Patterns in Music Consumption

Technological developments have enabled consumers to easily store large quantities of music on hard drives in MP3 format and broadband internet and P2P file sharing programs have offered a means of exchanging these files in an ever growing scale. This means that people are (given they possess the technological skills and means) able to consume vast amounts of music. This thesis departs from an economic perspective, but wants to do to do right to the social phenomenon that music is by taking in account the sociological perspective as well as a some insights from musical psychology. Based on the literature music appreciation was expected to depend amongst others on age, gender, education, different information sources and level of music practice. I set out to determine how these factors influence music appreciation and attempted to analyze the importance of the internet as an information source in particular. The data was collected by means of an internet survey, and yielded 291 respondents. What we see is that the internet together with friends and acquaintances are indeed the most important source of information for the majority of the respondents. Radio and written media follow closely, while TV and family appear to be of lesser importance. Two multiple regression analyses were run. From the entered independent variables only age, gender and listening intensity proved to be significant predictors for the level of importance of the internet as an information source. Being older and being female both decreased this level of importance, while listening more hours a day to music that was self-chosen increased it. The indicated level of importance of the internet had a small positive effect on diversity of music appreciation, but his result was not significant. Based on these findings I concluded that ‘The level of importance of the internet as a source for information about new music is a strong predictor for a higher diversity in music appreciation (measured as a higher level of overall music appreciation).’ Was in this case falsified.