The adoption of personalized music services – Combining qualitative and quantitative research –

In the last decade the music industry has been developing different Internet based music services. Lately personalization via recommendation is gaining popularity. In this paper we investigate the adoption of personalized music services by a combined quantitative and qualitative research approach. We first deploy an adoption study by the use of an adapted TAM survey. Our quantitative findings confirm perceived enjoyment as influential factor for intention to use, higher than perceived usefulness. Instead of broadening the quantitative study to a wider group of users we investigate deeper with qualitative interviews based on diffusion of innovation and different adoption models. Firstly three hypotheses are formulated on basis of the survey. Secondly our qualitative results give a richer explanation and show our group of respondents value the quality of the music recommendation mechanism over extra other functionalities like social networking, blogging and scrobbling. The latter result is important for music service suppliers in their highly competitive market

Music Streaming Services: Understanding the drivers of customer purchase and intention to recommend these services

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Statistics and Information Management, specialization in Information Analysis and ManagementThe music industry has undergone strong changes in relation to its production, distribution and consumption habits, due to the exponential development of new technologies, namely streaming platforms. The fact that sales from physical copies continue to decline significantly made it mandatory for this industry to reinvent itself by introducing music streaming services as a key part of the development of its business. This study aims to understand the factors that influence the consumption of music through streaming platforms studying, particularly, the intention to purchase a paid version of a music streaming service and to recommend it. Therefore, an extension of the UTAUT2 model (version of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology, applied to the consumer side) was created. An online survey was used to collect data from 324 music streaming services users and the framework was tested using structural equation modelling (SEM). It also included in-depth semi-structured interviews in order to draw conclusions about the profile of the new music consumer. Our findings verify that habit, performance expectancy and price value play the most important role in influencing the intention to use a paid music streaming service. The intention to recommend these services was also confirmed. With this analysis, centred in UTAUT2 theory, we contribute with new insights about music streaming services consumer behaviour, providing several theoretical and practical implications to music streaming services providers

Current Challenges and Visions in Music Recommender Systems Research

Music recommender systems (MRS) have experienced a boom in recent years, thanks to the emergence and success of online streaming services, which nowadays make available almost all music in the world at the user's fingertip. While today's MRS considerably help users to find interesting music in these huge catalogs, MRS research is still facing substantial challenges. In particular when it comes to build, incorporate, and evaluate recommendation strategies that integrate information beyond simple user--item interactions or content-based descriptors, but dig deep into the very essence of listener needs, preferences, and intentions, MRS research becomes a big endeavor and related publications quite sparse. The purpose of this trends and survey article is twofold. We first identify and shed light on what we believe are the most pressing challenges MRS research is facing, from both academic and industry perspectives. We review the state of the art towards solving these challenges and discuss its limitations. Second, we detail possible future directions and visions we contemplate for the further evolution of the field. The article should therefore serve two purposes: giving the interested reader an overview of current challenges in MRS research and providing guidance for young researchers by identifying interesting, yet under-researched, directions in the field

WHAT DO USERS NEED? EXPLORING INFLUENCES ON THE ADOPTION OF MOBILE CONTENT AND THE DIFFERENCES AMONG CATEGORIES OF ADOPTERS

Businesses develop products and services with the goal of earning a satisfactory return on their original investment of time and capital. For their part, consumers seek out products and services that meet a recognized need. However, predicting the adoption rate of any new technology is an inexact science, and some businesses find themselves on the wrong side of the curve. The variables factoring into consumers’ purchasing decisions are manifold and contingent on a wider network of influences. This research suggests that a primary variable that influences consumers’ adoption of a technological innovation (in this case, mobile content) is the perception of 10 proposed Mobile Content Needs. The first goal of this research is to propose a framework for the relationships among the adoption of mobile content, users’ perception of their need for mobile content, and users’ innovativeness, which is a measure of the likelihood to adopt a new product. This research seeks to explore the differences among groups (categories) of adopters in the context of the perceived needs influencing their decision to adopt mobile content. In other words, it examines the prominence of particular mobile content needs for each of the five categories of adopters. This examination provides indirect evidence of how the mobile content adoption process evolves over time in relation to a specific innovation and within specific groups. This research is useful for those seeking to better understand the mobile content market in its totality, in particular the motivations driving different adopter groups. The results of this research may enable the development of more relevant, targeted content, with a surer knowledge of what a potential consumer needs at each stage of the adoption lifecycle. Similarly, this research offers a foundation for more extensive studies in the near future

Music streaming services: understanding the drivers of customer purchase and intention to recommend

Barata, M. L., & Coelho, P. S. (2021). Music streaming services: understanding the drivers of customer purchase and intention to recommend. Heliyon, 7(8). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e07783The music industry has undergone tremendous changes in relation to its production, distribution, and consumption habits due to the exponential development of new technologies, namely streaming platforms. The fact that sales of physical copies continue to decline significantly made it mandatory for this industry to reinvent itself by introducing music streaming services as a key part of its business development. This study aims to understand the factors that influence music consumption through streaming platforms, particularly studying the intention to adopt premium (paid) versions of a music streaming service and recommend them. An extension of the UTAUT2 model (version of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology, applied to the consumer side) was created. Based on data collected from 324 music streaming services users, the framework of this study was tested using structural equation modelling (SEM). Research also included in-depth semi-structured interviews in order to generate a more profound knowledge about the profile, behaviours and motivations of the new music consumer. Our findings confirm that habit, performance expectancy and price value play the most important role in influencing the intention to use a paid music streaming service. Simultaneously, new dimensions such as personalisation, attitude towards piracy and perceived freemium-premium fit arise as having an additional relevant role in adopting this type of service. The research contributes insights into music streaming services consumer behaviour, providing several theoretical and practical implications to music streaming services providers.publishersversionpublishersversionpublishe

