Popular music reaction videos: Reactivity, creator labor, and the performance of listening online

In popular music reaction videos, performers on YouTube—called “creators”—record their reactions to popular music, filming themselves as they listen to music recordings and watch music videos. The profitability and appeal of popular music reaction videos can be explained by a quality I call reactivity. Reactivity describes the approach that creators take to listening, as they heighten and exaggerate their affective experience of music media. Reactivity also describes their goals for creating these reaction videos, which they hope will provoke subsequent reactions among viewers. Reactions among their viewers translate into more views, shares, and ultimately more power for the creators. By drawing on observations and interviews with nine creators, I demonstrate how reactivity can enable creators of color and queer creators to counter problematic and dominant forms of listening to popular music, while also enabling privileged creators to treat exploitative listening as a kind of virtuosic act of consumption.