Spotify as a Case of Musical Bildung

Abstract

This article explores the meaning and function of streaming media as a potential facilitator of musicalBildung. Taking the affordances of streaming media technologies as a starting point, the article thusfocuses on the formative and cultivating dimensions a music streaming service such as Spotifymight offer. The specific aim of this article is to describe and analyse how musical Bildung may evolvewithin a Spotify context from a user perspective. To address the aim from the point of view of musiceducation, Spotify users’ activities and experiences of streaming media interactions were accessed,inspired by internet-related ethnography. Stimulated recall interviews, focusing on the participants’experiences as well as their actual use of Spotify’s streaming service, were conducted, recorded, andtranscribed. The generated material was subjected to co-operative hermeneutic content analysis.The results illuminate how Bildung evolves in users’ encounters with the service and with art mediatedvia Spotify. Relevant topics occurring in the human-art-technology relationship of Bildung from aHeideggerian perspective were Being-possible, the ability-to-be, and Spotify as the Other. In sum, itcan be stated that Bildung evolves when Spotify exceeds the thingness of the Other, becoming a workof art in itself, throwing the user into Being.