World Media Economics and Management Conference 2016

This study investigates trends in consumption of digital streaming music. As a global mass-media industry, heavily disrupted by technological advances of the past decade, the digital streaming music industry is ripe for scholarly study. Emergent streaming platforms struggle to attract mass audiences and veteran streaming platforms face mounting criticisms from artists and users.This study administered a survey to digital streaming music consumers that partially replicated prior work by the Rethink Music Initiative (2013). In addition to providing more information on an important sector of media consumers, this study makes three contributions to the existing literature. This study isolated music streaming consumption from other streaming media. This study divided streaming consumers into two independent groups: those who pay for streaming subscriptions and users who consume for free. Finally, this study used cultural, sociological, and psychological theories of consumption to frame research questions and hypotheses, and to interpret results.Major findings indicate that paying subscribers and free users both view catalog of music as the most important feature of a streaming service, and losing the ability to ‘own’ music to be the most unsatisfying aspect. Paying subscribers are more satisfied overall with streaming services than free users. Paying subscribers also believe streaming services are fairer to themselves and to artists than free users indicated.Streaming media are quickly becoming dominate modes of consumption for digital video and music. Scholarly study of streaming media helps identify trends for industrial application to help consumers improve their experiences and managers improve their businesses.