Appreciating music in the streaming era

Bacheloroppgave i music business 2017The music industry is still subjected to the value gap that arose from services like Napster. At the time of writing, the issue is being addressed as a legislative one by the industry, and a rather sore one at that. There are however streaming services that employed a freemium strategy upon debut, and are still working on converting their free users to subscribers who pay. Facing the challenge outlined above, the idea of offering music as an experience as opposed to a product, has been adopted by many. An idea that stems from Pine & Gilmore’s work. (1988). We define this as the listening experience. The literature concerning how to tap into this, and the consumption of music in everyday life, is rich. Various sources examine music as a functionality, in other words a means to for instance regulate a mood, complement a setting, or to distance oneself from tedious tasks. Seeing this phenomenon in the context of the behavior possibly induced by accessibility, it’s easy to neglect those who still engage in active listening. Nonetheless how to present these people with relevant offerings. In this thesis, we seek to “further an understanding of active listening in the context of general consumption.” In doing so, we have collected questionnaires from 3629 respondents from 19 different counties in Norway. Based on the literature, we have articulated three hypotheses, that seeks to examine the relationship between active listening and three different variables; «Escapist experience», «Cognitive-Object» and «Parasocial interaction». Based on the data, we have found support for all three hypotheses