Personalised But Impersonal: Listeners' Experiences of Algorithmic Curation on Music Streaming Services

The consumption of music is increasingly reliant on the personalisation, recommendation, and automated curation features of music streaming services. Using algorithm experience (AX) as a lens, we investigated the user experience of the algorithmic recommendation and automated curation features of several popular music streaming services. We conducted interviews and participant-observation with 15 daily users of music streaming services, followed by a design workshop. We found that despite the utility of increasingly algorithmic personalisation, listeners experienced these algorithmic and recommendation features as impersonal in determining their background listening, music discovery, and playlist curation. While listener desire for more control over recommendation settings is not new, we offer a number of novel insights about music listening to nuance this understanding, particularly through the notion of vibe.