Not all listening is the same
Listeners have different intentions, while most artists market to only one of them.
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Let’s dive into today’s topic:
Not all listening is the same
There is a difference between music playing in the background while cooking and music someone specifically searched for, opened, and turned up.
Why it matters
I’ve written about user intent before. The idea that what a listener is trying to do when they press play matters as much as the fact that they did. Uses and Gratifications theory, developed by Katz, Blumler, and Gurevitch in the 1970s, provides a research foundation and a more precise vocabulary.
Precision matters because it points to what actually moves a listener from one mode to the other, something the low- versus high-intent distinction doesn’t fully address.
How it works
Uses and Gratifications theory (U&G) proposes that media audiences are active. This now sounds obvious but wasn’t at the time.
People don’t absorb everything in front of them. They choose what to watch, listen to, or read based on what they hope to get from it. U&G doesn’t ask what media does to people, but what people do with media.
Gratifications refer to what people seek to satisfy. U&G researchers identified broad categories of need: acquiring information, managing emotions, connecting with others, affirming identity, and escaping tension.
Music can serve all of them, but not simultaneously, and not always with the artist at the centre. Someone playing techno while working is satisfying a completely different need from someone who goes out of their way to experience the same DJ live.
Rubin (1984) later distilled U&G into a distinction more applicable for artists than the original five-category model:
Ritualised listeners engage frequently and habitually, mostly for diversion. Music is on in the background; the artist is incidental. They are reachable through playlists, algorithmic placement, and mood-based discovery, but they may never register who made the music.
Instrumental listeners engage less often, but with a specific purpose. They search for the artist. They hit play deliberately. They come for something only this artist can give them. They’re reachable through artist identity, storytelling, and community. They come looking.
Yes, but..
Rubin examined ritualised and instrumental television viewing, not music listening. While it’s easy to argue that music and TV share mechanics, recommendations and curation are more influential in music than in TV. Radio playlists or recommendation algorithms can surface an artist repeatedly until passive exposure starts to feel like preference. At what point does ritualised become instrumental?
Take action now
The shift from ritualised to instrumental is where artist marketing either works or doesn’t. Something has to interrupt the habitual listener. So artists could try to make them pause and recognise who made what they just heard.
This is why artists who build around an identity beyond the music tend to convert listeners more reliably than those who rely on quality alone. The goal here is to be noticed in a mode where noticing requires effort.
Your thoughts
Further reading
Uses and Gratifications Theory (EBSCO Research Starters)
Katz, E., Blumler, J.G., & Gurevitch, M. (1974). Utilization of mass communication by the individual. In J.G. Blumler & E. Katz (Eds.), The Uses of Mass Communications. Sage.
Rubin, A.M. (1984). Ritualized and instrumental television viewing. Journal of Communication, 34(3), 67–77.
Ruggiero, Thomas E. “Uses and Gratifications Theory in the 21st Century.” Mass Communication and Society, vol. 3, no. 1, Feb. 2000, pp. 3–37.
How to leverage user intent (The Fanbase Builder)
Measurement fallacies in music and fandom (The Fanbase Builder)