Sound Health: Finding Resonance Through Using Streaming Services for Health,Exercise and Wellness

Abstract

This article explores how individuals use streaming services to support exercise and wellness practices, proposing that the primary motivation is not merely functional fitness goals but the attainment of a state of resonance or a meaningful connection between body, media, and the world. Drawing on Hartmut Rosa’s concept of resonance and theories of sonic environments and self-formation, the study uses semi-structured interviews and diary-elicitation methods with 16 participants to investigate how streaming platforms such as Spotify, YouTube, and others are integrated into everyday wellness routines. Thematic analysis reveals that participants use streamed audio and video content to structure time, regulate tempo and emotion, and create embodied experiences of motivation and energy. Rather than simply facilitating normative discipline or algorithmic self-optimisation, streaming platforms enable users to create resonant encounters – dynamic, affective alignments with their bodily states and environments. These findings provide nuance to existing analyses of media use as utilitarian or consumer driven, highlighting instead how people appropriate digital technologies to navigate affective, temporal, and existential challenges. This research contributes to sociological and media studies debates on digital culture, self-regulation and health, offering insights into how platforms might be better designed to support meaningful engagement and subjective well-being.

Introduction

Streaming services have helped to transform the way people consume media, with more than 80% of total music listening revenue coming from streaming and over 350 million users of Spotify alone (Curry, 2025). Through a functionally infinite range of content, immediate access and algorithmic recommendation systems, media consumption is now an almost constant companion to all aspects of many lives. This is central to Spotify’s business model, as they aim to provide appropriate audio experiences for all aspects of life (Eriksson et al., 2019). Audio, and increasingly video, has long been important for exercise practice with gyms and fitness classes providing music soundtracks to workouts and, since the advent of personal music players, individuals curating their own experiences. Music has often been suggested as a means of increasing enjoyment of, adherence to, and the positive effects of, exercise (Alter et al., 2015; Elliott, 2020). The specific affordances of streaming services have made user, human and AI generated playlists more easily accessible in recent years, meaning that the experience, use and interpretation of music and other streamed content have changed. This article explores the use of streaming services to support their exercise and wellness activities. Specifically, it seeks to understand how and why people use streaming services when engaging in these activities and what sense they make of this. It is proposed that rather than simply seeking specific health, fitness or athletic achievements, participants were trying to attain a state of ‘resonance’ which they felt could best be achieved through a combination of physical activity, technical affordances of digital devices and streamed media content. In the following sections, I will outline the methods used in this study and the analytical themes generated from the data after situating this project within existing literature.

Literature Review

Music and audio accompaniments are well established as being in the foreground, not the background, of ‘aerobic entrainment’, possibly because most people intrinsically recognise that music has power over bodies (DeNora, 2000: 92). The positive impact of music on how people feel about their exercise has been highlighted, especially when it is synchronised with rhythmic activity, and when it aligns with their cultural preferences (Dyrlund and Wininger, 2008; Fritz et al., 2013; Hayakawa et al., 2000). While the same benefits of music use apply in the streaming context, this article explores how the specifics of their application are different such as in the construction of ‘sonic environments’.

Sonic Environments

It has been argued that smart phones and other personal media provide the means to generate auditory bubbles which shut out external noise and create their own ‘sonic environments’ (Prior, 2014). These enable users to assert ‘sonic autonomy’ both inside (Atkinson, 2008) and outside the home by producing ‘private and shared modalities of listening’ (Walsh and De La Fuente, 2020: 615 emphasis in original) with music functioning as ‘a means of aestheticizing and manufacturing [. . .] sonic havens’ (Walsh and De La Fuente, 2020: 616). These can function similarly to Kathleen Stewart’s ‘atmospheres’, which act as a ‘force field [. . .] and [as] imaginaries [. . .of] potential ways of living in or living through things’ (Stewart, 2011: 452). From this perspective aesthetic objects, like music, are not reducible to their objective components, such as the beats per minute, rather, their expressive qualities are enablers of the affective intensities they produce in subjects (Dufrenne, 1973 cited in Anderson, 2009: 79). The shaping of sonic environments thus requires multiple ‘mediations and remediations [. . .] not only regarding different media but also in their meanings and practices’ (Lasen, 2018: 107). George Burdon’s characterisation of the streaming of ambient music as a means of constructing ‘immunological atmospheres’ highlights how streaming platforms enable sound to be used to construct ‘personalized atmospheric enclosures’ (Burdon, 2023: 558).

This existing work helps to elucidate how personalised streaming experiences enable users to actively create a desired atmosphere and, at least in the case of ambient music, function as insulation from a ‘disorienting and potentially hostile world’ (Burdon, 2023: 561). But they do not capture the character of the specific scenario in which users are seeking a particular convergence of auditory (sometimes visual) and physical (usually exercising) experience. The introduction in this study of resonance helps to characterise and situate this experience within a broader striving for motivation, balance and connection to themselves and the world.

