Music Preferences Research Articles

Measuring music-genre preferences: Discrepancies between direct and indirect methods

Preferences are essential in explaining consumer choice and have been studied from different standpoints. Some empirical studies aimed at measuring music preferences have used direct procedures (i.e., list of genres), while other studies have used indirect measures (i.e., listening to excerpts of music). This article focuses on analyzing music-genre preferences to identify whether they differ depending on the type of measure used (direct vs. indirect), studying their consistency. A survey was conducted among 753 individuals. The results highlight not only the discrepancies of using one measure or another but also the relevance of familiarity and experience, associated with individuals’ endowment of cultural capital. Findings explain the (in)consistency of reported preferences through direct and indirect means. All in all, the research suggests that direct and indirect methods to measure music preferences may be capturing different dimensions.

Music Preferences and Enjoyment of Music as Predictors of Involvement of Teacher Studies Students in Music Teaching

The study of musical preferences, enjoyment of music and students’ involvement in teaching, as a current topic worthy of attention, deserves a multidisciplinary approach. Therefore, the aim of this research is to determine the predictive power of music enjoyment and musical preferences on students’ cognitive, emotional and social involvement in music teaching, as well as on their overall involvement in music teaching, which includes all three mentioned aspects. The sample included 183 teacher studies students from four university centers in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Research findings confirm that enjoyment of music, based on internal motivation, is a predictor of greater involvement (cognitive, emotional and social) of students in music lessons. Musical preferences are statistically significant as a model, but they do not make a statistically significant partial contribution to the prediction of cognitive, emotional and social involvement of students in music classes. It is clear that the research findings open up the „old-new” issues of the quality of music in society, detours or some „new avant-garde”. The recommendations brought by this research are reflected in the greater activation of the emotional dimension of university music teaching, which must be closely related to the cognitive and social aspects of music. The key to success, the experience of the lecturer, and thus the atmosphere in lessons, is primary for the quality of students’ involvement in the teaching process. We need high-quality, creative and at the same time fun and emotionally rich music teaching in order to create a path of faith into stimulating and healthy development of the students’ versatile personalities with a developed attitude towards music preference.

Emotional Temperament and Character Dimensions and State Anger as Predictors of Preference for Rap Music in Italian Population.

The objective of the current work was to examine the relationships between affective temperaments dimensions, trait anger, and the preference for rap music in a sample of Italian adults. An online survey was administered to 662 subjects. We assessed preference for rap music using a Likert scale. Ina addition, we investigated the sample’ affective temperament traits using the Memphis, Pisa, Paris, and San Diego (TEMPS-A) short scale and the trait anger by using the Trait Anger component of the State Trait Anger Expression Inventory 2 (STAXI-2). Multiple linear regression indicated that cyclothymic temperament score, hyperthymic temperament score, and trait anger scores were positive predictors while older age, and depressive temperament and higher education score were negative predictors of preference for rap music. The results expand previous literature on personality and music preference indicating the association of high energy/high activity temperaments and trait anger to preference for rap music.

Music preference, social identity, and collective self-esteem

Previous research suggests there may be links between people’s self-esteem and their musical preferences, although this evidence is inconsistent and inconclusive. The present study aimed to reexamine these links using measures of collective self-esteem, while also taking into account factors that are likely to moderate these links (i.e., age, gender, and personality). One hundred thirty-nine young adults completed an online questionnaire assessing their musical preferences, collective self-esteem, and personality. Participants’ musical preferences were found to be linked to their self-reported collective self-esteem. When controlling for the effects of age, gender, and personality, scores on the private collective self-esteem subscale were found to positively predict preference for “intense and rebellious” music (i.e., hard rock, heavy metal, punk). Scores on the importance to identity subscale, however, were found to negatively predict participants’ preference for “reflective and complex” music (e.g., blues, classical music, folk). These findings suggest that collective self-esteem might play a role in how our musical preferences develop and offer further evidence for the idea that our music preferences are somehow linked to our sense of identity.

