Age of Music Streaming

The purpose of this study was to explore how use of a web application that makes use of Spotify APIs may be utilized by music therapists to inform clinical decisions. Spotify Charts was used to identify weekly top-streamed songs on Spotify, and the web application Sort Your Music was used to examine musical attributes including tempo, energy, danceability, loudness, valence, length, acousticness, and popularity for top-streamed songs on Spotify in the United States in 2020. Multiple Pearson correlation analyses were used to examine how specific Spotify musical attributes identified by Sort Your Music compared to previous research on the relationship between specific musical attributes and perceptions of valence and arousal in music. In line with previous research, results of the present study indicated positive relationships between energy and loudness (r = .711) and tempo and energy (r = .590). However, contrary to previous research, results of this study indicated a negative relationship between tempo and valence (r = -.590). Further results and implications for the use of Sort Your Music as a resource to guide music therapy clinical decisions related to music selection are discussed within this paper.