Control

While it was possible to create ‘sonic environments’ prior to streaming services, the ‘unending consumption’ of content and changed relationship to music ownership has created a greater emphasis on control rather than possession (Arditi, 2017; Danckwerts and Kenning, 2019; Datta et al., 2017; Sinclair and Tinson, 2017). This is consistent with a functional understanding of musical preference seen as an outcome of its utility. The range of musical preferences of any individual are in principle limited only by the diversity of scenarios in which they can be made useful (Schäfer and Mehlhorn, 2017: 271). This is particularly characteristic of the playlist, which is thought to enable ‘user control’ and attainment of ‘mastery over the self’ (Hagen, 2015: 642). Similarly, ‘musical agency’ (audio feedback and control over sounds related to activity) has been found to increase enjoyment of exercise (over simply listening to pre-recorded music) (Fritz et al., 2013). Such affordances may enable greater audience agency; however, existing categorical boundaries may be strengthened through ‘bubbles’ forming around similar content and a ‘nested relationality’ between audience classificatory systems and established ‘genre-specific taste hierarchies’ (Airoldi, 2021: 26, 11–12; Beer, 2013; Roth et al., 2020: 14). Systems of ‘captivation’ (algorithmic filtering and recommendation) thus enable ever greater capture of user data, so the whole system is enclosed in a system of control (Seaver, 2019). While this article is not engaged with questions of the continued salience of genre, issues of aesthetic judgement are pertinent but in relation to their utility for users in achieving a particular physical or mental state. It has been asserted that the ways playlists are constructed and targeted by Spotify encourages a functional understanding of music and helps to impose a ‘chrononormative’ relationship to the self (with standardised emotional structures imposed on the day) particularly in relation to exercise (Eriksson and Johansson, 2017; Till, 2023). The forms of control over media content, which are discussed by the participants in this study, have been highlighted as often gendered and racialised (through persistent association with white women) and related to notions of aspirational entrepreneurship consistent with neoliberal capitalism (O’Neill, 2020: 631, 2024: 5). Although it is not contested that streaming platforms enable the integration of users into ‘broader spheres of production and consumption’ (Burdon, 2023: 565), this does not mean that such subjects are dominated by capitalist logics. Rather, through a discussion of resonance, it is suggested that a ‘medio-passive’ (Rosa, 2023: 9) state is sought in which they both take and cede control simultaneously.

Music as Self-formation

As the previous two sections have discussed, music and audio are means for exerting control over the body and the environment of the user, but underlying both of these is the use of music as ‘a device for ordering the self as an agent’ (DeNora, 2000: 73–74). That is, its use is not purely for achieving fitness or exercise goals, even when used in this context, but is always a process of self-formation and specifically of becoming ‘temporal subjects’ (Till, 2023; Wajcman, 2019a: 1273). The playlist affordances of Spotify have been highlighted for their role in self-representation and formation through their capacity to ‘cultivate moods and emotions’ and materialise affect through the articulation and mobilisation of music for its cultural meaning, enabling the formation of ‘intimate publics’ (Dhaenens and Burgess, 2018; Potter and Gilje, 2015; Siles et al., 2019: 1–2). Wenche Nag’s analysis suggests playlist use enables self-interpretation and regulation to an unprecedented degree through alignment with activities, moods or memories (Nag, 2018: 27). When music is being used for exercise, users are reflecting their self-identity by constructing ‘a sense of self, carried over to an exercising-self differentiated from known and unknown others’ (Hallett and Lamont, 2019: 207). Existing work has analysed how streaming platforms construct an exercising subject through the design of the platform by focusing on temporality and targeting activities as they happen so these can be opened up to intimate and affective engagement (Till, 2023). But it is crucial to investigate the interpretations and perspectives of users of such services as ‘[m]eaning [. . .] is not an inherent property of cultural materials [generating the need to] look instead at the ways in which people, things and meanings come to be clustered within particular socially located scenes’ (DeNora, 2000: 38), not least because we can see that people do not simply aspire to dominant ideals of self-control but seek to ‘buttress themselves [. . .] against the strains of contemporary life’ (O’Neill, 2020: 632). While this existing work has identified the significance of music streaming, and particularly playlist functions, for regulating users’ sense of self and emotional states, it often also emphasises the importance of self-presentation through curational practices (Nag, 2018; Zhao, 2025). The latter appears to be of little significance to the present case, and the existing frameworks say little about the ways in which users engage dynamically with media content to learn how to attain a certain mental, physical and emotional state which resonates in a way that feels right whether to motivate, distract or reset.

Resonance

Hartmut Rosa develops the concept of resonance to describe a particular relationship to the world which is open, responsive, and vibrating wherein people feel meaningfully connected to other people, the material world and culture (Rosa, 2019: 5–9). He suggests that resonance is often lacking today due to the transformation of temporal structures in modern societies which he calls ‘acceleration’ (Rosa, 2015). This speeding up of social processes is often experienced as an emphasis on the optimisation of one’s resources but most importantly as a dysfunctional and reified relationship to the world (Rosa, 2019: 2–3), which leads to alienation wherein the world (including our body, feelings and nature) appears to us as mute or unresponsive (Rosa, 2019: 178–179). Critiques of streaming services have built on Judy Wajcman’s (2015, 2019b), Rosa-influenced, characterisation of digital capitalism as accelerationist to suggest that they encourage functional use of music, a neoliberal orientation, more passive and uncritical engagement and decrease of cultural exploration (Eriksson et al., 2019; Eriksson and Johansson, 2017; Hanrahan, 2018; Pedersen, 2020; Thompson and Drott, 2020). David Hesmondhalgh has highlighted how much of this work can be dismissive of non-traditional ways of listening or the benefits that listeners receive and may reveal unconscious snobbery, with more research needed to understand how people experience using such services in practical contexts (Hesmondhalgh, 2021). The analysis in this article represents a step towards this greater understanding, with the notion of resonance enabling a shift away from judgements of taste, alignment with political rationalities or suggestions of inappropriate functional uses of music to instead focus on the ways in which people actually use and respond to streaming. In particular, the notion of resonance helps us to see how ‘certain resources chime with people when they offer a feeling of discovery, or solutions to problems’ (Hill et al., 2025: 3).

