Accessibility is important in the development of digital products as well as in physical products. An accessible product enables all people to use it, whether they have a disability or not. This thesis focuses on accessibility for visually impaired people in a music streaming service on desktop. Many music streaming services for desktop are built with web technologies, including Spotify. The aim of this thesis was to evaluate the accessibility status of the Spo- tify desktop application as well as develop accessibility guidelines fo- cused on a music streaming service. A user test was performed to in- vestigate the accessibility status of the desktop application. Existing accessibility guidelines was studied and used together with the results of the user test to develop accessibility guidelines applicable to a music streaming service. It was found that the Spotify desktop application had many accessibility issues and these were considered when developing accessibility guide- lines. The existing guidelines studied was the WCAG 2.0 guidelines developed by W3C. These were read through completely and compiled in Chapter 4 of this report. The result of the thesis was accessibility guidelines suitable for a music streaming service on desktop. Since music streaming applications can be developed using different techniques and frameworks these guide- lines should be used as a guide on how to implement accessibility and needs to be customized for each use case. Though the fundamentals of the guidelines should be applicable to most music streaming desktop applications.

Technology non-use or active resistance towards technology is a pertinent issue in Human Computer Interaction, especially when we contemplate the ongoing changes regarding the concept of usability. By combining Theory of Practice and Theory of Materiality with Theory of Affect this thesis explores the resistance towards online streaming music technology among music enthusiasts devoted to vintage Vinyl music culture and also takes an effort to understand any possible effect of this voluntary non-use on the digital music industry. Qualitative research analysis is employed on ten in-depth semi structured interviews showing that material aspects and nostalgia, create an individualistic image and passion for record collection; furthermore, these aspects play a role behind the choice of non-use of online music technology.

Currently, more and more people use music streaming websites to listen to music, and a music recommendation service is commonly provided on the music streaming websites. A good music recommender system improves people’s user experience of music streaming websites. Nevertheless, there are some issues regarding the existing music recommender systems that need to be looked into.The purpose of this thesis is to identify the weaknesses of music recommender systems. Spotify, a Swedish music streaming website, has a large number of users. As it is a widely known streaming service, it seems appropriate for a case study on the drawbacks of music recommender systems.The case study method has been chosen for doing this research. The process of making up this thesis was divided into three stages. At the first stage, some basic preparations for the thesis were done. The second stage was characterized by some empirical work, like interviews and questionnaires, to collect the required data. Those empirical findings were analyzed in the third part to help us to identify and define the drawbacks.The research results presented in this thesis contribute to close several knowledge gaps in the area of music recommender systems and could thus be beneficial to different actors: streaming website operators to identify drawbacks of their recommender system; designers of recommender systems to improve system design; and, last but not least, this thesis provides some useful advice to those who market music streaming websites.This thesis does not focus on the technical and algorithm fields, i.e. the hardware- and software-related background. Instead, the idea and the functions of the recommender system, its feedback loop and the user experience were subject to our research and discussion. The results of the thesis can provide those responsible with both and inspiration for creating more customized recommender systems.

In today’s world music streaming is the most dominant form of music consumption. Introducing platform capitalism to music streaming has changed the music commodity and its effects serve as a motivation for this thesis. The role of emotions in music listening is explored and design research is conducted to find unmet latent needs of users in respect to the emotional side of music.  Semi-structured user interviews are used to understand how users relate music to their emotional lives. Co-design workshops are conducted to identify unmet user needs and feelings. The data is analysed inductively and results treated through the theoretical lenses of emotional design (Norman D. (2003)) and psychological ownership theory (Pierce J.L., Kostova T., & Dirks K. Y., (2003)). The main themes generated by the research show that users want -- to know their music and their music service to know them; new ways to feel music, relive the “first time”; to connect music to their emotional and personal lives; to control music more easily. These findings motivate and inform the design of a conceptual artefact.

