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Evolution and development of music consumption

Article · November 2016

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 University of Bologna

Public and corporate communication

Academic year: 2016-2017

Evolution and development of music consumption

Student: Alberto Pagnin (id number. 1050181)

Professor: Piergiorgio degli Esposti

Course: Web society and globalization

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CONTENTS

Introduction .................................................................................................... 5!

The access-based paradigm............................................................................ 7!

Theoretical perspectives applied .................................................................. 13!

Beyond UGC - User Generating Content .................................................... 17!

Conclusions .................................................................................................. 21!

Bibliography ................................................................................................ 23!

Sitography .................................................................................................... 25!

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Introduction

My attention in the last years focused in the various faces of music. According
to my academic studies in the conservatory, I studied in deep the art aspect,
the big world behind history, composition. Alongside my university courses
in the last years, I wanted to discover the “backstage” of modern music. I
realized it is a complex world, but sometimes it is not so complicated as it has
been before the web 2.0. Many things changed in the last century concerning
music, like production, distribution, consumption and use. My purpose is to
examine these aspects. In addition, I will observe the important role of the
consumer (became ‘prosumer’) on the related customer management. I will
also sum up how the consumption of music is generating a big size of data,
giving much information to related companies. Music has always been a
matter of numbers, but in this case, is the mixture between art and data a good
one?

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The access-based paradigm

Music have always been a matter of numbers. There are several examples of
how music was and is, in different genres, a matter of numbers in terms of
public or money. From classical music to classical music composers and rock
band, most of the artists were interested in earn as much as they could, for
example through commissions from other wealthy people or as Oasis band
teaches. What is changed is the consistency and the value of those numbers.
The evolution brought to a “de-materialization” of numbers, or better, a
digitalization. Referring to George Ritzer and Zygmunt Bauman, the
condition evolved under another important distinction: that from heavy to
light. One characteristic of people, things, information and places of older
years (assuming the parameter for this example the advent of internet) is
solidity. Music was CDs sold, instruments owned by composers, music
composed, and many other things. But what I consider fundamental is the
arrival of internet. This tool is revolutionizing communication and affected
music in its three main aspects: from production, to distribution and
consumption (there would be another step, the use of music, for example
soundtracks for movies or advertising). First of all, digitalization brought to
the de-materialization of instruments. Software which emulate real
instrumental (virtual studio technology) could be installed in almost any
computers, played and recorded. Once composed, this can be distributed all
around the world via new services which give music to web platforms,
allowing people to buy or stream what has been produced in the furthest place
from them.

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intro

( ) )
)

) ),

• " ,
2016-2017

So, what characterizes music nowadays is an higher liquidity and

spreadability. Liquidity refers to an increasing ease of movement, people,
things, information, and places in the global age (Ritzer, 2011). There have
been a lot of consequences: the ownership of music already keep existing, but
another form of consumption have been introduced: the access to data. The
recorded music industry has historically focused on ownership as dominant
consumption mode. A record (or other physical media) was released, and
consumers bought a copy if they wished to listen. One song now could be
listened from many people who are not sharing the same physical place.
According to George Ritzer, one of the most important writers related this
field, “Closely related to the idea of liquidity […] there is another key concept
in talking about globalization, the idea of flows” (Ritzer, 2011). Through
flows, Ritzer intends “movement of people, things, information, and places
due, in part, to the increasing porosity of global barriers”. These sociological
definitions fits all well with this case, describing a huge phenomenon that we
are assisting. While reading Ritzer, I was surprised by one thought: “In spite
of greater liquidity and ever-more flows of various types, the world is still
characterized by great inequality” (Ritzer, 2011). The barriers of production,
distribution or consumption, will rapidly decrease, and the access to internet
to the poorest part of the worldwide population is one of the first aims of big

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companies like Facebook1. The access-based streaming is the frontier of the

new consumption, as online production may be the next one. Imagine to
produce music with your colleagues via internet in different cities, it would
be absolutely intriguing. As a result, access-based represents a revolution in
the consumption over ownership, because of lower prices of production,
higher performances of digital devices and faster internet connections. All
this forbid to keep many data on smartphones or laptops. There are many
advantages: for example, I remember the book “The paradox of choice” by
Barry Schwartz, where the author argues that eliminating consumer choices
can greatly reduce anxiety for shoppers. How do we decide what to listen to?
When faced with limited options, listeners demonstrate a clear preference to
listening to familiar music regardless of what their self-reported attitudes may
suggest (Ward et al. 2014). In front of a wide choice, the consumer tries to
simplify the process by getting involved with familiar artists or songs,
listening to tracks already known. Spotify’s launch in 2008, after the first one,
Pandora in 2004, introduced a system where users are proactive in their
experience. There are many controversial opinions supported by the
community. There are people who accept the new dialogue, others who
decline it for the most different reasons. A crucial point that cannot be missed,
is the numerous data these kind of companies are collecting from users2. Data
are really precious for companies which operate on the web. How confirms
Forbes website, with a deep study of raw data, companies could improve their
business, letting users behaviour be known, collecting better market and
customer intelligence trends and so on. They are becoming an asset to every
business but the challenge is to get value from those raw data. I would like to