Resonance is the state of mind that is endangered by acceleration and is a responsive relationship in which all parties ‘speak with their own voice’ (Rosa, 2019: 174 emphasis removed). The body is a key ‘organ of resonance’ (Rosa, 2019: 75) in that it facilitates, and determines, the character of, our relationship to the world. Rosa (2019: 39–40) identifies three ‘axes of resonance’: horizontal, referring to our relationships with other people; diagonal, meaning engagement with the material world; and vertical, describing a metaphysical connection to the world often experienced through art, nature, culture and religion. While these intersect and overlap, the findings in this article speak principally to the diagonal and vertical axes. Diagonal resonance is the connection we feel to material things which ‘chimes’ with us, makes us feel connected to the world (in some sense) and results in a ‘cultivation of the self’, as we become transformed by the process (Rosa, 2019: 241). Rosa (2019: 249) highlights sport and exercise as key examples of the diagonal axis of resonance; as he characterises such activity as a dialogue between mind and body which enables people to feel situated in, and connected with, their body in a different way. Exercise activity also generates a specific resonant relationship to external material things such as sports equipment, surfaces and ‘fields’ in general, which then can become spaces of resonance (Rosa, 2019: 253). Art, perhaps most commonly music, is one of the key means of achieving vertical resonance both through artistic production and, of relevance to this study, consumption. Vertical resonance occurs when people experience moments in which ‘the world is shaken and made fluid, in which they are touched, gripped and moved’ (Rosa, 2019: 283). It occurs when people feel transformed or ‘spoken to’ in some sense often through the articulation of some kind of beauty which expresses a successful relationship to the world that might exist in contrast to their otherwise mundane or alienated existence (Rosa, 2019: 284–285). The concept of resonance has yet to be applied to the use of streaming platforms for health, exercise and wellness or to media consumption more broadly. This can enrich our understanding, as it elucidates the ways in which people seek to engage in processes of self-formation, through exerting control over their sonic environments. Seeing this through the lens of resonance helps us move past abstract or often cynical theorising of the negatives of digital technologies towards an understanding of ‘tangible experiences of connection and alienation’ (Wilde et al., 2025: 365). Furthermore, resonance enables better understanding of how people simultaneously make active use of media in the pursuit of goals and lose themselves in an experience. This occurs through what Rosa calls the ‘medio-passive’ mode which is ‘fully active and fully passive at the same time’ (Rosa, 2023: 9). What is sought is neither control consistent with an entrepreneurial subject nor an entirely functional approach to media content. Furthermore, participants are not making hierarchical judgements of taste or restrictive assessments of genre nor are they rejecting algorithmically or human-generated classifications. Instead they are using these to facilitate ‘oases of resonance’ (Rosa, 2015: 15) in an often otherwise alienating world. Specifically, participants are, in various ways, articulating the use of streaming services to take a degree of control over their experience of time while also ceding some affective control to the content and platform. They are identifying something in the convergence of their emotional state, physical sensations, technical affordances and media content, which stimulates a ‘vibration’ and helps them to become ‘energetically charged’ (Rosa, 2019: 134–137). This might be through controlling the rhythm or the tempo of their experience, which many feel is somewhat out of their control. Some are attempting to slow down their pace to achieve a degree of calm and others to increase the tempo to generate a buzz or excitement. What many appear to be searching for is a form of resonance or connection with the world in the form of their bodily experience. While our engagement with devices, and especially screens, might be considered a significant contributor to a reified relationship to the world, and Rosa would certainly subscribe to this opinion (Rosa, 2019: 91), given their extensive integration with our lives, it is understandable that many people would use these tools as a means of achieving resonance even if they are part of the problem.

Methods

Semi-structured interviews were conducted on Microsoft Teams with 16 participants to explore their experiences, reflections and sense making regarding the use of streaming services for exercise and wellness practices. Participants came from across the United Kingdom, aside from one each from Turkey, Canada and the USA. Of the participants, one was employed as a sales assistant, one was an undergraduate student, one was unemployed, three worked in secretarial or administrative roles and the remainder were academic researchers, lecturers or professors. Three participants identified as male and the rest as female, no sampling for gender was conducted and this was not significant to the research aims, nor was it prominent in the data or analysis. Initially, Spotify was to be the sole focus, and while this was the most used platform, during recruitment calls it became clear many participants also used other services which served a similar function. Thus, YouTube, Netflix, and Nintendo Switch were also included in the research. A combination of purposive, theoretical and snowball sampling (Gray, 2004) was used to recruit and select participants with online (e.g. social media, blog posts) and physical promotion (at the researcher’s home institution). Participants’ ages ranged from 20 to 45 and were sought based on being currently engaged with exercise and wellness activities supported by streaming services. A monetary incentive of a shopping voucher was provided at the commencement of the interview, regardless of whether it was completed.

