Sharing a digital music collection with co-workers can be fraught with social perils, a study of US office workers has revealed.
Amy Voida and colleagues from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Palo Alto Research Center in California, US, interviewed 13 US office workers who routinely listened to each others鈥� music via their company鈥檚 computer network, using Apple鈥檚 iTunes music software.
Participants confessed to forming judgements about co-workers based on the taste 鈥� or lack of taste 鈥� revealed by their music collection. Many also admitted to tailoring their own music library to project a particular persona, and some said they deliberately hid particularly embarrassing tracks from others.
Advertisement
iTunes provides a simple way to manage music files and can be used to upload songs to an iPod music player or buy tracks from the iTunes Music Store. But another feature lets users share songs across a computer network. Activating the sharing function lets others view and listen to playlists stored in a computer鈥檚 library.
Embarrassing tracks
Unlike internet music-sharing networks, which are largely anonymous, users on a local iTunes network usually know many of the people trading tracks. And Voida鈥檚 team found that users formed snap judgements based on the songs in each other鈥檚 collections.
Participants also took great care selecting the songs included in their collection. For example, one admitted to copying new CDs just to make his personal music library seem more 鈥渂alanced鈥�.
Another confessed to hiding songs that were 鈥渂ought for his wife鈥�, including tracks by popular music icon Justin Timberlake as well as one by Michael McDonald of the rock outfits Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers.
Management issue
Users paid still more attention to their collection when managers joined the sharing, with some participants feeling compelled to conceal more outlandish songs in the presence of seniors.
More surprisingly perhaps, participants said they did not search one another鈥檚 collection to find new music. But Mike Ayers, a sociologist at Manhattan College in New York, US, and freelance music journalist, told New 杏吧原创 that behaviour 鈥渃ould be compared to scanning someone鈥檚 CD collection and picking out something you鈥檙e familiar with鈥�.
Nonetheless, online playlists widen the access available to music collections beyond those people who would be expected to visit someone鈥檚 home and view their CD collection.
Ayers suggests that personal playlists linked to online music stores could eventually prove very popular. 鈥淵ou can create your own iTunes playlist for people to buy,鈥� he adds. 鈥淚 think that鈥檚 revolutionary, in terms of the technology, public space, capital, and sharing taste.鈥�
The study was presented in a paper entitled Listening In: Practices Surrounding iTunes Music Sharing, at the Computer-Human Interaction conference in Oregon, US, in April 2005.
