Audience

How do you consume music?

Every weekday morning, my family and I usually listen to the radio in the car on the way to school. The radio station is usually Heart FM because it plays a variety of music (old and new) and we also enjoy to listen to the morning radio hosts.
At the weekends, I still wake up early and usually listen to music in bed, with earphones, before I get up.
During the day, I listen to music through earphones whenever I am doing a task that does not require me listening to anything. For example, when I am working on school work during my free periods at school.
I also walk home from school and my house is almost 5 kilometres away; I listen to music the whole way home.
At home, in the evenings, we almost always have music playing out and it is very rare to come to my house and find that there isn't some kind of music playing. Sometimes, we put the music channels on on the television and watch the music videos but this is not common. Most of the time, music is just in the background.
At night, I will usually listen to music in bed for a few hours.

I usually will use Spotify or YouTube to listen to music. If I use YouTube, I usually listen to the audio of live performances. I most commonly listen to Ed Sheeran, Linkin Park, Adele and Coldplay. Which is a massive variety of music styles.
I also enjoy watching television shows, such as The X Factor, because I enjoy watching the performances of the contestants and watching them improve over the weeks.

Uses and Gratifications Theory

Personal Identification: I often listen to music that expresses how I feel at the time. Sometimes, I listen to certain songs when I am feeling sad and feel the need to just cry. But there are also songs that I have never listened to in anything other than a party setting.

Entertainment: I often listen to music for entertainment and to provide some escapism from life. However, I would much rather listen to 'real music' and actually appreciate the skill required to play the instruments and the talent of the person providing the vocals than just listen to the regular pop music that is commonly released. I often think that the music that enters the charts usually does not display that much skill and often the songs sound very similar to each other. Although, they do have their place and they are great for background music.
Personally, I think that it is most entertaining to see artists perform live. This way, you are experiencing the music with them in the moment and, although there are thousands of other people there, it becomes much more personal. I also love to see musicals in the theatre because you can listen to the full orchestra playing and also enjoy the amazing vocals of the actors. My favourite musical is Wicked, purely because of how amazing the music is, vocally and instrumentally.

Social Interaction: I believe that music is very important for social interaction, whether it is on in the background or providing a topic of conversation. I almost always have music playing in my house and always have it on when I have friends or family members over. I also often have video calls with friends and one of us will put music on and we will both listen to it whilst we talk.