The dissertation’s overall structure is divided in two: (1) the covering paper that will survey the research project as a whole, and (2) four articles written over the three-year course of the project. I also argue that music-streaming services afford involvements in diverse modes of experience and practice that are realised through the role and impact of these services in everyday life, as demonstrated by the micro-dynamics that follow upon the act of streaming among individuals, the technology, the music and the context. Streaming-related musical meaning is found to be intensely self-referential and personal, and streaming presents itself as a malleable lifeworld resource.
The principal study finding involves the extent of the role that music has assumed in daily life as a result of streaming services.
I develop my arguments through a discussion that draws on theoretical frameworks that fundamentally revolve around notions of human action, which is also a focus of my analyses (via user practices and experiences). It is therefore also relevant for grasping everyday experiences of a taken-for-granted nature that arise in the context of mobile media and the ubiquitous Internet. This design is original to the dissertation and intended to make immediate experience sampling convenient for the informant. I followed up with individual in-depth interviews that were conducted while looking at the personal streaming-service interfaces together with the informants. I began by devoting two months to sampling users’ self-reported practices and experiences with music-streaming services, combined with online observation and logging of all streamed tracks during this period. The study relies on a mixed-methods design using twelve heavy music-streaming users (ranging from seventeen to sixty years old) as informants. The research was conducted in Norway, which currently boasts a globally pioneering streaming market. This perspective informs both the methodological model and the theoretical framework of the study, which is otherwise interdisciplinary and eclectic. Its research perspective is inspired by sociological phenomenology, starting with Alfred Schutz’s action-oriented approach to understanding intersubjective meaningful experience. It sheds light on how music in general, and streaming technology in particular, is perceived, made sense of, experienced and practiced in the context of the individual streaming user’s everyday life. Dissertation: This study is among the first to be explicitly concerned with music-streaming services from a qualitative user perspective.
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