Psycholigcal streaming
What does psychology have to do with streaming
Did you know there was a psychological aspect of streaming music? If you didn’t, you’re not alone I found this research randomly, but there is a psychological aspect of streaming. The main point of the research is why people are starting to prefer streaming over owning music. The reason streaming is preferred and the benefits to streaming (as opposed to ownership of the content) might be surprising. So, why do we prefer streaming over ownership and what are the benefits Psychologically? Let me explain.
The way we experience music has changed drastically in the last 200 years from only being experienced live to being able to be owned with the invention of the phonograph. Followed by more advanced records, tapes, CDs, and finally digital files. Specifically, the shift from physical ownership to digital is where things started to change. No longer did it take physical space to have a collection of music. I graduated high school in 2009 I remember having a tony hawk cd case I took everywhere until I got an iPod… and from digital files to streaming you don’t even need to take up storage space anymore. One of the main highlights of the research was that one of the limits of ownership was physical space. Record collections could only be so big, followed by storage space on your device. Streaming allows you to access an unlimited library! Alleviating the limits of physical and digital storage. Further, the risk of buying music is removed. I never experienced buyers remorse of an album, but I can see not wanting to spend the money to own a whole album you might not like. Again, access-based streaming eliminates that issue.
Here’s a fun fact from the research: a typical streaming service contains around 30 million tracks, if we listen to music 4 hours per day or about 13 years of our life, it would take 15 lifetimes to listen to an entire streaming services catalog.
With so much to choose from can you guess what happens? Paradox of choice! People tend to listen to things they already like and know rather than exploring, which is where we find one of the psychological benefits to streaming. Smart curation by a service eliminates the search process and algorithms tailor the searches to what you already like making it take less effort, users seem to LOVE this. The psychological time and effort of finding new things is eliminated.
Playlists account for 1/3rd of total listening time online, more than time spent listening to albums. Suggesting that playlists will become the dominant format as long as there’s a vast buffet of music to choose from (or that the algorithm chooses for us). Who doesn’t have a gym playlist AND a party playlist?
There's also a nostalgia effect that streaming is capable of. Since music can help us remember times in our lives, and having access to everything you can think of, having a song from your childhood pop up would easily be able to take you back to the memorable moments you had listening to it. in fact, the research suggests this is an underlying use of streaming in general; Being able to curate memories through music to be nostalgic. Nostalgia even has a psychological benefit! it increases feelings of positive affect and alleviates negative ones. It enhances self-regard and boosts self-esteem. Go ahead, start thanking Spotify™.
Finally emotional engagement: Music makes us feel, just ask everyone from the 60s. We all listen for a reason, angry music for the gym, hype music to boost yourself up, whatever it may be, emotional engagement is ever present with music. Emotion and reward circuits of the brain are activated when we listen to pleasurable music. The research suggests this is comparable to the same response we get from food, sex, and drugs. Because music is emotional it can illicit a physiological response, heart rate, respiratory rate and blood pressure can change. all this just from listening to music.
I never would have thought streaming would have a psychological aspect to it, let alone some of the benefits. Good to know right? So next time you’re zoning out to your favorite playlist you don’t have to feel guilty, its beneficial to your well-being psychologically and there’s research to back it! stream on!
I hope Spotify™ sees this…
Jake O. founder and editor of Psycho-social.com, graduate of Oregon state university (Go Beavs!) BA in psychology. Connect with him by email to pick his brain about social issues and psychological understandings of them.
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Source
Luck, G. (2016). The psychology of streaming : exploring music listeners’ motivations
to favour access over ownership. International Journal of Music Business Research,
5(2), 46-61. https://musicbusinessresearch.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/volume-5-
no-2-october-2016-luck2.pdf
