"Finding Home": Understanding How Music Supports Listeners' Mental Health through a Case Study of BTS

The positive impact of music on people's mental health and wellbeing has been well researched in music psychology, but there is a dearth of research exploring the implications of these benefits for the design of commercial music services (CMS). In this paper, we investigate how popular music can support the listener's mental health through a case study of fans of the music group BTS, with a goal of understanding how they perceive and describe the way music is influencing their mental health. We aim to derive specific design implications for CMS to facilitate such support for fans' mental health and wellbeing. Through an online survey of 1190 responses, we identify and discuss the patterns of seven different mood regulations along with major themes on fans' lived experiences of how BTS's music (1) provides comfort, (2) catalyzes self-growth, and (3) facilitates coping. We conclude the study with discussion of four specific suggestions for CMS features incorporating (1) visual elements, (2) non-music media, (3) user-generated content for collective sense-making, and (4) metadata related to mood and lyrical content that can facilitate the mental health support provided by popular music