Over the last years, the music industry has been disrupted by music streaming services which shifted the focus from owning music to accessing it. While the previous research focuses on the economic aspects, the social and cultural consequences remain largely unexplored. Existing research from an audience perspective is often focusing on one particular practice around music streaming and is mainly coming from and focusing on northern EU-countries. However, a broader contemplation of the sociocultural practices around music streaming is still missing. This thesis examines which sociocultural practices have emerged among urban and middle class Millennials in Germany when using the market-leading streaming provider Spotify and which affordances and gratifications these are based upon. The study is based on ten semi-structured interviews with German Millennials aged between 20 to 30 years. Three of these study participants are using a free Spotify account and seven the premium version. By conducting a thematic analysis against the theoretical background that interlinks practice theory, affordance theory and uses and gratifications theory, the practices are described and examined based on the underlying affordances and gratifications.The study found sociocultural practices around the themes social setting, listening mode, Spotify networks and music collection and outlines the underlying affordances and gratifications. During individual listening situations, users engage in the practices of mobile listening and mood management, while listening in social settings focused around navigating the group dynamics and the creation of context-sensitive playlists. The users also aim to create an unstructured and undisrupted music flow but are mainly listening in a passive manner while carrying out other activities. Due to social norms and privacy issues, the participants either reject the network function or build only small networks through which they were sharing and discovering music as well as creating playlists with friends. Lastly, users were building, organizing and maintaining individual music collections.

These last years, streaming services (for music, podcasts, TV shows and movies) have been under the spotlight by disrupting traditional media consumption platforms. If the technical implications of streaming huge amounts of data are well researched, much remains to be done to analyze the wealth of data collected by these services and exploit it to its full potential in order to improve them. Using raw data about users’ interactions with the music streaming service Spotify, this thesis focuses on three main concepts: streaming context, user attention and the sequential analysis of user actions. We discuss the importance of each of these aspects and propose different statistical and machine learning techniques to model them. We show how these models can be used to improve streaming services by inferring user sentiment and improving recommender systems, characterizing user sessions, extracting behavioral patterns and providing useful business metrics. / De senaste åren har strömningtjänster (för musik, podcasts, TV-serier och filmer) varit i strålkastarljuset genom att förändra synen på hur vi konsumerar media. Om det tekniska impikationerna av att strömma stora mängder data är väl utforskat finns det mycket kvar i att analysera de stora datamängderna som samlas in för att förstå och förbättra tjänsterna. Genom att använda rådata om hur användarna interagerar med musiktjänsten Spotify, fokuserar den här uppsatsen på tre huvudkoncept: strömmandets kontext, användares uppmäksamhet samt sekvensiell analys av användares handlingar. Vi diskuterar betydelsen av varje koncept och föreslår en olika statistiska och maskininlärningstekniker för att modellera dem. Vi visar hur dessa modeller kan användas för att förbättra strömmningstjänster genom att antyda användares sentiment, förbättra rekommendationer, karaktärisera användarsessioner, extrahera betendemönster och ta fram användbar affärsdata.

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Musikmarknaden har förändrats mycket de senaste åren. Många nya streamingtjänster har dykt upp på senare år och tiotals miljoner använder dessa tjänster idag (Borja et al., 2015). Användbarheten är en viktig aspekt för att användarna ska kunna använda dessa tjänster på ett tillfredsställande sätt. Denna studie undersöker två olika musiktjänsters gränssnitt ur ett användbarhetsperspektiv. 20 studenter från KTH besvarade en enkät om deras tidigare användning av musiktjänster. Sedan deltog studenterna i en ”Think Aloud”-undersökning där de fick utföra ett antal uppgifter på tjänsterna och där vi dessutom mätte effektivitet genom att ta tid samt beräkna antalet klick för varje uppgift. Slutligen fick studenterna besvara ett antal frågor i en kort intervju. Studien visade att båda tjänsterna visserligen hade funktioner som fungerade bättre än hos den andra tjänsten, men i slutändan var de mycket lika avseende användbarhet. / The music market has changed considerably in recent years and streaming has become one of the most popular ways to listen to music today. Many new streaming services have appeared and tens of millions of people use these today (Borja et al., 2015). Usability is important in order for users to be able to use these services in a satisfactory manner. This study examines two different music service interfaces from a usability perspective. 20 students from KTH answered a questionnaire about their prior use of music services. Afterwards the students participated in a Think Aloud study where they performed a number of tasks on services and where we additionally measured the efficiency by taking the time, in addition to calculating the number of clicks for each task. Finally, students were asked to answer a number of questions in a brief interview. The study shows that while both services had features that fared better in the study than for the other service, they were very similar when it came to usability.

