Studying Playlist Cultures with Qualitative Digital Methods

Existing research highlights that playlists sit at the heart of the platform economy of digital music streaming. Characterised by a combination of editorial and algorithmic logics, playlists today represent for many users the main means to consume music, as well as a key component of platforms’ data-driven accumulation model. This chapter investigates playlist production and consumption practices by music streaming platform users in Italy. To this end, it experiments with an original combination of traditional qualitative research, consisting in 5 focus groups with Spotify listeners aged 19-25, and the use of an innovative software, SpotiGeM Hub, that queries the Spotify API to collect playlist features and metadata following digital methods principles. Our study evidences the existence of a spectrum of playlist production and consumption practices that blends genre-based listening habits, anchored in conventional music categories, with a more fluid set of practices that prioritize moods and the social situations in which listening happens. The chapter critically reflects on these findings, discussing the advantages and disadvantages that derive from combining qualitative research and digital data collection for the study of ‘platformized’ music consumption.