Literature Review

Abstract

The world of music sharing has changed drastically within the past decade. While music sharing was heavily based off of emotional feelings and caring, it has now shifted to something much more complex. This complexity has not just come out of the blue, but rather has been a changing process throughout the years. With the development of social media, music sharing apps, iPhones, and easier forms of communication music sharing has lost its emotional connection and has taken on a new form of meaning. This meaning is much more complex and varies. Journeying through sources, Spotify has increasingly been influencing the modern day of music sharing through emotion and meaning. This continues on to Spotify’s unique sharing and promotional features that help create hits and easy-to-make playlists for its users.  

How music sharing apps like Spotify fit into the world of social media

A bigger issue is how do music sharing apps fit into the world of social media and what defines those requirements? “Internet-based applications and websites that promote the sharing of user-generated content, communication, and participation on a large scale,” (Cooper 1). This is exactly what Spotify does. The user generates playlists and is able to share them across large scale areas of other users. These users can now interact with the content by saving the playlist, listening to the playlist, and being able to save/listen to individual songs within the playlist as a whole. Now looking at how Spotify compares to other popular social platforms like Facebook.  “Facebook allows users to build a personal profile that includes pictures and cultural interests, to exchange messages, and to share thoughts, pictures, and videos. Facebook allows for mpore customization and requires users to give their true identity, which platforms like MySpace did not,” (Cooper 2). The customization aspect is important for users, Spotify allows profile images and allows customization to a certain point. However, people that are using music applications are more focused on the music. Which in this case, it’s safe to argue that the customizable content that Cooper mentions is the users playlists on Spotify. The users content is stuff that they are creating for others to view and share, which is exactly what the playlists are doing.

How Spotify can simplify the music sharing process

People have no switched to music sharing applications such as Spotify because the process is much easier and user friendly. The amount of time it takes to create a digital playlist and have it posted on the users profile for anyone to see is minimal. “Last month, Spotify reported that is has 60 million subscribers—a 100 percent jump from last year, Apple music has 27 million. More than half od Spotify users listen to the service’s constantly updated playlists, like Today’s Top Hits, which has more than 16 million subscribers,” (Knopper 1). These playlists aren’t just set in stone, but they are easily update-able and are changed instantly. Spotify has created music advertising like no other. Artist can now make their own playlists and share them with their listeners, listeners can create their own playlists, and Spotify can release their own playlists. “Spotify playlists can broaden audiences in a big way,” (Knopper 2). Because of the share ability that Spotify provides, as an artist it is much easier to gain new influencers from around the world.

Collaboration in Spotify

            “Demonstrating the ability to collaborate effectively is essential for students moving into the 21^st century workplaces. Employers are expecting new hires to already possess group-work skills and will seek evidence of their ability to cooperate, collaborate, and complete projects with colleagues, including remotely or at a distance,” (Stephens & Roberts 1). The key still of collaboration is become more relevant in the world today. As technology continues to adapt and change so does the way people communicate. Music sharing is one of those things that has changed a long with it. Instead of having a physical hard copy of the music, it has now become completely digital. It is this sense of I now own this music and I can gift it to you through playlists. Spotify is made of collaboration. Playlists being made and people listening and sharing them, the playlist has started somewhere and has its owner but it can be changed or recreated by someone else. Collaboration creates positive impacts by engagement with peers, according to Stephens & Roberts. When a person creates a playlist on Spotify, they now become a personal D.J. for the user. The user is listening to something that the creator put together to serve a certain emotional purpose. This follows under the Facilitating Collaboration in Online Groups (FCOG) according to Stephen & Roberts which states four phases. Phase 1 entails creating a group set and themed groups using self-enrollment, phase 2 provides instructors with suggestions on how to detail the operational and performance expectations for groups and individual members within the groups, phase 3 instructors are provided with web-based communication tools and pedagogical suggestions to help students use them more effectively. Finally phase 4 provides more examples and illustrations of assignments and activities that use the FCOG strategy.

