Yesterday once more: collective storytelling and public engagement with digital cultural products on the music streaming platform

Drawing on narrative transportation theory, we propose that when people consume a cultural product, they consume their emotions and memories through collective storytelling. Such emotions and memories are amplified by user comments on social media, enhancing the product’s influence and triggering audience engagement. We collected public data from NetEase Cloud Music—a major music streaming platform in mainland China—to investigate how the emotions and memories expressed in user comments influence the songs’ impact. Findings indicate that autobiographical narratives and negative emotions in user comments significantly boost a song’s influence. Moreover, user comments are particularly effective in promoting emerging artists with limited resources compared to their more established counterparts. This study advances the narrative transportation theory by emphasizing the role of active audiences and collective storytelling. Empirically, it extends the existing literature on the factors influencing cultural products on music streaming platforms in a non-Western context.