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Why do people listen to music? Over the past several decades, scholars have proposed numerous functions that listening to music might fulfill.
However, different theoretical approaches, different methods, and different samples have left a heterogeneous picture regarding the number and nature of musical functions. Moreover, there remains no agreement about the underlying dimensions of these functions. Part one of the paper reviews the research contributions that have explicitly referred to musical functions. It is concluded that a comprehensive investigation addressing the basic dimensions underlying the plethora of functions of music listening is warranted.
Part two of the paper presents an empirical investigation of hundreds of functions that could be extracted from the reviewed contributions.
These functions were distilled to non-redundant functions that were then rated by respondents. Principal component analysis suggested three distinct underlying dimensions: People listen to music to regulate arousal and mood , to achieve self-awareness , and as an expression of social relatedness.
