Project aim and possible changes to this

The aim of this reseach project has been to - with a focus on Moscow and Stockholm - analyze the role of the Internet in music use among young people, through a qualitative study of experiences and uses of music online. Approaching music use in a broad sense, the project has incorporated the study of music listening and related activities as situated in everyday life, and the study of music cultures as they appear online. The project has been divided into two subprojects, with the first one based on focus groups with young adults in each context, and the second one drawing on analysis of three online music platforms popular with the participants: Spotify, VKontakte and YouTube.

The aim of the project has not been altered during the research although the focus of the overall analysis, in line with the rising popularity of music streaming services during the period, has been re-directed towards streaming as a significant element of contemporary music use.

Three key results

Interweaving analyses of technological infrastructural specificity and situated experience, the project has provided a rich illustration of how the Internet is central to social practices and meanings of music. Subproject 1 has showed how streaming services can interlink with a particular kind of music listening, which the research participants described as characterized by a more fleeting engagement with music artists, songs and genres, and related to the experience of music as omnipresent in daily life. Music was conceptualised as "air"; an essential but taken for granted companion in many day-to-day activities, used to control and heighten emotional states and frames of mind, but not primarily seen as an interest or ground for fan cultures. Spotify (in Stockholm) and the Russian social network site VKontakte (in Moscow) emerge as online environments understood to have contributed to a shift in music use, for instance when it comes to a gradual abandonment of fan identities, while the almost unlimited access to music also has opened up new possibilities of exploring music. In relation to previous analyses of fans and music subcultures, the project thus adds to the understanding of the more "ordinary" and mundane forms of music use, and the way the Internet is embedded in these.

Subproject 2, in turn, has brought attention to the interplay between users and music streaming technologies. The three examined platforms, signified by their constantly changing character and an algorithmic logic that adapts to the traces of the users, have here been highlighted as steering the users towards particular forms of listening, where the music industry and commercial interests are represented in different degrees. Spotify, developed in close connection with the music industry, is the most prominent example of a commercial music environment, but equally YouTube, often held up as the prime example of contemporary participatory cultures, have here been observed as gradually developing towards greater commercialization and administrative control. VKontakte, which at its basis consists of user-generated music, has, likewise, to some extent come to adapt to an algorithmic logic directing its users during the research period. Taken together, the results from subproject 2 contribute to nuance ongoing discussions of participatory online music cultures, by underlining the relatively limited role that these may play in contemporary music use.

Finally, the project has shed light on the relationship between technology, music and geo-cultural context. Here it has highlighted how streaming services such as Spotify and VKontakte can develop and gain meaning in specific cultural and political contexts, but also how a site such as YouTube can cut across these as a common point of reference. In the Swedish focus groups the streaming of music for private listening had almost entirely replaced ownership, and there was a strong belief in Spotify as a service. In the Russian context there was a greater emphasis on the materiality of music and the importance of owning music, with an equally notable discourse on national identity in relation to certain kinds of popular music and to online music platforms. But factors such as age, lifestyle, urbanity and the centrality of the Internet as a tool for music at the same time constituted the ground for significant overlaps between the samples, indicating similar ways of incorporating music in everyday life.

New research questions generated within the project

The experiences and user patterns pinpointed within the project can be seen as relating to a broader shift towards streaming as a significant aspect of contemporary media consumption, where radio, television programs and films, as well as music, have increasingly come to be consumed through online streaming services. A new research question generated within the project concerns what the uses of streaming services - overall - imply for the values and meanings attached to media content and cultural artifacts. Addressing this explorative, and as yet largely open question, requires a perspective on streaming as a complex sociocultural, and not just technological, phenomenon, which this project has come to exemplify.

The project, likewise, has made visible the tensions involved on an everyday level when personal music listening, which many of the informants described as an intensely private experience, becomes integrated into the semi-public arenas of the Internet. Interlinking with discussions on the wider consequences of connectivity cultures, where the demands of sharing information with others in vast online networks are imperative, the boundary between the private and the public becomes further complicated in relation to a medium so intimately entwined in people's emotional life. Here, the project has opened up for further study of the performativity and sociality of online music use, but also for wider questions around its infrastructural dimensions.

International anchoring

The project has from the start had a strong international anchoring, through its comparative perspective and as one of the project researchers, Gregory Goldenzwaig, has an academic base at the faculty of journalism at Moscow State University. In order to strengthen this connection, a workshop, "Music and New Media" (2012, see below), was organised at this university at the initial stage of the research. Throughout the duration of the project the research group has also been in contact with the related project Clouds and Concerts at the University in Oslo (project leaders Anne Danielsen & Arnt Maasö). In November 2013 the project arranged a larger two-day international workshop at Södertörn University, where the Norwegian researchers participated together with other international music researchers.

