UNSTRUCTURED
The healing power of music is being used as a commercial gimmick by many music streaming services to attract online music users. However, less is known about how effective healing music is at helping people and the ways that music exerts healing power. In this study, we conducted the linguistic analysis of online music comments of music users in response to healing music using the Bag of Words model, LIWC analysis, and LDA topic modelling. Three healing music were selected whose singers and songwriters publicly announced to “heal” listeners and we randomly selected music comments from the music streaming platform as non-healing music comments. The results revealed that music users are more likely to disclose themselves in response to healing music as compared to non-healing music. It also suggested that appreciation of music, support seeking and provision, expressing induced emotions, and sharing episodic memories might be the motives for leaving healing-music comments. This research helps to enrich our understanding of the everyday use of music in cyberspace and social media contexts.