The Art of Music Collection Behaviours in the Digital Age

The music recording has been pushed to all new dimensions in the digital realm. Users of digital music streaming and storage platforms, such as Spotify or iTunes, have instant access to a nearly limitless horizon of songs, albums, artists and genres. These files and subject headings can feel less tangible given their digital format, but remain just as collectible, and perhaps are even more obsessively and intensely curated than physical formats. Using Sonnenwald’s (2001) method of the semi-structured Information Horizon Interview (IHI), this paper explores the music management and collection behaviours of three students in their early twenties with developed musical tastes and daily interactions with a digital music streaming or storage platform(s). The research seeks to investigate the collection and retrieval behaviours users adopt or invent as they curate their personal digital music libraries. An inductive thematic analysis reveals that users become deeply emotionally attached not just to the music recordings themselves, but also to their personally developed methods and processes of collection. These music collections come to be maintained through self-established rules and emotionally invested in as a form of stress-relief and creative expression.   Keywords: Collection behaviour, music, digital streaming platforms, creative, leisure, hobb