The researchers have, in addition, presented papers relating to the project at more than 20 international research conferences, with many of these, such as AOIR (Association for Internet Research), ECREA (European Communication Research and Education Association), ICA (International Communication Association), IASPM (International Association for the Study of Popular Music) and NordMedia (Nordic media conference), well-established and prestigious conferences.

Activities outside of the scientific community

The project findings have, likewise, been presented at several workshops and seminars oriented towards the music industry. These have included the final seminar of Clouds & Concerts (Oslo, 2016), Tallinn Music Week (Tallinn, 2015), MusicNorway (Oslo, 2015), MuzykaMoskva/NAMM Musikmesse (Moskva, 2014), Russia: Music Change (Stockholm, 2014) Sounds of Sweden export seminar (Moskva, 2012) and Helsinki Music Centre vs. Russia seminar (Helsingfors, 2012). The researchers have also contributed to journalistic interviews and blogs, and have been engaged as speakers at workshops directed to a general public. In addition to the organized workshop in November 2013, which included an afternoon with open lectures, and the Moscow workshop, which was likewise open to the public and formally introduced by a representative from the Swedish Embassy in Moscow, these have included "Music Matters: Emotion, Relation, Mediation", a workshop gathering academics and the general public on the theme of music and emotions (Södertörn University, 2014).

Two key publications

The key publication from the project constitutes of a co-written book, titled Streaming Music: Practices, Media, Cultures (forthcoming, 2016), which examines the adaptation of music streaming in the specific geo-cultural contexts, and considers how popular online music platforms guide contemporary music use. Divided into two main parts that correspond with the two subprojects - "Practices" and "Platforms" - it covers themes such as music streaming in everyday life, music and connectivity, and the value of music in a digital era, as well as paying attention to how music is organized and provided new contexts on Spotify, VKontakte and YouTube.

Another publication of particular importance is Werner and Johansson's article "Experts, dads & technology: Gendered talk about online music" (2014), which develops a research theme outside of those presented in the book. The article addresses online music use from a gender perspective, looking at some striking overlaps in discussions with young people in the two studied contexts, and arguing that gender continues to be a significant factor in musical influence and guidance, despite prevalent ideas of a networked music use characterized by individualism.

Publication strategy

The publication strategy has come to focus on the co-written book, written in English for an international audience, with the intent to provide a comprehensive overview of the findings. This is currently under review at a publisher, with each project researcher contributing with 2-4 chapters each. Aside from this, efforts have been made to contribute to a number of peer-review journals and anthology chapters in English, Swedish and Russian.

The published articles have primarily been directed at open access journals. For the article by Werner and Johansson described above an open access fee was paid to the publisher (Sage), as the journal was considered particularly well suited for the article due to its reach and content orientation.

Publications

Goldenzwaig, Gregory (2014) “Fenomen muzyki v oblake v rossiyskih realiyah: problematika tsennnosti?” (“Music in the Cloud in Russia: the Problematics of Value”), Vestnik MGU: Journalism, Vol. 2: 9-28.

Goldenzwaig, Gregory (2013) “Music Consumption Practices in the Age of the Cloud: Listening to Russia”, in World of Media: Yearbook of Russian Media and Journalism Studies, Moscow State University, Vol. 2013, 39-59. 

Johansson, Sofia, Werner, Ann, Åker, Patrik & Goldenzwaig, Gregory (2016, forthcoming) Streaming Music: Practices, Media, Cultures. 

Johansson, Sofia (forthcoming) “’Music is Like Air to Me’: Engaging with Music on Spotify” (under review, international peer-review journal).

Werner, Ann & Johansson, Sofia (2015) “Genusskapande i digitalt musikbruk” (“Constructions of Gender in Digital Music Use”), in Anja Hirdman & Yvonne Andersson (eds.) Mediernas känsla för kön, Göteborg: Nordicom, pp. 150-170.

Werner, Ann & Johansson, Sofia (2014) “Experts, Dads and Technology: Gendered Talk about Online Music”, International Journal of Cultural Studies, Online First (Published ahead of print) DOI 10.1177/1367877914555463.

Werner, Ann (2016, forthcoming) “Chapter 20. Streaming Nature: Ethnicity/Race, Gender and Technology in Online Sámi Popular Music”, in Fabian Holt & Antti. Ville Kärjä (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Popular Music in the Nordic Countries, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Werner, Ann (2015) “Moving forward: A Feminist Analysis of Mobile Music
Streaming”, Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research, 7(1): 197
-212.

Werner, Ann (2015) “Introduction: Studying junctures of motion and emotion”, Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research, 7(2): 169-173.