‘I’m also slightly conscious of how much I’m listening to something’: Music streaming and the transformation of music listening

Abstract

Drawing on Erving Goffman’s microsociology, this article explores the networking of music streaming technologies and their convergence with social media. Acts of privatized music listening that were once seamlessly secluded in back regions like the home and therefore removed from the view of others can now become presented more widely in front region contexts. Reporting on in-depth qualitative interviews with users of music streaming and how they perceive their musical listening has been altered, I investigate some of the affordances of streaming as it contributes to an unravelling or collapsing of demarcations between front and back region activity. As a result, users of streaming services describe how they become mindful of how they undertake their music listening and how these technologies consequently require careful management.