Abstract
This article explores the meaning and function of streaming media as a potential facilitator of musicalBildung. Taking the affordances of streaming media technologies as a starting point, the article thusfocuses on the formative and cultivating dimensions a music streaming service such as Spotifymight offer. The specific aim of this article is to describe and analyse how musical Bildung may evolvewithin a Spotify context from a user perspective. To address the aim from the point of view of musiceducation, Spotify users’ activities and experiences of streaming media interactions were accessed,inspired by internet-related ethnography. Stimulated recall interviews, focusing on the participants’experiences as well as their actual use of Spotify’s streaming service, were conducted, recorded, andtranscribed. The generated material was subjected to co-operative hermeneutic content analysis.The results illuminate how Bildung evolves in users’ encounters with the service and with art mediatedvia Spotify. Relevant topics occurring in the human-art-technology relationship of Bildung from aHeideggerian perspective were Being-possible, the ability-to-be, and Spotify as the Other. In sum, itcan be stated that Bildung evolves when Spotify exceeds the thingness of the Other, becoming a workof art in itself, throwing the user into Being.
Highlights
This article reports a study based on stimulated recall interviews (Calderhead, 1981; Lam, 2008) that aims to explore the meaning and function of the streaming media service Spotify as a facilitator of Bildung within the realm of music
The service was referred to by most of the participants as their dominant, or even only, facilitator of music, independent of their genre interests and of whether they worked professionally with music. This result was expected, as being a Spotify user was a prerequisite for participation and Spotify is the dominant service in Sweden (Kask, 2011)
The results presented above are related to the concepts of being-possible, ability-to-be, and Spotify as the Other
Summary
This article reports a study based on stimulated recall interviews (Calderhead, 1981; Lam, 2008) that aims to explore the meaning and function of the streaming media service Spotify as a facilitator of Bildung within the realm of music. The locus of attention in this study was Spotify, which has become the dominant means of accessing recorded music in Sweden. Music via Spotify is by default a double-directed communication (Eriksson et al, 2019; Leijonhufvud, 2018). Spotify influences how musical Bildung may evolve among users within the algorithmic interplay with the service, which is why it is important to scrutinise the relation between users, Spotify, and music
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