©2021 Cecilia Ferm Almqvist, Susanna Leijonhufvud & Niclas Ekberg. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Citation: Almqvist, C. F ., Leijonhufvud, S. & Ekberg, N. (2021). Spotify as a case of musical Bildung. Nordic Research in Music Education, 2(1), 89–113. https://doi.org/10.23865/nrme.v2.3023 Original Article | Vol. 2, No. 1, 2021, pp. 89–113 | ISSN: 2703-8041 Spotify as a case of musical Bildung Cecilia Ferm Almqvist 1 , Susanna Leijonhufvud 2 and Niclas Ekberg 2 Afliation: 1 Södertörn University, Sweden; 2 Luleå University of Technology, Sweden Contact corresponding author: cecilia.ferm.almqvist@sh.se Abstract This article explores the meaning and function of streaming media as a potential facilitator of musical Bildung. Taking the afordances of streaming media technologies as a starting point, the article thus focuses on the formative and cultivating dimensions a music streaming service such as Spotify might ofer. The specifc aim of this article is to describe and analyse how musical Bildung may evolve within a Spotify context from a user perspective. To address the aim from the point of view of music education, Spotify users’ activities and experiences of streaming media interactions were accessed, inspired by internet-related ethnography. Stimulated recall interviews, focusing on the participants’ experiences as well as their actual use of Spotify’s streaming service, were conducted, recorded, and transcribed. The generated material was subjected to co-operative hermeneutic content analysis. The results illuminate how Bildung evolves in users’ encounters with the service and with art mediated via Spotify. Relevant topics occurring in the human-art-technology relationship of Bildung from a Heideggerian perspective were Being-possible, the ability-to-be, and Spotify as the Other. In sum, it can be stated that Bildung evolves when Spotify exceeds the thingness of the Other, becoming a work of art in itself, throwing the user into Being. Keywords: Spotify, streamed music, Bildung, being, becoming, technology Introduction Tis article reports a study based on stimulated recall interviews (Calderhead, 1981; Lam, 2008) that aims to explore the meaning and function of the streaming media service Spo- tify as a facilitator of Bildung within the realm of music. Bildung frames the life-long jour- ney of exploring, experiencing and learning (Burman, 2018). Furthermore, musical Bildung enhances music and music-related activities: “in musical Bildung processes human beings act and refect and internalize intertwined essential and existential dimensions of music,