on Social Media
Personal Media and Everyday Life
Taken for Grantedness
Focus Group Methodology
Music in Everyday Life
Design and the Domestication of Information and Communication Technologies
Collect Yourself
Mobile listening situations in everyday life
Exploring engagement with music in everyday life using experience sampling methodology
Information and communication technologies and the moral economy of the household
Consuming Technologies
The phenomenology of the social world
Questions of Cultural Identity
It's Complicated
Sounds in the cloud
The triple articulation of media technologies in teenage media consumption
On the material and the symbolic
IPod
The Triple Articulation of Media Technologies in Audiovisual Media Consumption
The Playlist Experience
The plural iPod
| Unique citing works | 10 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1.67 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2025 (6) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 10 |