Personal Listening Pleasures

Personal listening technologies have been credited with the privatization of listening, yet this idea seems difficult to sustain. In exploring the history of personal listening, this chapter highlights the need to distinguish between notions of private and personal, along with their commonly used synonym, individual. This analysis compels the reader to consider personal listening within its broader cultural context, as something also public, collective and communal. Furthermore, in light of the long history of personal listening practices, it interrogates the complex relationship between technological and cultural imperatives, encouraging the reader to question their assumptions about the causes of cultural change