Varied Musical Experiences and Openness of University Students in Turkey and the United States

The personality trait of openness has been shown to contribute to a person’s ability to function effectively. Additionally, scholars have suggested that openness to experience and foreign language experience were related to music preference. Extending from earlier scholarship, this study examined the relationship between openness to experience and the various types of musical and language experiences reported by undergraduate music majors in Turkey and the United States. Participants ( N = 380) were surveyed using the Openness to Experience domain of the NEO-PI-R and an author-designed survey with questions about participants’ musical backgrounds and interests, foreign language abilities, age, and sex. Results showed that U.S. students rated significantly higher in four of the five dimensions of the Openness domain than their Turkish counterparts (Wilks’λ = .57; F(5, 374) = 55.37, p < .001). Factor analysis results showed that (a) experiences in foreign languages, (b) listening to Turkish traditional, pop, and folk music, and (c) listening to American (pop and folk) and Western classical music cumulatively explained 68.49% of the variance in openness. Correlation analyses suggested that listening to Western classical, American folk, and American pop music was associated with higher openness scores, and listening to Turkish traditional, folk, and pop music was associated with lower openness scores. Additionally, the number of foreign languages participants studied correlated with four of the dimensions. Results suggest that both groups could benefit from increased, broader, and deeper exposure to different musical genres from diverse cultures.

Individuals' favorite songs' lyrics reflect their attachment style

AbstractRecent studies suggest that one's personality relates to their music preferences. Separately, research from an attachment theory perspective has demonstrated that attachment security and insecurity are important relationship‐related individual differences. We combined these two lines of inquiry here by investigating whether the lyrics of individuals' favorite songs about relationships reflect their attachment styles and related Big Five personality traits (Study 1; NParticipants = 469, NSongs = 4853). Individuals higher in attachment avoidance preferred relationship songs with lyrics expressing an avoidant attachment style, whereas individuals higher in neuroticism preferred relationship songs with lyrics expressing more attachment anxiety. We extended these results in a second study, finding that the lyrics of Western culture's 823 most popular songs from 1946 to 2015 mirrored societal trends of increasing social disengagement (i.e., were increasingly higher in attachment avoidance themes), suggesting that song lyrics impart psychological meaning at the sociocultural level as well. Our data therefore suggests that higher levels of attachment avoidance are reflected in preferred lyrics in relationship songs at both an individual and societal level.

Music we move to: Spotify audio features and reasons for listening.

Previous literature has shown that music preferences (and thus preferred musical features) differ depending on the listening context and reasons for listening (RL). Yet, to our knowledge no research has investigated how features of music that people dance or move to relate to particular RL. Consequently, in two online surveys, participants (N = 173) were asked to name songs they move to (“dance music”). Additionally, participants (N = 105) from Survey 1 provided RL for their selected songs. To investigate relationships between the two, we first extracted audio features from dance music using the Spotify API and compared those features with a baseline dataset that is considered to represent music in general. Analyses revealed that, compared to the baseline, the dance music dataset had significantly higher levels of energy, danceability, valence, and loudness, and lower speechiness, instrumentalness and acousticness. Second, to identify potential subgroups of dance music, a cluster analysis was performed on its Spotify audio features. Results of this cluster analysis suggested five subgroups of dance music with varying combinations of Spotify audio features: “fast-lyrical”, “sad-instrumental”, “soft-acoustic”, “sad-energy”, and “happy-energy”. Third, a factor analysis revealed three main RL categories: “achieving self-awareness”, “regulation of arousal and mood”, and “expression of social relatedness”. Finally, we identified variations in people’s RL ratings for each subgroup of dance music. This suggests that certain characteristics of dance music are more suitable for listeners’ particular RL, which shape their music preferences. Importantly, the highest-rated RL items for dance music belonged to the “regulation of mood and arousal” category. This might be interpreted as the main function of dance music. We hope that future research will elaborate on connections between musical qualities of dance music and particular music listening functions.

Music-induced analgesia for adults and older adults during femoral arterial sheath removal after cardiac catheterization: a randomized clinical trial protocol

BackgroundCardiovascular diseases cause the death of 17.5 million people every year. Cardiac catheterization is an invasive diagnostic exam that allows treatment followed by the examination and can cause some complications such as pain. From this perspective, music has alleviated suffering and promoted pain relief for patients. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of music therapy to relieve pain in adults and older adults during femoral arterial sheath removal after cardiac catheterization.MethodsThis is a randomized controlled clinical trial, with two arms and a single-blind design to be carried out with 68 patients equally allocated into control and experimental groups. The intervention will be applied with the use of headphones without any musical transmission in the control group or with the patient’s musical preference in the experimental group with sound intensity of 60 dB. These patients will be evaluated in three moments: immediately before, during and 15 min after the painful procedure. The primary outcome includes reduction of pain intensity verified by the Visual Analogue Scale and the secondary outcome corresponds to improvement of vital signs and vocal and facial pain expressions.DiscussionThis study will allow by testing a non-pharmacological strategy to relieve pain during femoral sheath removal after cardiac catheterization, having its parameters evaluated at three moments: immediately before (30 min), during the procedure and 15 min after the painful procedure. It also enables the use of a low-cost, potentially effective resource that makes nursing care more humanized by improving user satisfaction with the service provided, in addition to reducing the need for post-procedure analgesics.Trial registrationThis study is registered on the Brazilian Clinical Trials Registry (REBEC) platform under number RBR-3t3qwp7 (05/04/2022) and was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte under CAAE 52,586,521.8.0000.5537 (11/11/2021).

