The music habits and listening motives of people seems to be different, but music psychology research has shown that most people's primary motives for listening to music is related to emotions. Based on the published studies, we can assume that Music should be viewed as an experience, with visual aspects influencing the perception music, and non-musical variables creating a statistically significant contribution to listeners' overall enjoyment.
That is a reason for the generation z to be fueling current revival of the vinyl despite the drawbacks of the medium such as high price and low practicality. Born into the age of CDs, they are not driven by technostalgia, but by very different psycho-social mechanisms working at the same time, such as symbolic and material aspects of the medium.
When we stream music, the medium is an interface of our electronic device. How we interact with music on our screens influences our navigation patterns, listening habits, and the whole experience that we get from music. It is a starting point of a music experience, and can influence it in a major way. This is exactly what we have been working on - creating a music playback interface that is optimized for the emotional involvement with music, and better music experience as a result.
At its core, music is a medium to transfer emotions from artist to the listener. When listening to music, the overall experience is correlated with emotion that artist experiences during the performance or recording. In fact, Artist communicates these emotions in the form of cues that we perceive through our empathy.
When releasing music, Artists record the emotions (cues), combine them into a performance, store the data, and attach a cover art (visual cue) they want to associate it with. That is what we can re-live - many experiences made by different artists, each record being a particular dose of the music stimuli.
Patrik N. Juslin & Petri Laukka (2004) Expression, Perception, and Induction of Musical Emotions: A Review and a Questionnaire Study of Everyday Listening, Journal of New Music Research, 33:3, 217-238, DOI: 10.1080/0929821042000317813
Lepa, Steffen & Tritakis, Vlasis. (2016). Not every vinyl retromaniac is a nostalgic – a social experiment on the pleasures of record listening in the digital age. Medien & Zeit.
Thompson, W. F., Graham, P., & Russo, F. A. (2005). Seeing music performance: Visual influences on perception and experience.
(PDF) Seeing music performance: Visual influences on perception and experience