That cool new pop song on the radio… did a human even write that?
It is getting more difficult to know whether music is created by humans or machines. AI-powered music production apps allow users to input simple audio ideas or lyrics, adjust a few settings, and the artificial music producer creates a surprisingly polished song recording. This highlights the strong interaction that exists between technology and music listening.
Psychologists are interested in how humans process music, how music links to memories, or why a particular musical passage gives us goosebumps. Researchers have confirmed that music listening activates diverse brain systems, and the psychology of music offers insight into cognition, memory, and emotions. Evidence-based music therapy is used to improve alertness, speech, movement, pain, or even alter moods. There is evidence that music listening engages key neurological reward circuits, and contributes to the formation of our personal identity. Studies suggest that the music we listened to when we were young significantly helped to shape our personal sense of self. (1 – 4)
But without the technology that allows us to listen to music, we would not have this mind-music connection. Technology changes, and with it, changing the ways we accessed the music that has music influenced us over the decades.
How does technology shape music? First is the technology of musical instruments themselves. Each instrument is crafted with wood, brass, skins and strings to produce the unique timbres musicians use to create music. For millennia, music had to be experienced live. We only could listen to the music created live by musicians, bands and orchestras, or we performed it ourselves. Performance spaces—from dance halls to churches and theaters—were the high tech of their time, designed to best present live music to audiences within these spaces.
About 100 years ago, electricity made its way into our homes, offering significant technological leaps in how we accessed and created our relationship with music. Recorded music allowed people to enjoy it in our homes. From wax cylinders to gramophones, from vinyl and tape to digital streaming formats, we now listen to our personal playlists at any time. Likewise, with the widespread introduction of radio broadcasting, technology allowed us to listen to a wide range of music and take it with us wherever we went. Music became the backing soundtrack of our lives and identity.
Today’s digital delivery platforms provides an almost infinite variety of streaming musical styles and artists. Digital audio now streams 24/7 to our devices offering nearly unlimited global media content. There were over 200 million music tracks on streaming services in 2024, growing by 10% per year. The sheer number of online musical selections now accessible far exceeds what was available to prior generations, and is also more musical content than anyone could listen to in a lifetime! (5 – 7)
What does music mean to you? What were the most impactful songs in your life? Chances are that some of the most meaningful songs were those you heard between the ages of puberty and emerging adulthood. (3 – 4) Many songs became central to what we call our “sense of self” and influenced how we think about ourselves.
According to psychology of music research, adults listen to music for three basic reasons: 1) To regulate arousal and mood, 2) To achieve Self-awareness, and this relates to music being part of our personal identity, and 3) As an expression of social relatedness. (8) It thus appears that music influences both individual identity development, but also acts as a vehicle for social identity and group cohesion. Whether we identify with classical or jazz, punk, rock, rap or heavy metal, these choices are markers of our individual as well as group and cultural identity.
What’s next for music technology? Robotic musicians that sing and dance? Directly beaming music into a music-brain interface? Perhaps eventually the Matrix-style downloading of a musical skill, such as playing the violin, directly into our brains? These achievements remain science fiction for now… but probably not for long. Technology will continue to change and influence the ways humans integrate music, continuing to shape our lives and identities.
