Tunes Together: Perception and Experience of Collaborative Playlists

Music is well established as a means of social connection. In the age of streaming platforms, personalized playlists and recommendations are popular topics in music information retrieval. We bring the focus of music enjoyment back to social connection and examine how technologies can enhance interpersonal relationships, specifically through the context of the collaborative playlist (CP). We conducted an exploratory study of CP users and non-users (N=65) and examined speculative and experienced purposes and outcomes of CPs, as well as general perspectives on music and social connectedness. We derived a CP Framework with three purposes - Practical, Cognitive, and Social - and two connotations - Utility and Orientation. Both users and non-users shared similar perspectives on music-related activities and CP user outcomes. Projected and actual CP purposes differed between groups, however, as did perception of music's role in connectedness in recent years. These results highlight the importance of music-based social interactions for both groups.