Participants were asked a series of questions about their patterns of use, the content they engaged with, perceptions of success, and feelings when using these platforms. The two-stage interview process commenced with an interview which simply asked participants to reflect on past experiences with an interview schedule developed through engagement with existing literature (Denscombe, 2017; Flick, 2018; Kallio et al., 2016). Participants were then invited to take part in a second round of interviews which would also require them to complete a seven-day diary of their use of streaming services for health and wellness practices. A ‘structured diary’ or ‘daily diary’ method is considered effective at capturing ‘life as it is lived’ and is especially useful for recording mood and emotional states (of significance to this project) (Bolger et al., 2003; Conway and Briner, 2002; DeLongis et al., 1992). They were asked to keep a record of the day (e.g. Day 1) and, if appropriate, the subdivision within the day, if there was more than one activity (e.g. Day 1a, 1b), what activity they did (open field), what media they used (open field), how they felt about the activity (open field) and self-perceived level of intensity of the activity (1 = low, 10 = high). This diary was then reformatted into a visual representation to act as a stimulus for the second round of interviews, to encourage participants to reflect on more concrete and specific experiences and to be more mindful of their experiences recorded in the diary. This assisted in the recall of events and specifically of emotional experiences during and around the activities (Alamri, 2019; Conway and Briner, 2002). The diaries themselves do not form part of the analysis in this article, but they were helpful in stimulating discussion. Interviews were transcribed by a paid research assistant not involved in the rest of the project and then imported to NVivo for analysis.

Thematic analysis was conducted to identify ‘patterns of shared meaning’ in the data through the development of codes into themes, by identifying similarly expressed ideas or meanings across different participants and the application of existing theory and concepts to draw out latent meaning (Braun and Clarke, 2022: 77, 204). Initial descriptive codes were produced through close reading of transcripts (noting basic observational details), topic codes were then developed detailing the content of the transcripts and then analytical codes or themes were generated through engagement with existing research and further development of the literature review (Edwards, 2021: 123). New codes were developed, at all levels, through a recursive and reflexive process with ‘candidate themes’ solidified as final themes when they were observed to have been sufficiently repeated and were reflexively considered to represent a central organising concept (Braun and Clarke, 2022; Byrne, 2022; Clarke and Braun, 2019). Ethical approval was granted by Leeds Beckett University, all participants were assured that pseudonyms would be used throughout the project and all identifiable details would be redacted (participants will be referred to by the numbering of their initial interview e.g. P1, P2), that their data would be stored on secure, password protected servers and destroyed after completion of the project.

Analysis

Participants engaged in a variety of listening and engagement practices. Some mentioned that the music they listened to while exercising was consistent with that at other times, and while others only used certain styles or genres of music in an exercise context. All were consistent users of one or more platforms with Spotify the most used, followed by YouTube, then Apple Music and Nintendo Switch. All participants who used Spotify and Apple Music accessed playlists generated by the platform, or other users, and some made their own playlists. Some participants also mentioned finding useful video workout routines on Instagram or using Calm or Headspace for guided meditation and mindfulness. Although not a central part of the discussion in interviews, it was clear that music played a significant part in some participants lives and was less central for others. But the importance of music, and other media, for health, exercise and wellness goals was clear and prominent across all participants. While this does not make their reflections broadly generalisable to all music listeners, or all exercisers, it is possible that their experiences are common to those who use media in the kinds of health, exercise and wellness contexts described. It is, therefore, likely that the resonant experiences which were enabled by generating positive associations between music (and other audio accompaniments) and exercise or wellness activities can help to understand the practices and forms of engagement of others. The following section will outline how resonance was achieved through engagement with rhythm, tempo and emotional states.

Rhythm

The analysis in this section highlights the ways participants used streaming services to establish a rhythm in their lives. While this could be interpreted as simply functional or ‘chrononormative’ (DeNora, 2000: 49, 62; Eriksson and Johansson, 2017; Hagen, 2015: 642), I suggest it speaks to a more fundamental striving for a more successful relationship to the world (Rosa, 2019: 26–27). Loss of resonance and alienation are often the result of modernity’s tendency towards acceleration and instability, with individuals required to combat this by creating opportunities for ‘rhythmic oscillation’ between themselves and the world (Rosa, 2019: 28–29) The development of rhythm through use of streaming services was found to be an effective means of combatting the ‘alienation mode’ (Rosa, 2019: 98) borne from the instrumentality associated with work in two main ways, by enabling structure and separation and stimulating energy.

Structure and Separation

Many participants benefited from being able to use on-demand workouts from streaming services in regular patterned ways which helped to fit them into the rhythm of their life or to impose a rhythm onto what might otherwise be unstructured lifestyles. Due partly to the Covid-19 movement restrictions (which were in place for some of the data generation), and a tendency towards sedentarism in contemporary lifestyles, some participants found streaming services helped them to maintain structure and keep to a pattern of behaviour:

I really like to have a routine and I am a bit of a creature of habit. So I think for me going on a daily walk and listening to a podcast and trying to run a couple of times a week and maybe going for a walk and listening to some music [. . .] So I think there’s something to be said around having familiarity and routine and structure [. . .] the thought of going listening to a new podcast or putting some tunes on is going to help me to be active and get outside. (P11)

Here the abundance, and consistency of delivery, of podcasts available via streaming services helped them to maintain patterns of exercise behaviour; through listening to podcasts, these activities merged into a pattern. For others the benefits came from familiarity of the style and structure of the content in terms of length of a guided workout and the knowledge that they will be able to follow it effectively even when the specific video is new. Discussing the popular Yoga with Adriene YouTube channel, one participant stated:

