Social and Cultural Practices around Using the Music Streaming Provider Spotify - A qualitative study exploring how German Millennials use Spotify

Abstract: Over the last years, the music industry has been disrupted by music streaming services which shifted the focus from owning music to accessing it. While the previous research focuses on the economic aspects, the social and cultural consequences remain largely unexplored. Existing research from an audience perspective is often focusing on one particular practice around music streaming and is mainly coming from and focusing on northern EU-countries. However, a broader contemplation of the sociocultural practices around music streaming is still missing. This thesis examines which sociocultural practices have emerged among urban and middle class Millennials in Germany when using the market-leading streaming provider Spotify and which affordances and gratifications these are based upon. The study is based on ten semi-structured interviews with German Millennials aged between 20 to 30 years. Three of these study participants are using a free Spotify account and seven the premium version. By conducting a thematic analysis against the theoretical background that interlinks practice theory, affordance theory and uses and gratifications theory, the practices are described and examined based on the underlying affordances and gratifications.The study found sociocultural practices around the themes social setting, listening mode, Spotify networks and music collection and outlines the underlying affordances and gratifications. During individual listening situations, users engage in the practices of mobile listening and mood management, while listening in social settings focused around navigating the group dynamics and the creation of context-sensitive playlists. The users also aim to create an unstructured and undisrupted music flow but are mainly listening in a passive manner while carrying out other activities. Due to social norms and privacy issues, the participants either reject the network function or build only small networks through which they were sharing and discovering music as well as creating playlists with friends. Lastly, users were building, organizing and maintaining individual music collections.