What your playlist says about you
posted by:Marty // 06:36 PM // May 12, 2005 // TechLife
Listening In: Practices Surrounding iTunes Music Sharing, presented at the 2005 Computer-Human Interaction Conference, details the results of recent study offering some informative insight into the nuisances and dynamics of behavioural representation. The paper speaks to how music playlists in general, play a role in establishing and portraying characteristics of ourselves to those around us, including co-workers. Furthermore, the study establishes that sharing digital music can lead to strong group identities.
Of interest to Blog*on*nymity, is the study’s revelations on the nexus between privacy and the sharing features of music playlists.
Those who used iTunes as a personal music library prior to the version release that enabled sharing upgraded their versions of iTunes and started sharing immediately. The rest enabled sharing as soon as they started using iTunes; sharing, as it was seen, was part of the “ethos” of the application
...
By default, one’s own music sharing is turned off; users must explicitly turn it on. One participant (P9) reported that if his music had been automatically shared, he would have strongly resented it and turned it off. Giving users control over whether they share their music from the start respected users’ privacy concerns in sharing.
This study adds another dimension to the notion that technology alters the way humans relate to one another, in large part due to their online or digital identity. Thus, the above statement regarding control exemplifies that control is a central aspect to how one might approach the reales of availability of one's own personal information or characteristics in the online world.
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