MUSIC PREFERENCES AND PERSONALITY

AMEYA PRADIP SHIRODKAR

SECTION A

P43004
Abstract:

Online music streaming has become increasingly popular over the past few years. It has made
the listening experience personalised. Currently streaming service use AI recommender
systems which recommend music majorly based on listener history. This could be improved
by incorporating other factors like personality. Previous research has shown that there could
be associations between certain aspects of personality and musical preference. This research
aims to find associations between aspects of personality and musical preferences, much along
the lines of previous research findings. Findings of the research could have direct applications
in improving music streaming services.

Motivation:

Since childhood, I have been an avid music listener and have always tried to understand
music by learning instruments and listening to various forms of music. I have tried my hand
at learning different instruments including Drums, Guitar, and Keyboard, Drums being my
strong suit. Although I have listened to various genres of music, since my teenage and
through young adulthood, my music preferences have been inclined towards one or two broad
categories of music. I count myself amongst the small population of people who listen to
some of the more extreme forms of Rock music (generally called heavy metal or metal). I
also have an introverted personality. In the past few years, with technological advances and
the advent of music streaming services, music listening has become more and more
personalized. These streaming services use music recommender systems to personalize
recommendations based largely on the listening history of the user and genres of music.
These new-age music streaming services have made discovering new music easier than ever.
Applications such as Spotify, recommend new music regularly to the users. A problem with
these recommender systems is that without listening history, it is difficult to recommend
music. As I have an introverted personality and also listen to rather unconventional genres of
music, I have always wondered whether there is any link between personality and musical
preferences. As many of us also experience a shift in musical preference with a change in
age, another possible factor that may play a role in determining musical preference is age.
Problem Statement:

Music streaming has become very popular in recent years. There is an emerging interest in
how personality relates to user preferences in different domains. This provides valuable
information for the development of domain specific recommender systems. Knowing
someone's personality can help to infer their preferences, and can therefore contribute to a
more accurate recommendation. Streaming services like Spotify use AI recommender
systems to recommend music to users based on their listening behaviour and other users’
history. Although this works to personalise recommendations, there can be improvements in
the way music is recommended. A few personality factors seemingly influence musical
preference. Among these, personality and age seem to be the most influential based on
previous research. If a link between certain human characteristics and musical preference is
confirmed through research, it has direct applications for the music streaming services.

Literature Review:

There has been research regarding musical preference and different characteristics of the
listener. Most of the current literature has tried to find a connection between personality
differences and musical preference (Gideon Nave, et. al.,). Studies show that particular
personality characteristics may be associated with particular musical preferences. However,
Personality characteristics are not the only trait that influences musical preference. Factors
like Age, cultural influences, environment, etc. may also play a role in influencing musical
preferences (Bruce Ferwerda et. al., 2007). Research has been done to find an association
between the Big Five Personality model (Adrian C. North, 2010) and Myers-Briggs Type
Indicator as well. Previous research shows that openness to experience and Extraversion may
be more positively or negatively correlated with certain musical preferences. Further,
research has also been done on whether values have any effect on musical preferences (Sandy
Manolios, et. al., 2019). There has also been research finding the correlation between the
listening behaviour of users on streaming platforms and personality (Ian Anderson, et. al.,
2021).

Music streaming platforms have seen a rapid rise in the past few years. Research
related to music preferences has practical applications for music streaming services like
Spotify, Apple Music, Gaana, and many more. Spotify, and for that matter other music
streaming services use AI-based music recommender systems. These systems try to
understand the two sides of the marketplace, that is the music and the users. Based on the
user's activities and the activities of other users, music is recommended. Finding out
correlations between music preferences and human characteristics like personality can have a
great impact on the way music is recommended.

Gaps in literature:

The current literature in this context has been mostly done using users’ listening data
collected from streaming service platforms. This data does not contain data collected directly
from users and record their preferences with regard to age. Also, cross cultural researches
have not been done yet. Most studies focus on a certain region or a certain streaming service.
Since many users use different streaming services, the data collected may not show the full
picture. The objective of this research is to try and find a link between music preference and
personality, and the effect of age on change in musical preferences in the Indian context.

Researchability Aspect:

The main limitation of this topic is that it is extremely difficult to perform a controlled study.
Since music is a part of everyday life of people and can be affected by various things, it is
difficult to narrow down on certain aspects. Another limitation is that respondents may not be
able to recall or articulate their thoughts and experiences, which could be misleading. The
research can be done using secondary data as well as primary data. Primary can be collected
via questionnaires focusing on personality characteristics, age and musical preference. Data
could also be collected through interviews

Expected outcome:

The outcome at the end of this research is expected to be in line with some of the previous
research done on personality and musical preferences. Previous research has shown that there
seems to be a positive correlation between certain personality characteristics like openness to
experience and extraversion to certain genres of music. There have also been associations
with age and musical preference. The outcomes of this research are expected to show a
associations between personality characteristics, age and musical preference.

Acknowledgement:

I would like to thank Prof. Hippu Salk Kristle Nathan for giving me this opportunity to
complete this research proposal. I would also like to thank my friends and fellow batchmates
for constantly supporting and motivating me in completion of this research proposal.

References:

Ferwerda, B., Tkalcic, M., & Schedl, M. (2017). Personality traits and music genre
preferences: how music taste varies over age groups. In 1st Workshop on Temporal
Reasoning in Recommender Systems (RecTemp) at the 11th ACM Conference on
Recommender Systems, Como, August 31, 2017. (Vol. 1922, pp. 16-20). CEUR-WS.

Manolios, S., Hanjalic, A., & Liem, C. C. (2019, September). The influence of personal
values on music taste: Towards value-based music recommendations. In Proceedings of the
13th ACM Conference on Recommender Systems (pp. 501-505).

Anderson, I., Gil, S., Gibson, C., Wolf, S., Shapiro, W., Semerci, O., & Greenberg, D. M.
(2021). “Just the Way You Are”: Linking Music Listening on Spotify and Personality. Social
Psychological and Personality Science, 12(4), 561–
572. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550620923228

Dmitry Pastukhov, (2022, Feb 09). Inside Spotify’s Recommender System: A Complete
Guide to Spotify Recommendation Algorithms: https://www.music-tomorrow.com/blog/how-
spotify-recommendation-system-works-a-complete-guide-2022