Date of Completion

2015

Document Type

Honors College Thesis

Department

Community Development and Applied Economics

Thesis Type

Honors College, College of Arts and Science Honors

First Advisor

Jane Petrillo

Second Advisor

Thomas DeSisto

Third Advisor

Rob Williams

Keywords

media, music preferences, music streaming, piracy, concerts

Abstract

Today with digital technology revolutionizing, music access is changing and becoming available in new forms. It is important to look at the most common ways it is accessed in order to effectively market new products and services related to this field. This study examined the music listening habits and preferences of University of Vermont (UVM) students as a whole through an online survey. 200 responses were analyzed for the results of this study and respondents consisted of a mix of academic years and majors. Results indicated that rock music was the most popular genre and the top three bands among the sample were Phish, Led Zeppelin, and Alt-J. The most popular streaming service was Spotify, and the highest number of students listen to music through a desktop or laptop computer. Qualitative analysis indicated that friends, family, and music websites have the strongest influences on music tastes, as well as how students discover new music. Attendance to live concerts was also analyzed, with 82.0% of students attending performances regularly, and the majority of respondents (64.0%) said they have seen between 1-9 live concerts in the past year. Nearly 50 percent of students admitted to downloading from file-sharing websites on a regular basis. Results also indicated that college students prefer to buy music online rather than in physical form such as CD or vinyl. UVM students have an individualistic taste in music, with indie artists and jam-rock bands dominating the musical preferences of the college, and many of them find new music from a variety of different sources as opposed to just one.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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