I like the familiarity of it. I think I like that I know there’s something new each time but I also know that her workouts are always 28 minutes long [. . .] There’s a set routine that I know what’s happening as well, which I like. (P10)

The familiarity of the structure of the workout (including its overall length), combined with novelty in the specifics of the content, appealed to this participant. Several participants found using streamed content useful for making a separation between different times of the day and parts of their lives, such as transitioning between work and non-work life. This was especially the case during the lockdown periods, when most participants were predominantly, or entirely, working from home:

Exercise, and especially something like yoga and especially Yoga [with] Adriene [. . .] I think that really helps separate my day between work and night. So I found that really essential. (P3)

This participant, like others, placed value not just in the content but the function, which created a separation between different times, perhaps supporting a ‘chrononormative’ (Eriksson and Johansson, 2017) understanding of a desirable life being one which is divided into temporally discrete packages of work and non-work time. However, such a reading could lead us to think participants were almost indifferent to, or equally emotionally invested in, the two time periods with a detached awareness that both are necessary for a successful life. But a desire to attain a different mental state and experience a degree of transformation (even if modest) highlights the need for an experience which stimulates them and ‘speaks’ to them. In some cases, this was facilitated by replacing a ‘natural’ exercise separation such as cycling home from work:

[U]sually I would be absolutely knackered if I’d been working. I’d been really busy all day then I’ll go upstairs and do an hour on Ring Fit. But I think it’s that separation from work. Which I don’t have now, which is I used to finish work and I’d bike home and I’d think about work stuff. But as soon as I got my front door, that was it, I’d switch off. I’d give myself that bike ride home, and then that was it. And I think if I don’t do Ring Fit after work or any sort of exercise after work, I’m still in work mode. I just leave this room, and I go downstairs and nothing’s changed. So, I think it is that break as well. (P7)

Ring Fit is a video game style app for the Nintendo Switch console which allows users to interact with the game via inserting the console’s two controllers into a hula hoop style device that makes use of the device’s accelerometers to detect movement. The user’s engagement with the ring then serves as a proxy for their movement (e.g. running on the spot, jumping, squatting). The user’s movements are represented by their onscreen avatar who runs through a virtual environment, manoeuvres around obstacles or overcomes other challenges. This activity is distinct from others discussed in this article, as it is interactive and more closely resembles a videogame (with a non-traditional controller interface). However, the way the participant described their use of the game was consistent with that of others discussed in this section. The movement required to succeed at the game was functionally similar to following instructions in a YouTube video or synchronising running pace with the BPM of a song. Ring Fit is distinctive from those others, as it provides feedback on the user’s performance, but this affordance was not emphasised by the participant. Rather, the utility they found was in using the activity enabled by the game to create an artificial separation between work and non-work life.

Although for most participants this separation took the form of an exercise workout or yoga session, some used guided meditation for the same purposes:

But I think the benefit of it, especially at the moment during lockdown or the times where we’ve seen mass social distancing, is that the transition that I would normally have to start the day and end the day would be the walk to work, getting into the office, or getting from my car to the office door. Whereas we don’t have that, so for me the Headspace in the morning and the yoga at night has almost become those two transition points which we would normally see during the day. (P3)

Headspace is an app which provides guided meditation and mindfulness exercises. Users are guided by auditory and visual prompts to reflect on and manage their physical and mental state. Headspace does provide some degree of interactivity, although less so than Ring Fit, as users can choose the direction of a mindfulness activity by selecting options during the process. But, as with the previous example, the benefits which this participant found from use of the app came predominantly from the opportunity for separation between different parts of the day rather than the interactivity of the experience itself. As these quotations show, while the specific form of activity or physical experience differed, it served a similar function in creating a mental separation which is enabled and accentuated by the media with which they engaged.

The analysis presented in this section shows the broad consistency of the utility participants found from imposing rhythmic structures onto their daily lives somewhat consistent with the intentions of the platform itself (Eriksson and Johansson, 2017; Till, 2023). But participants were not merely internalising the platform design but using its affordances to create a mental separation by harnessing ‘diagonal resonance’ with the devices and their bodies by generating a sense of liveliness and responsiveness deadened by the demands of work (especially home working). However, the benefits were not just derived from the order and structure within accepted social and cultural norms (e.g. ‘chrononormativity’), rather, the use of streaming services helped them achieve rhythm on the micro level of their physical movements. So, this was not interpreted as a cultural imposition from a platform but a relief from work and the monotony of sedentarism and a means of managing their lives through maintaining or increasing energy levels. It thus helped them combat the alienating ‘reification of the relation between self and body [. . .the] rhythms and demands [. . .of which] are quite obviously not synchronized [. . .] with our biorhythms’ (Rosa, 2019: 98–99).

Energy and Motivation

The pacing and structuring of lives through imposition of a rhythm onto daily practices, as discussed earlier, was credited with increasing participants’ energy levels or motivation, enabling it to become a resonant experience which ‘can recharge [. . .their] batteries’ (Rosa, 2024 cited in Gregersen, 2025: 228). For some, listening to a podcast would distract them from an activity which they felt would be beneficial to their health (e.g. walking) but found to be boring or painful:

Definitely. I find it quite, yeah, I find it quite hard I think to find that intrinsic motivation to do things like that [. . .] Just doing the movements and walking in general I just find quite boring. So I think yeah it has to have that added [element]. (P12)

Yeah, just more of a vibe and just something to keep me going and also to keep me distracted as well. So, like if I’m doing a plank or something, I listen to the music instead of thinking about being in pain. (P2)

Others found it provided them with some impetus to lengthen a walk:

You know it makes me want to walk for longer because I’m like ‘oh, this is really good’. (P11)

These participants emphasise that the ability to stream content changed their perception of the activity which makes it more enjoyable, or less painful, so that they can more effectively resonate with the experience.

