Unknown pleasures: techniques of taste in the algorithmic recommendation of unfamiliar art music

Abstract

ABSTRACT Research into cultural tastes has commonly sought to analyze and understand preferences in terms of notions of familiarity. Such approaches are inadequate, however, when it comes to examining our engagement with unfamiliar cultural content. This paper responds to this gap by examining how people respond to algorithmic recommendations of culture through a case study of unfamiliar Australian art music. It firstly identifies three different “techniques’ by which audiences engage with and value music: functional, emotional, and intellectual. The analysis then examines how these techniques, together with measures of familiarity and the acoustic “materiality” of the music itself, combine to predict the affective ratings given to music recommendations. The findings show that audiences display a surprising capacity to engage with the unfamiliar. The paper argues for the need to develop more nuanced understandings of the relationship between familiarity and preferences which are capable of accommodating a taste for the unfamiliar.