Introduction

As record labels, publishing houses, concert promoters, and artists tackle financial and legal uncertainties following digitalization, the internet has become central to music consumption. Well-established shifts in music listening practices include the move from offline to online music listening and the development of file-sharing and communicative activities around music within social media. In recent years, online streaming services have, moreover, contributed to the notion of music as primarily belonging in an online ‘cloud’ (Wikström, 2013), rather than in personal music collections. Spotify, first launched in Sweden and five other countries in 2008, had over 140 million active users in 61 markets at the end of 2017, with over 30 million songs in its archive. Owning a CD – once considered the height of technological innovation – has become, especially among young people, a nostalgic thing of the past.

Offering constantly available access to vast quantities of music, streaming services can be analysed in relation to their consequences for music artists and the music industry. As a way to deliver cultural commodities, notably music and video, streaming can likewise be approached as a significant development in the media system at large, involving an intertwining of techno-social and economic elements (Vonderau, 2015). Music streaming can also be studied for the way it is integrated into the fabric of social media, with YouTube, for instance, largely based on user-generated content, and the partnership between Spotify and Facebook, effective from the autumn of 2011, an example of commercial dovetailing between two of the main actors in social media and music streaming. The wider shift towards the internet as a main platform for music, equally, opens up investigations into its meanings for listeners. How does cloud-based music listening contribute to engagement in music? How do music fans understand their role in the transforming music and media landscape?