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1
The main topic of M. Zuckemberg speech at the annual developer conference F8 conference
in San Francisco in 2016 has been the access to internet to the poorest populations.
2
It’s the reason why the data scientist profession is gaining more and more space among big
companies (wired.it)

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report the last Spotify’s ad campaign, developed in-house by the creative

team in New York, supported by insights from its regional teams around the
world. As reported by the site Cnet, Spotify CMO Seth Farbman told
Creativity the idea for the data-driven campaign originated with 2015’s end-
of-year “Year in Music” campaign, as it collated data from listeners in
different geographical areas and captured some fascinating insights. The 2016
campaign called “Thanks 2016, it’s been weird” it is an example of data-
driven marketing, reporting hilarious listening data on billboards. But they
didn’t stop. The campaign, aiming to be more attractive, has been hyper-local.
In order to be as hyper-local as possible, Spotify decided to focus primarily
on OOH advertising3.

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3
According to Wikipedia.org, OOH it’s the acronym of out-of-home and Out-of-home
advertising is focused on marketing to consumers when they are "on the go" in public places,
in transit, waiting

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Images via Businessinsider.com

As the reader may suspect, the public opinion about this type of advertising
campaign is heterogeneous4. The content is fascinating and funny as
mentioned above, but must be considered the availability of personal data
which music companies hold. Companies know users’ tastes and behaviours,
credit cards, addresses, and this could arouse “anxiety” to them. How can the
situation be rectified? I do not know, and I do not think it could be avoided
too. More and more things are filed on databases and even if people do not
want to accept this system, they are locked up on it since their birth, with the
storage of their personal data etc. The company, for example, offers a website
with music insights of their web traffic related to the most streamed music
from Spotify or the 50 genres with the strangest names.

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Comments about the campaign can be easily find on blog or websites concerning this
argument

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The attention goes even on knowledge from the customer other than focusing
on knowledge about the customer. In other words companies use CKM5,
“Customer knowledge management”, CRM, customer relationship
management and CEM, customer experience management to design their
product 6.
However technology can hurt. Recently, in Winter 2016, Spotify released a
desktop client version of its software which created really huge problems to
users. As reported by the Arstechnica or Extremetech, Spotify’s application
wrote a massive amounts of junk data to storage drives. The app wrote from
5 to 10 GB of data in less than an hour on Arstechnica reporters' machines,
even when the app was idle. Letting the app running for periods longer than
a day it resulted in amounts as high as 700 GB.

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5
Knowledge Management refers to the management of knowledge from customers, i.e.
knowledge resident in customers, in contrast to knowledge about customers. The experience
management focuses on the process of strategically managing a customer's entire experience
with a product or a company (Schimth 2003)
6
Definition by businessidcitonary.com

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Theoretical perspectives applied

An important distinction that has to be mentioned according to theories of

globalization concerns the theory “Nothing & Something” by the sociologist
George Ritzer. With nothing, the author means empty forms that are centrally
conceived and controlled and relatively devoid of distinctive content.
Something is defined as “full forms that are indigenously conceived and
controlled and relatively rich in distinctive content. Thus, it is easier to export
empty forms (nothing) throughout the globe than it is forms that are loaded
with content (something)” (Ritzer, 2007). Ritzer defines globalization as "the
worldwide diffusion of practices, expansion of relations across continents,
organizations of social life on global scale, and growth of a shared global
consciousness" (Ritzer, 2007), but he also talked about two related notions:
glocalization7 and grobalization. With “glocal” the author means the
integration of what is global with what is local, emphasizing differences. It is
sharply contrasting with the idea of “grobal” which include “imperialistic
ambitions of nations, corporations, organizations, and the like and their
desire, indeed need, to impose themselves on various geographic areas”
(Ritzer, 2007).

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This term belongs to Roland Robertson. Grobalization to Ritzer.

