How do music streaming services help us exercise?

I conducted a series of interviews with people who used streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music to access music when they were exercising. Many people told me that listening to music or podcasts helped them to stave off boredom or temporarily forget the difficulty or pain of their workout. Others said that a good song, especially with a high tempo beat, could help them to run faster or longer.

On the surface this could lead us to think that people use streamed content simply to improve their athletic performance or achievement fitness goals. I found that often people were looking for something a bit deeper.

A key finding was that people used streaming services to establish a 'rhythm' in their lives. This happened in two ways: first, through helping to create 'structure and separation'. Music and other content was described as an efficient and effective way to help people transition from one period of their day to another and to get into a mindset where they could workout. This was particularly true for people who worked from home as they didn't always have a natural transition (like a commute) between work and home life.

A second, and related, way services helped to create rhythm was through combatting dips in energy at different points in the day. Listening to music or a podcast helped to switch their mindset from a work to an exercise one and get a boost of energy.

Lots of participants found that being able to easily access lots of music which had the right kind of 'tempo' for their run or workout was very important. For instance, they would use playlists (their own and those made by other users, the platform, or AI) with a tempo that matched the speed they wanted to run. However, most people were not focused on the attainment of particular goals but on trying to achieve a certain feeling they got from a combination of the exercise and the music.

Although many of the people I spoke to did want to run further or lift heavier it wasn't the biggest or the only factor. What was key for them was achieving an 'emotional state' or feeling. Music was chosen because it was 'intense', 'angry', 'soothing' or 'fun'. They were looking for music that would speak to them in a particular way at that moment.

For some people this was even music that they were not interested in listening to in other contexts and certainly wasn't part of their usual taste or musical identity. The looked for a specific convergence of activity and music which created a 'resonant' experience. A lot of the time this was a way of combating stresses of work, feeling sluggish or bored.

'Resonance', according to the sociologist Hartmut Rosa, is a particular feeling we get when we feel we are connected and responsive to the world. We experience a positive 'vibration'. Rosa suggests that this is often lacking in modern life when it can be hard to feel a connection to other people, nature and our own bodies. This is perhaps especially the case when, as with some of those I talked with, we are working from home or spending a lot of time indoors with screens rather than outdoors with other people.

I think that for some people streamed music, podcasts and other content can help people to quickly achieve a kind of 'resonance' when combined with complementary exercise activities. This might help them to combat some of the alienating aspects of modern life associated with work or disconnection from other people.

You can read more about the study in this open access paper published in the journal Cultural Sociology.