In other contexts, participants sought to use the affordances of devices and streaming services to help them to generate a greater resonance throughout their whole day:

Either first thing in the morning, lunch time or evening [. . .I am] trying to break up the day a bit [. . .] and just get a bit more energy. (P10)

The foregoing participant would workout at times when they had identified a period that would be followed by a dip in energy, and the technology helped to impose structure on their day by enabling a switch to a different mode of activity. Another participant inserted their exercise regime into different times of the day, dependent on how they perceived their energy levels, most recently settling on the morning when they felt low energy due to a lack of forced movement associated with commuting:

I try [. . .to do yoga] in the morning [. . .] because I’m just sitting at my desk all day. Sometimes like late morning [. . .] and then circuits usually straight after work so kind of like around five or six. I just do a quick circuit and then start on dinner [. . .] Because I tend to just feel really sluggish. Just because I don’t leave the house, so I just think it’s quite nice to feel like you’ve done something positive and started the day right before you get into work it can be quite hard to concentrate otherwise. (P12)

These examples might highlight how individuals have experienced, or perhaps internalised, contemporary concerns over burnout and neoliberal demands for productivity (O’Neill, 2020; Till, 2019), but the rhythmic structures streaming services help participants create also boost their energy levels and combat the over-exploitation of bodily resources associated with ‘alienation mode’ (Rosa, 2019: 98). The ‘sluggishness’ described in these extracts can be seen as a lack of resonance with the world and their bodies, which the combination of streaming services and exercise helps them counteract through enabling a more engaged mental state.

This section has shown how participants used streamed content to impose a structure onto their lives, both because a more natural, or previously established, structure had been lost due to lockdown restrictions or due to a broader desire to maintain or increase energy levels while working or going about their daily lives. While this was sometimes framed as being beneficial for productivity it more fundamentally represented a shift of their subjective experience of their day. The following section explores how the tempo of content was used by participants similarly in response to their embodied feelings and to help them achieve their goals and shift their perception of their connection to their world.

Tempo

This section identifies the utility that some participants found in being able to select and control the tempo of content (especially music), which would help them to achieve a desirable physical or emotional state. Similar to the data discussed in the previous section the use of streamed content is partly functional (DeNora, 2000: 49; Eriksson and Johansson, 2017) with participants using content as a means of regulating themselves but also as a means of finding themselves (DeNora, 2000: 68) in the music; for instance, identifying a tempo which fits with how they feel, or want to feel, and what they want to achieve. This synchronisation of bodily movements with tempo enables diagonal, vertical and horizontal resonance through making connection with another ‘voice’ (in different forms), which generates a heightened experience for the user.

Synchronisation with Tempo

Affordances novel to streaming platforms, not to be found in previously dominant technologies such as CD players or iPods, enable users to access music with which they could synchronise their movements. Specifically, the quantity and range of music available on streaming platforms. Search functions, and access to playlists generated by the platform and other users, means that participants were able to identify and easily access music at the right tempo for their activities. In the process, they were able to create a kind of ‘synchronous resonance’ (Rosa, 2019: 166) in which their tempo becomes aligned with that of another. Commenting on selecting high tempo playlists one participant stated:

I use them because they’re all quite up-beat [. . .] if I’m running I know a lot of them I can put it on and it’ll be sort of like a beat where I can match my running to the beat. So, I can keep the same momentum, so I’m not, so it doesn’t go from being like really quick songs to something really slow. Because then I just want to stop [. . .] you feel like if I put a song on that I don’t know 60 beats per minute that’s not going to do anything where if it’s like 160 I’m going to be a lot more inclined to work harder with it. (P1)

Playlists were the most commonly cited affordance of music streaming platforms for enabling participants’ workouts. Participant 1, just cited, elaborated on how the fact that playlists were frequently updated, and that they were notified of this, was useful as it enabled them to stay motivated. A key aspect of the playlist function for them was feeding them with a balance of novelty and familiarity:

[The playlists] get updated [. . .the] Be Pure Workout it tells you when it got updated [. . .when] it’ll have all the new music and like just looking through the artists [. . .] a lot of them obviously I already know [. . .] so I know they’re going to be quite up-beat. (P1)

Synchronisation with tempo was also significant to participants for its potential to regulate participants’ movements through matching their activity with the music:

I kind of try and sync up to it, so I try and get a high energy tempo that I kind of run along to. So, I normally try and get the high energy songs so that when I’m having a bit of a lull in the run; then, I kind of listen to the music and then get going again. (P2)

There is a somewhat mechanical sense of synchronisation of bodily movements with the music in this description. In this instance it is not the case of a broad motivational stimulation but almost a sense that music is the motor driving the runner’s legs which will simply stop if the music does. Here we can see an intersection of diagonal and vertical resonance, creating a scenario which is only possible with this confluence of elements. The music generates a feeling in the listener which helps them to achieve a type of movement or exertion which is a physical and emotional state desired by the participant. Such a relationship between (outdoor) running and music may have been possible prior to the streaming era; however, it is now more accessible without the necessity of pre-emptively constructing playlists.