Application of Hybrid Filtering Strategies in Music Recommendation System

Everyone has their own distinct musical preferences; it's safe to assume that each music will find an appreciative audience. It's important to note that there isn't a single human society that has ever survived without music. There are two major gains from this study. Initially, a multi-strategy approach is taken to develop hybrid recommendation algorithms that give more accuracy than the existing algorithms. Also this hybrid algorithm is used to find new music in real time. This allows the algorithm to make an educated guess as to which musician and song best suit the user. As a second step, a general context-aware and emotion-based customized music framework is offered to facilitate the quick growth of context-aware music recommendation systems and to shed light on the whole recommendation procedure. Multiple methods exist for responding to requests, and a general framework is required for both collecting these methods and interpreting them within the context of the proposed framework. The kind of recommendation algorithm used is decided by the format of the input.

A discussion on the aesthetics and philosophy of music in popular music

Since childhood, children have been drawn to the aesthetics of music. In the current exploratory study, we investigate the relationship between age, gender, and music education in terms of the perception of music preferences and musical emotions, which are two fundamental aspects of the aesthetic experience of music, using the children of teachers. I utilized the sectional design. We have established an experimental method for addressing particular children's musical interests and tendencies to do this. Melodic emotions and style are highly regarded. The melody consisted of three brief piano pieces: a significant piece, a minor piece, and a freetone piece. This article describes the "Reasoning of Music Education" or "Philosophy of Music Education" field (MEP). Method of music instruction is a relatively young field, and many music educators are unaware of its existence, as well as its inclination and value. In North America and most other nations, specialized MEP courses are not currently common in undergraduate and graduate curricula. The most surprising aspect of music is the variety of human advancements and individuals that create, utilize, evaluate, teach, learn, and invent "music" items, cycles, encounters, etc. Similarly, billions of people have invested a great deal of time, effort, thought, emotion, money, and in some cases, their lives creating specific sounds and related activities. I also acknowledge that it has been completed. Although music is an important and visible component of human civilisation, certain types of "music" sounds are created and listened to fulfill basic survival demands. Infrequent (if not entirely bizarre) compared to the enormous effort we exert. As many have noted, music does not appear biologically essential, yet it permeates all cultures.

Towards Ubiquitous Personalized Music Recommendation with Smart Bracelets

Nowadays, recommender systems play an increasingly important role in the music scenario. Generally, music preferences are related to internal and external conditions. For example, mood state and ongoing activity will affect users' music preferences. However, conventional music recommenders cannot capture these conditions since they only utilize the online data but ignore the impact of physical-world information. In this paper, we leverage the contexts from low-cost smart bracelets for ubiquitous personalized recommendation to meet users' music preference. We first conduct a large-scale questionnaire survey, which illustrates moods, activities, and environments will affect music preferences. Then we perform a one-week field study among 30 participants, where they receive personalized music recommendation and record preferences and mood. Meanwhile, participants' context information is collected with bracelets. Analyses on the data demonstrate significant relationships between music preference, mood, and bracelet contexts. Furthermore, we propose a novel Multi-task Ubiquitous Music Recommendation model (MUMR) to predict personalized music preference with bracelet contexts as input and mood prediction as an auxiliary task. Experiments show significant improvement in music recommendation performances with MUMR. Our work demonstrates the possibility of ubiquitous personalized music recommendations with smart bracelets data, which is an encouraging step towards building recommender systems aware of physical-world contexts.

Music Empathizing and Music Systemizing are Associated with Music Listening Reward

Music empathizing (ME) and music systemizing (MS) are constructs representing cognitive styles that address different facets of interest in music listening. Here we investigate whether ME and MS are positively associated with feelings of reward in response to music listening (MR). We conducted an online-survey in which n = 202 (127 identifying as female) participants, Mage = 26.06 years, SDage = 8.66 years, filled out the Music-Empathizing-Music-Systemizing (MEMS) Inventory, the Barcelona Questionnaire of Music Reward (BMRQ), further music-related inventories, and ad hoc items representing general interest and investment in music listening. Results from a conditional inference tree analysis confirm our hypothesis by showing ME followed by MS were the most important predictors of MR. In addition, subscription to music streaming services and investing free time into music listening were also associated with higher MR. These results suggest that perceiving reward through music listening is a function of both music empathizing and music systemizing. The nonsignificant contributions of music sophistication and music style preferences deny a larger role of these factors in MR. Further research is needed to investigate the interrelationships of musical cognitive styles and MR to refine our understanding of the affective value of music listening.