“The first phase of the FCOG strategy is for the online instructor to create formal groups of students,” (Stephens & Roberts 2). This first phase needs to be pictured as Spotify being the online instructor. Spotify has created musical categories/genres to help people fit their playlists into categories of people with same musical taste. “In addition to guiding students through how to self-enroll in one of the themed groups, providing them with information related to the importance and benefits of working in groups to achieve collective goals,” (Stephens & Roberts 3). This phase goes with experience and how much creditability a playlist has. If the playlist has more followers it then becomes more credible. If the playlist has a low amount of followers the playlist becomes less credible. These set expectations for users that are browsing through a certain genre, if the playlist has credibility it is more likely to be listened to, plus it appears before those that do not have followers. Phase 3 now provides users with choices in communication tools, it is critical for collaboration (Stephens & Roberts 4). This is then the decision that is made upon the user. Is this user going to now follow the playlist maker, is the user just going to follow the playlist, or is the user just going to browse through the playlist and save individuals songs that are of interest. Lastly, phase 4 which is focused on development. This is done through Spotify on the user now being aware of new music and therefore, the user is now able to create new content using that song or playlist. This allows something completely new to birth and turn into a playlist or a combination of certain songs that no one has heard before.

Why the Pirates haven’t found Spotify

            The Pirates Bay was a popular music downloading site that allowed users to upload their own content into their own categories. This music sharing site did not abide by any legal copyrights. This allowed anyone to upload anything and anyone to download anything that was uploaded. While the collaboration aspect is quite similar to Spotify, it couldn’t be more different. “Due to its mobilization of millions of users and the hosting of about 5 million torrent files, The Pirates Bay can speak with a disdainful or irreverent voice against the established power structures of the music industry. In this way it questions the view of consumers as passive content recipients and the business logic of paying for the carrier,” (Wikhamn & Knights 46). Being an “active” user means paying for content and making sure no copyright issues are violated. This is people purchasing CDs and Spotify can fall under this category. A “passive: user is getting free content, potentially violating copyright issues such as The Pirates Bay. “Spotify is a new way to listen to music. Any track you like, any time you like. Just search for it on Spotify, then play it. Any artist, any album, any genre-all available instantly. With Spotify, there are no limits to the amount of music you can listen to. Just help yourself to whatever you want, whenever you want it,” (Wikhamn & Knights 44). Spotify has changed the realm of the music sharing industry, as people can now pay a monthly fee to listen to unlimited amounts of music while still giving the artists their share of profits.

How Spotify creates hits

“To content providers, the focus is put on being a new distribution channel to a large customer base through a service safe from illegal use and with a business model in place to protect the income streams of intellectual property owners. In this way, Spotify rather acts as a savior to the music industry, supporting the big corporations in the war against pirates,” (Wikhamn & Knights 46). A lot of the music is stuff that wouldn’t normally seem as if it would be popular. However, a majority of the music listened to is Peaceful Piano and Deep Focus. These have songs that are on the more chill side of things, which a lot of people prefer to listen to when studying or working. The more they rack up, as far as listeners, the big paydays comes quick for the copyright owners. “Music, like other imaginary or creative works, is particularly subitle for content or socially based recommendation tools for two reasons: firstly, with creative works like music, what is sought after is the emotive experience it evokes, which is more difficult to express than topical knowledge in traditional information retrieval system. Secondly, unlinked in the problem solving information retrieval context where search behaviors are driven by pre-existing information need, in creative works like music, the desire to consume a product often takes place after, rather than before users’ first encounter with the information,” (Tang & Yang 1).

Conclusion    

“Empirical research on music-induced emotions provides convincing evidence that music does indeed elict certain emotions and moods in listeners,” (Rentfrow 406). While emotion is still key in music sharing, there is now a heavier weight placed on sharing something much deeper, identity. When the sharing of music CDs or mixtapes was still the popular form of music sharing this was mainly for your crush. As media has portrayed this best, with a guy creating a mixtape to show how in love he is with his crush. It is also showed as a guy holding a stereo outside of his crushes window, emphasizing how much he wants to be with her. Making playlists has now served as a temporary identity for someone to share how they are feeling in a certain moment, creating a feeling of learning who someone is in their different moods. Not a lot of research has been done in the changing of how music sharing has adapted in the past few years, but it is a huge part of American culture. Continuing the research in this direction, will potentially identify some of the key parts of how music sharing has changed.

Method

Choosing these sources was not easy, as it is hard to identify the parts of much music sharing, as it has changed so much over the past century. With updates to the social media, music sharing, marketing, and online music collaboration, there has been a shift in music sharing and its meaning. By analyzing how Spotify creates hits, this ultimately leads to how people are hearing about the music. Once people have heard the music, they are wanting to share their music taste with others. This creates a kind of identity with the music, defining themselves as the listeners personal D.J. that is sharing this new music. This can also go to include the social psychology of music sharing and how it affects the mind of both the user and the listener. This also in a sort of way creating a way of listeners feeling like they are listening to new content, but every time they are hearing the new content they are relating it back to the person that created it.