ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how music listening works for the solitary listener, for listening as a social activity, and the ways in which the two interrelate in individuals' lives, focusing on the purposes music listening fulfils. The average Western listener will be experiencing a bewilderingly wide array of different kinds of music, some self-chosen, others chosen more for the environment than the music, and still others entirely unchosen; some alone and others shared. Self-reported strong experiences of music with others overwhelmingly happen in live settings. Solitary music listening is frequently a context for emotional self-regulation or self-care. Across all participants, there was a wide variety of contexts and situations that music listening occurred in, a broad range of styles, and a great deal of variation in the ways in which people used music. Listeners are now able to plug in their own music to almost every scenario imaginable, and background music need not be attended to in order to have effects.