Individual differences in the expression and experience of curiosity are reflected in patterns of music preferences and appreciation.

Individual differences in the expression and experience of curiosity are reflected in patterns of music preferences and appreciation.

Sounds of Accompaniment

Sounds of Accompaniment

The effect of listening to the music of the patient's own or others' choice during cesarean sections on pain, and its contribution to anesthesia technicians

To investigate the effect of listening to the music of the patient's own or others' choice during the cesarean section on the intraoperative pain of the expectant mother and its contribution to the anesthesia technicians' practice. This study is a single-centre, controlled and randomized trial involving 92 patients. During cesarean section, pregnant women in the intervention group listened to music of their own or our choice with headphones. We placed headphones on the patients in the control group but played no music. We performed cesarean sections under regional anesthesia. We collected a variety of subjective (visual analog and numerical scale for pain) and objective parameters (heart rate, blood pressure and amount of medication leftover from postoperative PCA) during the incision and suturing of the skin. We found no differences between the groups in terms of systolic-diastolic blood pressure and heart rate. However, we observed that the VAS scores in the group listening to music in the Acemashiran maqam (a melody type in Turkish classical music) were lower than the control group (p=0.02). On the other hand, there was no difference between the VAS scores of patients listening to the music of their own choice and that of the group listening to music in the Acemashiran maqam or from the control group (p>0.05). At the end of the study, 87.5% of the patients liked the music preferences, while 93.8% desired to listen to music during the next cesarean section. Listening to music reduces patients' pain during cesarean section. Comparisons with the control group showed that the effect of music in the Acemashiran maqam on pain was even more pronounced than that of the patient's own choice.

Promoting Music Exploration through Personalized Nudging in a Genre Exploration Recommender

Recommender systems are efficient at predicting users’ current preferences, but how users’ preferences develop over time is still under-explored. In this work, we study the development of users’ musical preferences. Exploring musical preference consistency between short-term and long-term preferences in data from earlier studies, we find that users with higher musical expertise have more consistent preferences for their top-listened artists and tags than those with lower musical expertise, while high expertise users also show more diverse listening behavior. Users typically chose to explore genres that were close to their current preferences, and this effect was stronger for expert users. Based on these findings, we conducted a user study on genre exploration to investigate (1) whether it is possible to nudge users to explore more distant genres, (2) how users’ exploration behavior within a genre is influenced by default recommendation settings that balance personalization with genre representativeness in different ways, and (3) how nudging for exploration increases the perceived helpfulness of recommendations for users to explore. Our results show that users were more likely to select the more distant genres if these genres were nudged by presented at the top of the list, however, users with high musical expertise were less likely to do so. We also find that the more representative default slider, which by default recommended more genre-representative tracks, made users set the slider at a less personalized level. The more representative slider position alone did not promote more exploration of users’ current preferences but when combined with the nudge for distant genres, the more representative slider positions effectively nudged users to explore. Nudging to explore does not necessarily lead to an increase in perceived helpfulness. On the one hand, nudging for exploration improves the perceived helpfulness for exploration by making users explore away from their current preferences. On the other hand, it reduces helpfulness due to lower perceived personalization as users move away from their personalized recommendations. To improve perceived helpfulness, it seems necessary to provide a balanced trade-off between exploration and personalization.

The Extended Self: Youth’s Identity in the Music Consumption of Indonesian Spotify Users

The music streaming service provider app, Spotify, accommodates users to customize their music consumption to suit their needs. Not only for listening to music, but Spotify also allows users to show off their musical tastes through other social media channels. The process of music consumption in Spotify becomes a tool of identity construction as well as distinguishing individuals by their social circle, and makes individuals feel that they are part of a particular group. This study examined the process of constructing user’s identity through music consumption on Spotify, where there is a process of extended self into the social media sphere. This research was conducted with virtual ethnographic method towards Indonesian Spotify users. The results indicated that informants used music consumption in Spotify as a way to construct an extended self in the digital space, primarily through ownership of Spotify profiles and music preferences.