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The intersection of these last four concepts, grobalization, glocalization,

nothing and something, creates this:

Glocal

Something Nothing

Grobal

Each quarter is going to be filled by products (artists/albums/songs) together

with respective peculiarity explained before. My attempt was to apply
Ritzer’s theory to music nowadays, but unfortunately I found on the internet
(on www.frw.rug.nl) someone that tried to do before me. This schema permits
to think about networks between geographical, cultural or musical issues of
music consumption in the world. For example, in 1973 Pink Floyd band
published the first edition of one of the best-selling album ever, “Dark side
of the Moon”. The Album’s content is inspired by political and philosophical
issues as declared by the band. The same for the one best-selling in jazz
history, “A love supreme” by the saxophonist John Coltrane born from
religious and spiritual inspirations. These are (only few) examples of what
could be now considered Grobal (high spread) – Something (deep content).
On the other hand, new worldwide artists such as Justin Bieber or Rihanna,
could be considered grobal-nothing. An easier identification could be done
for glocal-something music for artists who are appreciated in the region of

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origin by local population that uses to identify themselves with local culture.
Another last case in this quadrant, is the glocal-nothing category which
explained local music that haven’t been understood by other population.
Furthermore, following this classification, there is another one which walk by
side. Grobalization, as said before, is a modern view of how things are
changing. It emphasizes the growing worldwide ability of, especially, largely
capitalistic organizations and modern states, to increase their power and reach
throughout the world. According to Ritzer, this is homogenization, a sort of
standardization and uniformity of consumption dictated mainly by
phenomena like “americanization”, “capitalism” or “mcdonaldization”. If
homogenization regards grobalization, heterogenization regards
glocalization. With this latter it’s enhanced the difference between cultures,
“glocalization theory sees individuals and groups as important and creative
agents who have a great deal of power to shape their own lives” (Ritzer,
2007). The goal of Ritzer is to explain a gradually globalization of nothing, a
spread of empty forms throughout the world. In this lens, this is a partial - in
my opinion - globalization of nothing. The revolution is on the way of
production, distribution and consumption which tend, to be empty, adoptable
and adaptable by countries. Rather, services I have already mentioned as
iTunes, Apple Music, Google play, Amazon, or Spotify (the most used in
Italy) tend to diversify in each country regarding content. For example, each
country has its own top list which differs from country to country by artists
and songs bought/streamed by users.
For this reason I resume the concept introduced earlier of “Nothing &
something”. With nothing Ritzer identifies 4 sub-types called “non-people”,
“non-services”, “non-places”, “non-things”, which are groups that sum up,
each with its own references, the concept of nothing. They differ from what
is something by the lack of distinctive content (“a local book shop with a
knowledgeable and involved owner and staff and a lovingly chosen selection
of books, many of them quite out of the ordinary, would be a good example

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of that which is distinctive in substance. Amazon.com exemplifies what is

lacking in distinctive substance (Ritzer, 2007), the generality (which is unique
tends to be something and what is generic tends to be nothing), the
dehumanization (which is rich in human relationships tends to be something
and vice versa) and the absence of local ties and time. As a matter of fact, I
believe that these types of services belongs to the “non-services” category’s
of Ritzer. If we think of a record store in the city center, with a limited
capacity, with low staff and maybe regular customer, it represents a different
logic from what the “fast-food music” symbolizes.

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Beyond UGC - User Generating Content

Spotify, the music social network, let users to listen to free online music with
ads, or with a premium subscription to listen music without ads and in a better
quality. In the previous paragraph I wrote about theories, and their application
on this case study. Another huge thing has changed inside the process of
production – distribution – consumption. From another point of view, as
declared by Edgar Berger and reported on Billboard.com, Sony Music
Entertainment chairman & CEO international on IFPI conference, “music
industry is managing three transitions at the same time: from physical to
digital; PC to mobile and download to streaming”. Users are involved in
music consumption change. It is a factual information that music has became
easier to listen and more accessible. In the digital system, user interface gives
the possibility to create personal playlists, collaborative playlists, and on the
Spotify desktop app I can see what my friends (users I’m following) are
listening. I think these opportunities are really important to improve and
differentiate the experience8 and they should not be neglected. The consumer
it is not passive at all any more, but community members can interact each
other, sharing music or comments. In other words, users are not only

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Another important tool it’s the Collaborative filtering: As in many other social network, a
crucial system is what is called “Collaborative Filtering”. It’s class of tools and mechanisms
that allow analysts to recovery of predictive information relatively to interests of a given set
of users from a larger mass, and yet undifferentiated of knowledge.

