Listeners: How They Shape Music Consumption Practices

In this chapter we investigate how the practice of music listening in the age of digital platforms takes shape. The power of platforms in selecting and recommending music to listen to might lead us to believe that listeners are passive individualized users who inertly accept music choices made by algorithms. In the chapter we question this view and the claims of many observers who see today’s listeners as victims of platforms, deconstructing a definition adopted by the recording industry itself: lean-back listeners, that is, passive listeners waiting to be spoon-fed music by platforms. Our interviews with a number of young music fans demonstrate that they are by no means passive about the platforms’ recommendations nor completely absorbed in the logic of automated selection. On the contrary, most of them have developed listening practices that do not play out exclusively on platforms; rather, they are integrated selectively within the rhythms of their daily lives in very different and sometimes creative ways. We can even identify forms of resistance by listeners, who put in practice tactics for contrasting platforms’ strategies. We show that although platforms hold great power in shaping our musical experiences, listeners still retain a degree of autonomy to make their musical experience personal and meaningful.