Acoustic Features Influence Musical Choices Across Multiple Genres.

Michael D Barone,Matthew H Woolhouse,Jotthi Bansal

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00931

Abstract

Based on a large behavioral dataset of music downloads, two analyses investigate whether the acoustic features of listeners' preferred musical genres influence their choice of tracks within non-preferred, secondary musical styles. Analysis 1 identifies feature distributions for pairs of genre-defined subgroups that are distinct. Using correlation analysis, these distributions are used to test the degree of similarity between subgroups' main genres and the other music within their download collections. Analysis 2 explores the issue of main-to-secondary genre influence through the production of 10 feature-influence matrices, one per acoustic feature, in which cell values indicate the percentage change in features for genres and subgroups compared to overall population averages. In total, 10 acoustic features and 10 genre-defined subgroups are explored within the two analyses. Results strongly indicate that the acoustic features of people's main genres influence the tracks they download within non-preferred, secondary musical styles. The nature of this influence and its possible actuating mechanisms are discussed with respect to research on musical preference, personality, and statistical learning.

Highlights

This paper concerns the degree to which the acoustic features of a person’s preferred musical genre influence their choice of songs or tracks within non-preferred, secondary musical styles
The phenomenon of features within a preferred genre influencing song selection within secondary musical styles falls under the general topic of “cognitive leakiness,” a notion explored in depth in the area of consumer choice and commerce (e.g., Rieskamp et al, 2006), but less so in music perception
The finding in the feature-influence matrices that the signs of 64 diagonal-to-median cell pairings were in agreement, with 36 in disagreement, strongly suggests that there is a directional relationship, either positive or negative, between the features of X-heads’ main genres and those of their other genres

Summary

Introduction

This paper concerns the degree to which the acoustic features of a person’s preferred musical genre influence their choice of songs or tracks within non-preferred, secondary musical styles. Might someone whose preference is for Metal gravitate toward relatively dynamic, “high-octane” Country or Blues music (assuming, that those genres are not mutually exclusive; Bansal and Woolhouse, 2015). Conceptually straightforward, this question addresses active research areas within the fields of music cognition and Music Information Retrieval (MIR), and, to some extent, highlights current limitations within both. The psychological reality of extracted acoustic features is an open question (Friberg and Schoonderwaldt, 2014), and research demonstrating their influence upon musical preference, may, in part, help to legitimize their perceptual existence

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