About

Listening Experience Database (LED) Logo

The Listening Experience Database (LED) Project, hosted at The Open University, was a pioneering research initiative that transformed the way we understand the history of music listening. Running for over a decade, the project shifted attention away from composers and performers to focus on the listeners themselves, capturing how music was experienced, interpreted, and valued by individuals across different times and cultures.

At the centre of the project was the Listening Experience Database, an open-access digital resource that brought together thousands of first-hand accounts of music listening. These accounts were drawn from diaries, memoirs, letters, interviews, newspapers, and other sources, offering unparalleled insights into the personal and social meanings of music throughout history.

A Lasting Research Resource

The project made a significant contribution to musicology, cultural history, and digital humanities by:

  • Creating the first large-scale, searchable database of historical listening experiences.
  • Preserving accounts that revealed the diversity of musical engagement across class, gender, geography, and time.
  • Demonstrating the value of public engagement, with contributions welcomed from scholars, students, and members of the public worldwide.

Impact and Legacy

The LED Project not only produced a resource for academic research and teaching but also engaged the wider public, encouraging individuals to reflect on and share their own listening experiences. It provided case studies for interdisciplinary research, informed new approaches to understanding music’s role in society, and established a model for collaborative digital scholarship.

Publications


Adamou, A., Daga, E. and Isaksen, L. (eds.) (2016) WHiSe 2016 – Humanities in the Semantic Web, Workshop: 1st Workshop on Humanities in the Semantic Web (WHiSe 2016) at 13th ESWC Conference 2016, Anissaras, Greece, 1608, CEUR-WS.org

Brown, S., Barlow, H., Adamou, A. and d’Aquin, M. (2015) The Listening Experience Database Project: Collating the Responses of the ‘Ordinary Listener’ to Prompt New Insights into Musical Experience, The International Journal of the Humanities: Annual Review, 13, pp. 17-32, CGPublisher