Kiite Cafe: A Web Service for Getting Together Virtually to Listen to Music

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic making it difficult for people to get together in person, this paper describes a public web service called Kiite Cafe that lets users get together virtually to listen to music. When users listen to music on Kiite Cafe, their experiences are characterized by two architectures: (i) visualization of each user's reactions, and (ii) selection of songs from users' favorite songs. These architectures enable users to feel social connection with others and the joy of introducing others to their favorite songs as if they were together in person to listen to music. In addition, the architectures provide three user experiences: (1) motivation to react to played songs, (2) the opportunity to listen to a diverse range of songs, and (3) the opportunity to contribute as curators. By analyzing the behavior logs of 1,760 Kiite Cafe users over about five months, we quantitatively show that these user experiences can generate various effects (e.g., users react to a more diverse range of songs on Kiite Cafe than when listening alone). We also discuss how our proposed architectures can continue to enrich music listening experiences with others even after the pandemic's resolution.