An approach to the impact on the market and music consumption after the emergence of streaming technology

Consumption in the music industry has been changing considerably, moving from the analogue to the digital phase and finally to the total dematerialization of music. Despite digitalization making consumption more accessible and democratic to consumers, the emergence of piracy is becoming a problem for the music industry, which faces dizzying declines in its sales. In an era that is virtually impossible to control online consumption, streaming technology is developed and launched which, in addition to curbing illegal downloading practices, creates a new business model and becomes a new consumer trend as it develops. Based on this scenario, where digital and intangible forms take control, this work seeks through descriptive research based on specialized sources and reports, an analysis on related subjects that stimulate the understanding of the impacts caused on the industry that has emerged after the period critical of piracy. The study also reveals a general overview of the positive and negative influences of streaming technology, in relation to pre-existing media, artists and consumers who had to readjust the new trend that shaped the new music industry

Research on the Adoption Intention of Users\u27 Knowledge Payment: the Integrated Model of UGT and TAM

Knowledge payment based on social media has become a new business model. The research on adoption intention of users could help the users recognize the influence of knowledge payment. Meanwhile, the research is helpful for the suppliers to standard and develop this business model further. According to the social media nature of knowledge payment, use and gratification theory and technology acceptance model were chosen as the theory basis to build the research model of users\u27 adoption intention on knowledge payment. 315 valid samples were collected from questionnaire. Structural equation model was used as the model analysis tool. It is found that the main motivations and purposes of users\u27 adoption on knowledge payment are the willingness to get cognitive gratification, hedonic gratification, and convenience gratification of the users. Meanwhile, in order to increase the users\u27 adoption intentions, knowledge content represented by perceived usefulness is critical, operation process represented by perceived ease of use is the method, but perceived payment price is not the key factor

Unlocking the potential of Artificial Intelligence: barriers and barriers’ inhibitors regarding the adoption of artificial intelligence-enabled products by consumers

Despite the optimistic forecasts of some years ago about the diffusion of smart objects (SOs), consumers' adoption of such devices is still in its infancy. Building on marketing literature about consumer resistance to the adoption of innovation, consumer privacy concerns, and consumer-smart objects relationships, the goal of this work is threefold: 1) identifying barriers to consumers' adoption that are specific to smart devices, and identifying the most important barrier discriminating between adopters and non-adopters; 2) identifying inhibitors specific to the main barriers to the adoption (i.e., data collection concerns); 3) identifying a new barrier to the adoption stemming from the possible relationship that can occur between consumer and smart object. Each objective is the subject of one paper. Indeed, the dissertation is composed of three different papers. Concerning the results, the first paper shed light on the main barrier to the adoption of SOs (i.e., data collection concerns); the second paper uncovers whether, why, and when the explanation about how an algorithm gathers and processes consumers' personal data and the level of control over the management of personal data that the firm provides to the consumer can reduce consumers' data collection concerns. Finally, the third paper uncovers a new, relational barrier to the adoption of SOs highlighting four different fears and respective negative social roles anticipated by consumers

Novel music discovery concepts: user experience and design implications

Current music consumers are facing an almost endless selection of music in online services to be accessed on-demand with a variety of devices. The focus has now shifted from providing on-demand access to massive music catalogs towards improving the user experience of the music services, providing new ways of finding relevant music from the massive online catalogs, and making music consumption a pleasurable experience. The key differentiation aspects for music services come largely from the user interface and the ways that music can be found or consumed. This thesis belongs to the fields of human-computer interation (HCI) and music information retrieval (MIR). HCI is concerned with the design, evaluation and implementation of interactive computing systems and MIR targets to broaden the understanding and usage of musical data through research, applications and tools. This thesis studies novel concepts for music discovery that are based on strong visual metaphors and stereotypes. The goal is to research the user experience (UX) of novel music discovery services and to formulate key design implications to support service development for music discovery. The research of music discovery prototypes consisted of three main phases: initial concept design phase, playful concept exploration phase, and iterative concept design phase. The thesis introduces, in total, ten prototype implementations of these novel concepts for music discovery. User evaluations of the implemented prototypes were conducted with Finnish active music listeners with both qualitative and quantitative research methods. This thesis contributes to both academic research on HCI in MIR and commercial music discovery service development. The results provide insights to user experience with different types of novel music discovery services. Five novel music discovery services using the same content-based music recommendation back-end were compared and the comparison results are reported including both first impressions and longer-term usage. Additionally, the results of the studies introduce a wide set of future directions for each music discovery approach. These future directions enable service developers to further enhance the music discovery experience within these fields. All but one of the proposed music discovery concepts work well for music discovery. The use of avatar characters and mood pictures for music discovery are the most promising ones. The results show that visual music discovery services have the potential to replace traditional music discovery services in different types of music discovery practices. The final contribution of the thesis is a set of 16 design implications for music discovery service developers