The Listening Experience Database

The Listening Experience Database (LED) Project was a collaborative research project based at the OU and funded by two AHRC grants between 2013 and 2019. It was a partnership between the Music Department and the Knowledge Media Institute (KMi), but also, over the years, involved researchers from the OU English Department, the Royal College of Music and the University of Glasgow. LED arose out of the recognition of a gap in musicology: the relative absence of listeners from how musicology narrates the past. The many ways in which ‘ordinary people’ had experienced music in the past was an under-developed area of musicology. There were two fundamental research questions: 1. How has listening to music been experienced by individuals? 2. How can a substantial body of evidence be used to increase our understanding of the position of music among individuals and societies?