One participant described how they would select music which would follow the same changes in tempo they hoped to achieve with their workout:

I usually start with that song, because it’s sort of, it starts quite slow for a minute so that at least I can warm myself up get on a light jog and when it kicks in, I can push myself a bit and then I’ll start running. Because it stays at that tempo for the rest of the song. (P1)

The participants P1 and P2 appear to be using audio to achieve a particular physical and mental state that I characterise as a form of resonance. They did not express that they were trying to achieve a specific fitness goal, rather, they wanted to achieve a certain kind of feeling. This was enabled by a vertical resonance with media content and horizontal resonance with their own bodies and devices, the combination of which combined for a heightened experience. Synchronisation is, according to Rosa (2019: 28–29), a preconception for resonance, as temporal structures are fundamental to our existential relationship to the world but have been disrupted by the accelerationist tendencies of modernity.

Synchronisation of Movements

Some participants also valued streamed content for the opportunity to synchronise their movements and timings rather than aligning with the tempo of content as such:

I’m copying the movements, and I think it just helps me have someone else do it at the same time, so that it’s like a solidarity thing and you know that they’re going through it as well. (P2)

This was usually in the case of guided workouts. But the value of this, for some, was to be found less in copying movements as such and more in the sense of collectivity derived from participating in a group, even if this is virtual or a recording:

I like the sociability of classes, which was my main reason for doing classes, and that’s why when lockdown, well when all the classes stopped even before lockdown, a lot of exercise I struggle with when it isn’t in a class format. (P10)

For one participant on-demand classes helped them to feel like they were ceding control to some extent:

I think the encouragement of having someone to exercise with is also quite beneficial [. . .] I would think if that wasn’t structured for me without someone telling me how to think or how to process then I’d actually really struggle to get a lot from that session. So, it kind of takes away self-control almost from the person doing the exercise. (P3)

In this section I have shown how participants identified an interesting hybrid of diagonal and horizontal resonance. While in literal terms they are describing an interaction with cultural content presented to them through a digital device, therefore consistent with the diagonal resonance in previous sections, their experience with video classes is distinct. It is the potential to synchronise with instructors or pre-recorded class members which provides them with a different quality of connection with the activity and therefore somewhat different form of resonance. The potential for streamed content to generate resonance comes into even clearer focus through participants’ discussion of the importance of subjective connection with the content they streamed and the potential to manage their emotions.

Emotional States

While all participants framed their use of streaming platforms in terms of achieving exercise or wellness goals, this did not simply take the form of imposing a ‘chrononormative’ (Eriksson and Johansson, 2017) structure onto their life or finding music with a desired tempo they could follow in a metronomic fashion. Rather, they often sought out content which represented an emotional state they wished to achieve or maintain and which they associated with an athletic activity. This was desirable, because it enabled them to attain a different kind of mental and physical state through establishing a resonant connection to the world and themselves via music, representing both diagonal and vertical resonance. This can be seen through discussion of emotions expressed in the music and how this affected perception of their energy and capacities:

If I’m doing something that’s more cardio based, I would go for something more [. . .with] a good beat a high intensity beat and it’s [. . .] maybe a little bit more poppy [. . .] But if I’m doing [. . .] heavy weights, then usually I go for mostly rap [. . .] or something with a bit more aggression to it. (P12)

Here different types of activities are identified as requiring different styles of music with cardio activities having a more mechanistic relationship with the music with a ‘high intensity beat’ (principally meaning high tempo) and less rhythmically focused activities such as weightlifting, needing more emotional support. This participant used Spotify to access music and found AI or human curated playlists useful, as the style of music supported them when weight training but did not engage with those music styles (mostly R&B and Hip-hop) in other contexts. Thus, platform affordances distinctive to streaming services enabled them to identify and get functional use from music styles they appreciated but did not have sufficient knowledge of to select appropriately themselves. They also identified associations between playlists, activities and their emotional states:

I think every movement elicits its own feelings and emotions and I find weightlifting a big stress relief. I can put quite an angry playlist on and it feels like a real release of frustration. (P12)

While this association could be developed with music accessed through other means, it is telling that the participant attached the emotional significance to the playlist, a technical affordance specific to the digital platform, rather than the music as such.

Another participant emphasised both the energy they gain from some styles of music and the sense of control this gives them over their workout:

[If] it’s a high energy [workout], a lot of the tunes I do tend to prefer [are] high energy tunes like Dance, Hip Hop, Electronic, and House, Drum n Bass, because these are tunes that I love and [. . .and] they keep on going, going, going and tunes are banging. You can get more of a push out from the workout, so you can control and be more focussed. (P5)

Here the participant highlights that they get a ‘push’ from the style and the energy of the music, which helps them to feel in control and focused. This highlights an important aspect of this theme with the participant seeking to manage their affect and arousal levels (Hallett and Lamont, 2019: 195–196) by being more focused. The attainment of control and focus represents a – relatively modest – transformation of their mental state but one which is consistent with an energising ‘vibration’ (Rosa, 2019: 165).

