Personal Media Network and Preferred Contemporary Technologies of Music Listeners: A Study in Assam in North East India

Personal Media Network (PMN), in the music industry, refers to a listener’s frequency of exposure, average time spent, and time of exposure to various types of media in a day. Appropriate study of PMN is critical for the success of the Assamese music industry (in North East India). The methodology included personal interviews with a few prominent artists of Assam and a survey of 390 music listeners with a schedule. The results highlighted that most of the respondents’ duration of listening to music was between 1 to 3 hours a day. Most of these respondents’ frequencies of exposure to the various media for listening to music were more than twice in a day. The most preferred time of exposure in the case of television was from 8 PM to 10 PM, radio from 7 AM to 10 AM, internet after 11 PM, and mobile phones from 8 PM to 10 PM, respectively. It was found that respondent listeners having a frequency of exposure twice in a day preferred listening/viewing songs/videos on PCs/laptops, mobile phones/tablets, streaming on online music/radio apps, streaming songs/videos on social networking apps (like WhatsApp, etc.), and social networking sites (like Facebook). Similarly, in the case of collecting music-related videos or albums, respondents with exposure once in a day and twice in a day preferred to do so via downloading from online sites to listen offline and via Bluetooth, Infrared, Xender, etc., respectively. Likewise, different contemporary technologies and media for listening/viewing songs/music videos (CTMLVSV) and contemporary modes of collecting music-related audio/video songs (CMCMVA) based on time of exposure and time spent on media were also identified. The findings of this study may immensely help the music marketers to selectively target the audience as per their preferred time, frequency, and duration of exposure to various media.