Digitaliseringen, uppkomsten och den ökade populariteten av on-demand musikstreamingtjänster har förändrat musikbranschen i snabb takt. Tidigare studier visar att digitaliseringen har påverkat sättet hur media skapas, publiceras, distribueras och konsumeras. Studier om digitaliseringens effekter på kreatörer och distributörer inom musikbranschen visade sig däremot vara få. Det ansågs därför som en möjlighet att utforska hur artister och oberoende skivbolag uppfattar digitaliseringens effekter för att minimera den nuvarande kunskapsluckan. Den explorativa sekventiella studien bestod av två faser och baserades på en kombination av olika metoder. Den initiala studien utgjordes av tre kvalitativa intervjuer och resulterande arbetsteorier prövades därefter i en kvantitativ enkätundersökning (n=81). Resultatet indikerar att större andelen av oberoende skivbolag har anpassat sina affärsmodeller och utvecklats till s.k. 360°-musikföretag. Resultatet visar vidare att digitaliseringen har till viss grad påverkat sättet hur musik skapas och produceras, med en tendens mot en mer individualistisk och digital process, och vidare medfört en förenkling för artister att publicera sin musik. Artisternas intäkter har däremot inte förbättrats och många upplever att arbetsklimatet har försämrats. Resultatet visar att digitaliseringen sedan uppkomsten av musikstreamingtjänster har medfört omvälvande förändringar, dock verkar dessa inte ha lett till en demokratisering av musikbranschen utan enbart till en förflyttning av makten från skivbolagen till musikstreamingtjänsterna. Både artister och oberoende skivbolag uppfattar att den nära framtidens främsta utmaningar å ena sidan är att uppnå en skälig betalning för artister, samt å andra sidan att framgångsrikt marknadsföra musiken för att nå igenom bruset. Det indikeras vidare att regler och lagar är nödvändiga för att kunna säkerställa en hållbar utveckling av musikbranschen. / The emergence and continuously growing popularity of on-demand streaming music services has changed the music landscape rapidly and new services are entering the market at a high pace. Prior studies show that digitization has affected the way media is created, published, distributed and consumed. The literature review revealed a knowledge gap regarding the effects on music professionals and provided an opportunity to explore how artists and independent record labels perceive the aspects of digitization. The study followed an exploratory sequential mixed-methods approach and consisted of two phases, an initial study including three qualitative interviews, and a quantitative follow-up study, in which working theories that had resulted from the initial study were tested through an online survey (n=81). The results indicate that many independent record labels have changed and adapted their business models and turned into so called 360° music companies. The results further show that digitization developments have to some degree affected the way music is created and produced, with a tendency towards a more individualistic and digital process, and that it has become easier for artists to publish their music; their incomes have however not improved and for many artists the working climate has become harder. The results show that the emergence of on-demand streaming services has disrupted the music industry, instead of having a democratic impact, the power that record labels used to have appears to have shifted to streaming services. Both artists and independent record labels perceive the achievement of fair payments and successful promotion to be the main future challenges. It is indicated that regulations and laws that prevent exploitation are necessary in order to ensure the music industry to be sustainable in the future.

Although the rapid growth of the music streaming industry has led to record levels of global music consumption, many leaders in the music streaming industry have not developed a financially sustainable business model for music streaming. This descriptive single case study focused on strategies that some global music streaming service leaders used to generate sustainable profits through their business models. Christensen's theory of disruptive innovation served as the conceptual framework for this study. Semistructured interviews with the chief executive officer and 4 senior managers of a leading music streaming service in southeastern Asia were analyzed to identify themes. Secondary data collected for this research included practitioner reports, government reports, company documentation, and peer-reviewed journal articles. During data analysis, I used method triangulation to generate insights regarding the key themes identified in the literature review. Analysis of the data revealed strategies that global music streaming leaders used to generate profits: (a) optimization of the firm's dynamic capabilities, (b) optimization of the subscription and freemium business models, and (c) a deliberate focus on the niche of local music. The findings of this study could be useful to music streaming service leaders who need to generate sustainable revenues and lack the strategies to do so on their own as well as to music streaming leaders who want their service to implement a disruptive innovation strategy. Additionally, the findings of this study might promote social change by generating awareness of proven strategies leading to sustainable profits for music streaming services and job security for artists who contribute to sustaining or increasing local economies cash flows and taxable incomes.