Low detail future variety: Providing affective relief during repetitive music consumption

Consumers have access to vast libraries of online music, which they often choose to consume repetitively. Given that enjoyment often declines with recurrent consumption (satiation), music streaming services face a unique challenge; providing customers access to the content that they want, without devaluing their experience when customers repetitively consume the available content. The present research demonstrates that providing consumers with a low detail description (e.g., providing a customer a general idea of the genre of music that will be played, but not the exact artist and song) of future variety can extend their present music enjoyment during repetitive consumption episodes. Mediation results indicate that low detail future variety slows satiation by reducing the amount of negative affect consumers experience in the present, which functions to extend their music enjoyment. Moderation results indicate the main effect of low detail descriptions future variety on consumers’ satiation response is magnified for consumers high in emotional intelligence, providing additional evidence of the proposed affective process mechanism and identifying an important individual difference as a boundary condition.