Three Personas of Potential High-Resolution Music Users

With advances in audio technology, high-resolution audio is becoming more affordable and gaining in popularity. This work qualitatively investigates on how people would experience high resolution music. We had a focus group discussion with music experts to identify six motivations for listening music and conducted an online survey with a hundred people who were asked several music behavioral questions for each motivation. We classified the participants into similar groups and finally selected 14 participants from the groups as diverse as possible, which include five high-resolution music users. From the diary studies and in-depth interviews with the selected participants, we constructed three personas of potential users of high-resolution music: 1) Leisurely listener who listens to hi-res music as a new hobby, 2) Music explorer who listens to hi-res music as a way of knowing the music, and 3) Artist maniac who listens to hi-res music when their favorite artist releases an hi-res version of the music. We also discuss design implications for high-resolution music download and streaming services.