Managing music across multiple devices and computers

Abstract

In this paper we present results from a study to understand how people use, synchronize, and backup personal digital music collections across multiple devices and computers. We conducted a survey of a university community including students, faculty, and staff, with 184 respondents. Our findings show that the sizes of music collections follow an exponential distribution curve both in terms of number of songs and collection size in gigabytes. Over 50% of the participants in this study owned more than one portable music player and a majority of respondents (82%) listened to music on their mobile player 2--3 times per week or more. We report techniques that participants commonly described for synchronizing portable MP3 players with music collections, and common problems they experienced. We also describe results about music backup and recovery strategies described by respondents and how they synchronize music across multiple computers. Our results give insights into the under-studied area of personal digital music management and provide suggestions for tasks that would benefit from improved tools and practices.

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