مقاله سال ۲۰۱۷

The shift in consumer use from physical forms of music consumption (i.e. vinyl, cassette tapes and CDs) to digital spaces (legal – e.g. iTunes, Spotify and illegal – e.g. piracy), has attracted attention from researchers, questioning the impact this de-materialisation has on how we experience music in everyday life and use it to manage relationships, mood and our sense of self (Bull, 2006; Belk, 2013). Although the idea that music is becoming increasingly de-materialised has been challenged (Magaudda, 2011), there is still a sense that something may have been diminished with the digitalisation of music; that consuming music digitally leads to a loss in the perceived sense of ownership and relationship we have with the music product (see Bartmanski & Woodward, 2015). This potential diminishment of ‘ownership’ has been amplified further through the increasing use of streaming platforms (e.g. Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music) for music consumption, a business model that is based on shared access to music content. According to IFPI (2015), worldwide music streaming subscription services revenues grew by 39% in 2014 to $1.57 billion with an estimated 41 million people paying for the premium versions of these services, a number that is increasing every year. This growth in streaming is in stark contrast to a global decline in digital downloads (−۸%) and physical product sales (−۸٫۱%).

It is only a relatively short period of time, since the invention of the phonograph, that music could be ‘owned’ in the same way we ‘own’ possessions. While music as a means of consumption has been streamed since the invention of radio, contemporary subscription services offer unprecedented levels of choice and control over our music consumption, including when and where it is accessed. Premium versions of such applications allow the consumer access to an unlimited amount of music (ad-free) with the option to download their favourite albums to their devices. However, payment is not conducive (in a legal sense) to any form of ownership as streaming differs from the ‘personal ownership model employed by other digital services, such as the iTunes store’ (Richardson, 2014: 22). This approach to accessing music is similar in business structure to what is seen as an outdated media consumption model of renting movies or borrowing books from a library albeit without the added tangibility of the actual book or video (see Dixon, 2013).

It is this emphasis on de-materialisation in a digitalised world and the increasing dominance of streaming in other forms of media consumption (e.g. Netflix) as well as collaborative models in other industries (e.g. Uber) that has led to the insistence from some commentators (e.g. Belk, 2014: 1599) that we are entering a ‘post-ownership economy’. Consequently, this study seeks to understand the experience of the consumer in this context using the theoretical framework of psychological ownership (Pierce, Kostova, & Dirks, 2003) with music streaming as a focus. As there have been calls for further empirical research ‘to address the emergence of psychological ownership in particular types of situation and contexts or for particular types of ownership targets’ (Pierce et al., 2003:103), and requests to consider the marketing outcomes of psychological ownership (Jussila, Tarkiainen, Sarstedt, & Hair, 2015), this study seeks to attend to these issues.