What shapes our music preferences?

Every songwriter wants a hit, right? Problem is, listeners' music preferences are driven by a whole host of factors, not least by a range of so-called extra-musical influences, i.e., factors that are not directly driven by the music itself.

These extra-musical factors include the listeners' age, gender, personality, where they live, their friends' preferences, as well as a variety of socio-economic factors. Of these possible sources of influence, one might even say that age, gender, and personality actually predispose listeners to like certain types of music. Here's how..

Top Trumps

Peter Rentfrow and Samuel Gosling have shown in many studies that music preferences are at least to some extend related to personality characteristics. For example, genre-level preferences tend to correlate with scores on the Five Factor Model of personality, in which personality is characterised along five dimensions (Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism — OCEAN for short). If you score highly on Openness, for instance, you're probably more likely to enjoy Alternative, Rock and Heavy Metal. High scorers on Agreeableness, on the other hand, tend to enjoy Country, Pop, Religious and Soundtracks. And so on.

This knowledge can be used to predict what kind of music a person will probably like. Here, for example, are some personality-based predictions about what Donald Trump listens to!

There's even tentative evidence to suggest that personality characteristics might arise from small, individual differences in brain structure. This supports the idea that we might be predisposed to like certain types of music, and that certain predispositions can't be changed.

Critical period

Age plays a role in our predispositions, too. For example, our music preferences are usually shaped during our formative years in a critical period that extends from our mid-teens to our mid-twenties. This is the period during which we construct our musical identity, and most people go through a whole host of highly emotional and character-defining experiences for the first time during this period.

We tend to have very fond memories of music we were exposed to at this time in our lives, which at least partially explains why every generation complains that music 'in their day' was better than 'the rubbish played today' :)

All that jazz

And let's not forget the role of gender in all of this. Research has shown that men, for example, are more likely than women to use music to create a certain impression of themselves. For instance, men are especially more likely to use music in a cognitive or intellectual way in order to make themselves appear more intelligent..

But it's not all about these extra-musical factors. To learn more about how a piece of music itself can be structured to maximise listener preference, visit thexfactoruncovered.com.

What do you think about this post? What do you think has guided your music preferences? Please share your thoughts in the comments below :)

Geoff Luck is Associate Professor at the Finnish Centre For Interdisciplinary Music Research, and an expert on music perception and cognition. In his new book, he reveals how songwriters and composers can write better music, industry professionals can increase audience engagement, and fans can intensify their listening experience by understanding the science behind the sound. If you listen to, create or work with music, download the free synopsis, and discover the 'why?' behind the world's favourite music.