Hearing Aids Enhance Music Enjoyment in Individuals With Hearing Loss.

To investigate music appreciation in hearing aid (HA) users with varying levels of hearing loss (HL). Cross-sectional, within-subjects design. Tertiary medical center, community. Adults (≥18 yr) bilateral HA users. HA usage. Outcome variables included self-reported music enjoyment measures (pleasantness, musicality, naturalness) with and without HAs assessed with visual analogue scales (10 indicates highest level of enjoyment, 0 the least). Exposure variables include HL (better ear pure-tone average) and speech discrimination (word recognition scores [WRS]). Demographic information was collected. One hundred nine bilateral HA users completed the study. Mean (standard deviation) age was 66.6 years (16.8 yr); 52.3% were female patients. Mean (standard deviation) better ear pure-tone average was 51.1 dB (16.3 dB) HL. Increased severity of HL and worse WRS were associated with decreased music enjoyment ( p < 0.05) across all measures without HAs, adjusting for sex, age, education, race, HA type, age of HL diagnosis, duration of HL, duration of HA use, musical preference, and musical experience. However, these associations were attenuated or no longer significant with HA usage. Moreover, among all subjects, HAs (vs. no HAs) provided increased music enjoyment in pleasantness (HA, 6.94, no HA, 5.74; p < 0.01), musicality (HA, 7.35; no HA, 6.13, p < 0.01), and naturalness (HA, 6.75; no HA, 6.02; p = 0.02). HA users report increased music enjoyment with HAs compared with without HAs. Increased severity of HL and worse WRS were independently associated with decreased unaided music enjoyment. HA usage seems to mitigate this effect, particularly for those with worse HL.

Music preferences as an instrument of emotional self-regulation along the business cycle

This paper studies the influence of macroeconomic conditions on subjective well-being and music preferences. The macroeconomic cycle exerts an effect on happiness and well-being that consumers counterbalance by modifying music consumption. We use machine learning techniques to make a weekly classification of the top 100 songs of Billboard Hot 100 into positive and negative lyrics over the period 1958–2019. When unemployment is high, society generally prefers more positive songs. Other macroeconomic indicators such as high inflation, high interest rates or low stock market prices also affect musical preferences. These results provide initial evidence regarding the use of cultural consumption to offset business cycle oscillations.

Inspired by the Research Process: Lessons Learned in the Participation of a Mixed Method Randomized Comparative Clinical Trial

<h3>Background Information</h3> Post Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU) nurses met with the clinical nurse specialist to participate in a music-based intervention research study whose purpose was to reduce anxiety and pain in laparoscopic radical prostatectomy patients. One co-investigator was a nursing student whose expertise was in music. The research team chose to frame their study using a mixed method, randomized comparative design between two complementary music interventions: (1) patient-selected music preferences using Spotify; (2) pre-recorded guided breathing relaxation narrative underscored with minimal, hypnotic music. <h3>Objectives of Project</h3> To participate as co-investigators in a mixed method randomized comparative study to determine the effectiveness of music listening interventions in reducing anxiety and pain scores in the PACU; learn about patient experiences through qualitative inquiry. <h3>Process of Implementation</h3> 1.Co-investigators took CITI protection for human subjects 2.Submitted study protocol; approved by IRB 3.IT Department programed music interventions on devices 4.Invitation PreOp phone call night prior 5.Night prior, team collates brown envelope; headset/fully charged i-Pods in plastic bag w/coded randomized group; I-Pods checked fully charged/tested 6.PI/Co-investigators consented patients in waiting room 7.Drew music G-cleft by patient's ID 8.Patient escorted to Prep; listened to music 9.Once awake – patient offered assigned music until discharge 10.Blinded RN records "Post" STAI scores; completes PACU data form 11.RN documents patient's own words to qualitative inquiry 12.RN returns plastic bag/data sheet to LCN desk. All equipment sanitized; placed in locked drawer for recharging; ready for next patient 13.Nurses shared results of their study with nursing leaders and surgeons <h3>Statement of Successful Practice</h3> The PACU nurses successfully completed the research study, authored a music listening manuscript, submitted manuscript for publication, and disseminated results of the study through local and national poster presentations. <h3>Implications for Advancing the Practice of Perianesthesia Nursing</h3> Participating in the conduct of research inspires bedside PACU nurses to continue their scientific inquiry by creating new knowledge to improve perianesthesia nursing practice and patient care. Future research should focus on the benefits of PACU nurses participating in research and contributing to nursing theory.