Understanding Music Listening Intents During Daily Activities with Implications for Contextual Music Recommendation

Why do we listen to music? This question has as many answers as there are people, which may vary by time of day, and the activity of the listener. We envision a contextual music search and recommendation system, which could suggest appropriate music to the user in the current context. As an important step in this direction, we set out to understand what are the users» intents for listening to music, and how they relate to common daily activities. To accomplish this, we conduct and analyze a survey of why and when people of different ages and in different countries listen to music. The resulting categories of common musical intents, and the associations of intents and activities, could be helpful for guiding the development and evaluation of contextual music recommendation systems.