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consumers but they became producers. Always more, in the process of

consumption, producers and consumers are merged into single subject.
Producer and consumer are co-workers, creating brand value in the same
process. According to Engadget.com, recently (on December 2016) Pandora
“officially unveiled its long-awaited Spotify competitor”. As reported by the
site, Pandora CEO Tim Westergren, affirmed Pandora has created the "first
truly premium music service" - and that "premium means personal”. The
platform is ready to work for users in their discovery of new music, and
algorithms play an important role.
It seems like there has been a quick pass on this. In the user experience, it has
been said that consumer became prosumer, giving important data to these
companies (see the 2016 Spotify campaign example). However, machines are
going to predict plays, so the music can be suggested by them.
As described by Carsten Winter in the Journal of Music Business few years
ago, again in 2016, many people own smart digital networked devices that
allow to create value. This is web 2.0, a dynamic web. In relation to music,
without the involvement of companies and at lower costs, these new media
let undertake activities like commenting, criticising, sharing, producing,
posting, publishing, they are able to innovate socially and culturally and at
the same time create cultural and social value instead of direct economic
value. According to the first case examined, where the huge amount of
incoming data to Spotify has proved useful with the campaign “Thanks 2016,
it’s been weird”, it’s a demonstration of how data created by users have been
exploited. However, the attempt to satisfy users with features (designed to
differentiate the user experience compared to other services) has led to
delegate to machines which are independently able to please customers and
anticipate their moves and tastes. For some extent, there is an increase of
prosumer machines. Similar is the case of internet of things, where objects
interact each other, getting users’ data and devising responses. New objects
are now ready to prosume and in the future will have even greater ability to

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communicate between them and assist people.

I do not consider exhaustive the analysis made so far, mainly due to the wide
topic of this work. There are lot of benefits, but I would like to focus on some
disagreements caused by this system. I identified 5 points, 5 contradictions
related to the concept of exploitation that is involved in the process of music
consumption.

1) Apparent-democratization: many artists (“small and medium”). I would

like to spend some time about it. It is common to find on the web people who
talks about democratization of music and I would like to express my own
opinion. It is undeniable to affirm that now it’s easier to produce, distribute
and consume music than many years ago. It is easier, but this do not guarantee
automatically success for all. Talking about democratization in terms of
opportunities: there are several barriers for artists, first of all the quality of
music itself.

2) Remuneration issues. Despite music streaming it’s a legal system and a

good way to fight P2P but there are controversial aspects in the remuneration
issues.

3) Playlists and radios are very advantageous and used by users, but are a
multitude of artists (superficial knowledge). I have talked about playlists,
collaborative playlists and radios. Single artists may be loose value in please
of standardization or attitude.

4) Being under algorithms. Data-driven methodology can help producers and

consumers, as shown by the Spotify’s ad campaign before. What scenario
could we expect in a long term? Many would say those systems are meaning
possibility in terms of comfort, other as music industry killers.

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5) The experience (in terms of

networking) could be improved with
features. For example, I would like to
propose an implementation of rating !
to Spotify’s desktop client with a like
button for what friends are listening with a consequent notification system
about likes. I think this would make Spotify even more social.9

Neverthless, other companies like Amazon, as visible from the last

advertising campaign (italian or japanese ads), aim to show that the company
can sell almost everything (i.e. even a wearable pouch for dogs on the TV ad),
concentrating ads on emotional side of the purchase. When you find a kind,
helpful salesman, who can help customers in their experience, it could
increase the chances of a second sale. Therefore, from my point of view, the
human side could have an important role, and some people aren’t able to get
used to buy through a screen of computers or smartphones. In this examples,
Amazon relates to the customer only thanks to digital devices, and has led the
company to raise some of points previously discussed, through a campaign
which increases awareness and try to move the customer adding emotional
elements that he will not find during the shopping experience. When before I
was referring to emotional engagement, I meant the different content of music
streaming services. They spread music, above all for people who use them,
as I pointed out, it is quite different from what amazon offers, because it has
a catchment area different due to several aspects.

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I choose Spotify just becuase it is the only service, at the moment, which lets users see
what friends are listening. This feature is adaptable to other services.

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Conclusions

Up until now I have draw a critical and general image of the system around
music consumption nowadays. The change we are undergoing in new digital
services is faster than ever before, so we have to expect changes that will
affect our lives year after year. People facing these innovations should be as
opened minded as possible in order not to remain excluded from society. I
tried to argue how the paradigm is shifting from ownership to access,
involving other sectors as shown by companies like Uber, Airbnb or
Blablacar. In this field, economy is quickly evolving together new form of
remuneration and payments. Companies try to capture customers' attention
with lower and competitive prices than competitors. This will not take long
due to financial statements of music labels which have to pay artists. Just in
the last months (to innovate the experience of consumption), new forms of
sharing economy have been introduced by Spotify and Apple, which provide
a breakdown of subscription cost to the service among multiple users. For
example, this is what is happening for the family subscription solution.
Things are changed very fast month by month, and it will not take long to
assist to important features.

