This study takes a cultural anthropological approach to address the use of music taste as an instrument of self-presentation on online dating platforms by examining the partnership between Spotify and Tinder, which not only allows Tinder users to pick an anthem from Spotify’s catalog, but also displays a list of “top artists” based on data aggregated through their activity on Spotify. Using Cheney-Lippold’s formulation of the “measurable type” and Bucher’s notion of “conscious clicking” as foundational frameworks, this paper offers the term “conscious listening” to explore the ways that users play with their music taste-based identities on Tinder. In order to better theorize this phenomenon, a wide array of thinkers ranging from communications, sociology, and data/platform studies are coalesced along with the results of in-depth interviews with 10 Tinder users to analyze the recent convergence of music streaming and social dating platforms.
CouldryNMejiasUA (2019) Data colonialism: rethinking big data’s relation to the contemporary subject. Television & New Media20(4): 336–349.
10.
DuguayS (2017) Dressing up Tinderella: interrogating authenticity claims on the mobile dating app Tinder. Information, Communication & Society20(3): 351–367.
11.
EllisonNBHancockJTTomaCL (2012) Profile as promise: a framework for conceptualizing veracity in online dating self-presentations. New Media & Society14(1): 45–62.
GeeJP (2000) Chapter 3: identity as an analytic lens for research in education. Review of Research in Education25(1): 99–125.
15.
GillespieT (2014) The relevance of algorithms. Media Technologies: Essays on Communication, Materiality, and Society167: 167.
16.
GoffmanE (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Harmondsworth.
17.
GoldsteinP (1994) Copyright’s Highway: The Law and Lore of Copyright from Gutenberg to the Celestial Jukebox. New York: Hill & Wang.
18.
HallJAParkNSongH, et al. (2010) Strategic misrepresentation in online dating: the effects of gender, self-monitoring, and personality traits. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships27(1): 117–135.
JiaFKokuE (2018) Making American friends: the effects of musical tastes and English proficiency on Chinese international students’ social networks in the United States. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research48(1): 4–20.
21.
JohnsonBKRanziniG (2018) Click here to look clever: self-presentation via selective sharing of music and film on social media. Computers in Human Behavior82: 148–158.
22.
KantT (2015) FCJ-180 ‘Spotify has added an event to your past’: (re) writing the self through Facebook’s autoposting apps. The Fibreculture Journal25: 30–61.
SilfverbergSLiikkanenLALampinenA (2011) I’ll press play, but I won’t listen: profile work in a music-focused social network service. In: Proceedings of the ACM 2011 conference on computer supported cooperative work, Hangzhou, China, 1923 March, pp. 207216. New York: ACM.
32.
SoloveDJ (2004) The Digital Person: Technology and Privacy in the Information Age (vol. 1). New York: New York University Press.
33.
ThorntonS (1996) Club Cultures: Music, Media, and Subcultural Capital. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
34.
TomaCLHancockJT (2010) Looks and lies: the role of physical attractiveness in online dating self-presentation and deception. Communication Research37(3): 335–351.
35.
UskiSLampinenA (2016) Social norms and self-presentation on social network sites: profile work in action. New Media & Society18(3): 447–464.
36.
ValkenburgPM (2017) Understanding self-effects in social media. Human Communication Research43(4): 477–490.
ZytkoDJonesQGrandhiSA (2014) Impression management and formation in online dating systems. In: Twenty second European conference on information systems, Tel Aviv, 1215 June.
