User perspectives on critical factors for collaborative playlists
This study addresses the lack of understanding regarding critical factors for collaborative playlists for music streaming users, providing insights for platform designers.
This paper investigates user perspectives on collaborative playlists (CPs) to understand critical factors for their enjoyment and usage. Through a survey and thematic analysis, the study identified eight key aspects that users find useful or lacking in current CP implementations.
Collaborative playlists (CP) enable listeners to curate music together, translating long-standing social practices around music consumption into the age of streaming. Yet despite their role in connecting people through music, we lack an understanding of factors that are critical to CPs and their enjoyment. To understand what users consider important to CPs and their usage, we investigated aspects that are perceived to be most useful and lacking in today's CP implementations. We conducted a survey to collect open-ended text responses from real-world CP users. Using thematic analysis, we derived the Codebook of Critical CP Factors, which comprises eight aspects. We gained insights into which aspects are particularly useful, and which are absent and desired by current CP users. From these findings we propose design implications to inform further design of CP functionalities and platforms, and highlight potential benefits and challenges related to their adoption in current music services.