Observation of Boredom during Repetitive Listening of the Same Music in Various Time Spans

Abstract

Streaming services repetitively provide similar kinds of music, and listeners might get tired of them quickly. This is one of the serious problems for streaming services today. Boredom is developed with repetition, and it depends on personal preference. Therefore, boredom development depends on the time spans of the repetition and personal preferences when people listen to the same music over days. This study conducts an experiment that the participants repetitively listen to one music piece 294 times for seven days in a row to observe boredom development. We measured the boredom level as the reactional factor of the failure to keep the concentration and motivation of listening. As a result, the concentration decreased in the short-term, whereas the motivation decreased in the long-term. Therefore, we could distinguish the state of boredom by the length of the time span. In addition, compared to repetitive listening with a day as the short-term, repetitive listening every day in a week as the long-term had an equal or slightly higher power to generate boredom, but there is a weak correlation between boredom and preference for a music piece. In conclusion, the results showed that the amount of repetition had a stronger effect than personal preference for music, and people may get bored even with their favorite music when they listen too many times. Moreover, the behavior of the low-frequency alpha wave in the brain had only a weak relationship to the amount of listening within a day, not in the week.