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Bibliography

Gibbert M., Leibold M., Probst G., (2002), Five styles of customer knowledge
management and how smart companies put them into action,

Knobloch, S., & Zillmann, D. (2002), Mood management via the digital
jukebox, Journal of Communication, vol. 52, pp. 351–366,

Koelsch, S. (2014), Brain correlates of music-evoked emotions, Nature

Reviews Neuro- science, vol. 15, pp. 170–180,

Pink, S., & Mackley, K. L. (2013) Saturated and situated: expanding the
meaning of media in the routines of everyday life, Media, Culture & Society,
vol. 35, pp. 677–691,

Ritzer G., (2007), The Globalization of Nothing 2, Sage Pubns,

Ritzer, G., (2011), Globalization: The Essentials, Wiley-Blackwell,

Saarikallio, S., & Erkkilä, J., (2006) The role of music in adolescents' mood
regulation, Psychology of Music, vol. 35(1), pp. 88–109,

Schmitt, B., (2003), Customer experience management: A revolutionary

approach to connecting with your customers, John Wiley & Sons, NJ,

Ter Bogt T. F. M., Vieno A., Doornwaard S. M., Pastore M., & van den
Eijnden, R. J. J. M. (2016), ‘You’re not alone': Music as a source of
consolation among adolescents and young adults, Psychology of Music, pp.

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1–17,

Tschmuck P., Collopy D., Winter C., (2012), International Journal of Music
Business Research, vol. 1 no. 2,

Ward, M. K., Goodman, J. K. & Irwin, J. R. (2014), The Same Old Song: The
Power of Familiarity in Music Choice, Marketing Letters, vol. 25(1), pp. 1-
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Juslin, P. N., & Västfjäll, D. (2009) Emotional responses to music: The need
to consider underlying mechanisms, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol. 31,
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Zillmann, D. (1988), Mood management: Using entertainment to full

advantage, in Communication, Social Cognition, and Affect, eds. L.
Donohew, H. E. Sypher & E. T. Higgins, Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ.

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Sitography

Cnet.com, CNET: Product reviews, how-tos, deals and the latest tech news,
Chris Matyszczyk, last consultation 15/12/2016, website link:
https://www.cnet.com/news/spotify-ad-campaign-2016-weird/

Engadget.com, Engadget | Technology News, Advice and Features, Nathan

Ingraham, last consultation on 15/12/2016, website link:
https://www.engadget.com/2016/12/06/pandora-officially-unveils-its-long-
awaited-spotify-competitor/

Businessinsider.com, Business Insider, Hannah Roberts, last consultation

15/12/2016, website link: http://uk.businessinsider.com/spotify-global-ad-
campaign-signing-off-2016-2016-11?r=US&IR=T

Billboard.com, Billboard - Music Charts, News, Photos & Video, Richard

Smirke, last consultation on 15/12/2016, website link:
rhttp://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6531734/ifpi-report-2015-us-
recording-industry-up-2-percent-global-drop

Businessdictionary.com, Business Dictionary, n.d., last consultation on

15/12/2016, website link:
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/customer-knowledge-
management-CKM.htm

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Extremetech.com, ExtremeTech, Joel Hruska, last consultation on

15/12/2016, website link: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/239268-
spotify-may-killing-ssd

Forbes.com, Forbes, Bernard Marr, last seen on 15/12/2016, website link:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2015/09/08/4-ways-big-data-will-
change-every-business/#4655e67a7900

Arstechnica.com, Ars Technica, Dan Goodin, last consultation on

15/12/2016, website link: http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2016/11/for-five-months-spotify-has-badly-abused-users-
storage-drives/

Wikipedia.org, Wikipedia, l’enciclopedia libera, n.d., last consultation on

15/16/2016, website link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-
home_advertising

www.frw.rug.nl, n.d., last consultation 15/12/2016, website link:

http://www.frw.rug.nl/persons/groote/cursus/global%20village/websites/070
8/music/globalizationandmusic.html

Wired.it, Wired - Un mondo migliore. Un mondo nuovo. Ogni giorno.,

Giuditta Mosca, last consultation on 15/12/2016, website link:
http://www.wired.it/economia/lavoro/2016/12/01/esplode-la-domanda-data-
scientist-italia/

Insight.spotify.com, Insights | Exploring music and how people listen to it

through data, last consultation 15/12/2016, website: insight.spotify.com

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