Popular Music and LGBTQ+ Identities in the Age of Streaming: An Explorative Audience Study

For this study, we conducted 24 in-depth interviews with LGBTQ+ Spotify users to understand the relations between LGBTQ+ identities, music, and music streaming. Participants displayed a wide range of meaningful music practices and views on music and identity. At the same time, the interviews showcased how the impalpable and ever-changing nature of music, new media, and identities make it difficult and often undesirable to actively dissect or define the relations between music and LGBTQ+ identities, but affectively, personally, and socially they are as meaningful and prominent as ever before.