Which Music Do We Prefer? Interesting New Research

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We know that Spotify, Apple, and others have developed sophisticated algorithms to recommend music to listeners. While many customers know precisely what they would like to listen to, others are open to discovery. Spotify distinguishes between those listeners with a "closed" vs. "open" mindset. The algorithms are especially important for those with an open mindset. 

Now we have a new academic study that suggests an interesting way to predict the music we will enjoy. David Greenberg, Sandra Matz, Andrew Schwartz, and Kai Fricke have published a paper titled, "The Self-Congruity Effect of Music" in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.  They write: 

Across three studies we show that people prefer the music of artists who have publicly observable personalities (“personas”) similar to their own personality traits (the “self-congruity effect of music”)... Our findings are largely consistent across two methodological approaches to operationalizing an artist’s public personality: (a) the public personality as reported by the artist’s fans, and (b) the public personality as predicted by machine learning on the basis of the artist’s lyrics.

The scholars also show powerful evidence of a gender effect in music preferences.  They write:

The present article also provides the first evidence that listeners tend to prefer music from artists of the same sex, which had been previously theorized but not studied empirically (Hagen & Bryant, 2003). That is, the gender-fit between the listener and artist was found to be a significant predictor of musical preferences.

So, the next time you say yourself, "I love that artist's music."  Ask yourself, what do you know about that performer?  Why do you like that artist?   For companies, of course, the implications are profound.  Can they use this finding to refine their algorithms, without intruding on our personal privacy?  What if listeners were willing to disclose more about their personality in order to discover more music they would enjoy?