A similar desire for control over affect and arousal levels was described by participants when choosing a guided workout video to follow; they emphasised that selection was based on the energy levels they were experiencing at that time:

I was kind of going through that process of ‘how am I feeling? What would match this way that I’m feeling? What kind of workout or what kind of video?’ and then trying to as best as I can align them. I think this day I just didn’t quite get it right [. . .] and you’re like ‘oh this makes me feel like crap because she’s all full high energy and I’m like ugh’. (P12)

Although this participant does describe attempting to control their energy levels, as they want to avoid choosing a video that is too ‘high energy’, which then ‘makes [them] feel like crap’, they are also trying to match how they feel in the workout videos similar to DeNora’s (2000: 68) conceptualisation of people trying to find themselves in certain music. This represents a failure to find resonance and highlights the ways in which the body, emotional states, technologies and media content need to align to attain the desired feeling. Thus for resonance to occur two (or more) ‘bodies’ must be able to speak with ‘their own voice’ then the ‘vibration of one body prompts the other to itself vibrate in turn’ (Rosa, 2019: 165). Some participants discussed ways in which content did not meet what they needed so they found ways to circumvent the affordances of the platform. For instance, one participant recruited their partner, who had the relevant skills, to edit a new video together out of individual elements of other YouTube yoga videos:

Because [. . .] sometimes you want a video with some talking in it and some soothing and some motivational chatter. And sometimes you want less of that maybe [. . .] They’re similar in tempo but you kind of move through from doing something that’s faster to doing something that’s a bit slower towards the end. (P6)

Here the broader affordances of digital media, rather than those officially sanctioned by YouTube, enabled them to achieve the feeling and tempo which they felt they needed to attain a particular emotional and physical state.

Other participants did not look for a specific genre but broader emotional states such as ‘fun’, ‘aggression’ or ‘bravado’:

It’s not the tempo; [rather], it tends to be energetic dance-y beat [. . .] So it would be Disco, Dance, [. . .] 70s style. Or sometimes [. . .] children’s stuff, whatever is fun, it needs to be fun. (P9)

I think it’s partly the tempo and partly like [. . .] you just want something up-beat so [. . .] you can just [. . .get] something quite consistent. Whereas I think with Rap music for like weights, there’s something about I think the aggression [. . .] there’s a bit more bravado in it, I guess which like pushes me and [. . .] I think it sometimes helps with that confidence almost to actually push yourself. (P12)

The foregoing quotations can be interpreted through existing analytical lenses which suggest music as a means of cultivating moods and emotions (Siles et al., 2019: 1), of algorithmic individuation (Prey, 2018), the notion of ‘latching’ as noncognitive, non-conscious, embodied engagement with music (DeNora, 2000: 160–161), helping in the management of affect (Hallett and Lamont, 2019: 195) and in managing arousal levels (Hallett and Lamont, 2019: 196). All of these capture some elements of this context, but the notion of diagonal and vertical resonance captures the ways participants found they could not just manipulate their emotions but found a particular resonance which is achievable only through the specific combination of activity, music and technical affordances. The genres, emotions and qualities mentioned in the two last quotations represent shortcuts to the kinds of ‘voices’ which participants feel could speak to them and enable a resonant experience. This can be seen in the relationship highlighted between the content, the activity and the emotions felt by the participants, which are subjective, nuanced and individual. But what many participants had in common was that they were seeking meaning in their workouts. Some sought to bring meaning to otherwise unstructured time by imposing a pattern onto their day or using content to stimulate energy at otherwise uninspiring times of the day. Alternatively, content was also used to align their physical activities or experiences with a particular tempo present in a piece of music or as enacted in a guided workout that is associated with a goal or feeling they wanted to achieve. Ultimately, I suggest that what is common is the use of music, and other content, in conjunction with their workout or activity, to instil such activities with meaning and therefore to produce a certain kind of resonance. For some this resonance may be the goal; for others, the attainment of resonance may make it easier to attain external goals (a certain distance, time of workout, weight loss, etc).

Conclusion

The identification of the use of streaming services for the attainment of resonance presented here offers a nuance to existing analyses. Some previous work has focused on the imposition of normative structures (Eriksson et al., 2019), encouragement and enabling of a form of self-mastery or management (arguably consistent with neoliberal notions of subjectivity) (Hagen, 2015; Hallett and Lamont, 2019), or algorithmic individuation consistent with the commercial interests of the platforms (Eriksson and Johansson, 2017; Prey, 2018; Till, 2023). My analysis proposes that users do not necessarily experience their engagement with platforms in a utilitarian or consumerist fashion but seek, and often find, a more affectively charged encounter. Their engagement with streaming platforms enable them to identify and attune to rhythmic and temporal structures that are specific to their needs. They do this, first, through establishing rhythm by imposing structure on, or enabling separation between, different life tasks and helping them to switch from work to a more relaxed state quickly and efficiently. This means they could manage their energy levels or attain the degree of intensity they desire. Second, streaming platforms makes it possible to easily access content with a particular tempo with which participants could synchronise their activity, enabling them to attain a feeling of intensity or to cede control to an external force. Underlying the rhythmic and temporal utility that participants found in the use of streaming services for their exercise and wellness practices, was a desire to achieve or manage a certain emotional state and find a personal connection in their activity.

While this analysis may be applicable to broader engagement with streamed media, the prominence of rhythmic and temporal patterns and structures in audio, and specifically music, content, and exercise and wellness activities make the connection identified particularly meaningful. These findings suggest that better understanding is needed of how resonance is experienced and achieved through assemblages of physical activity, environment, media content and platform affordances. This could identify how platform design can be changed to better enable the attainment of such feelings and the role that they play in the experience of exercise and wellness activities and their effectiveness for the individual.