Listening Niches across a Century of Popular Music

Abstract

This article investigates the contexts, or “listening niches”, in which people hear popular music. The study spanned a century of popular music, divided into 10 decades, with participants born between 1940 and 1999. It asks about whether they know and like the music in each decade, and their emotional reactions. It also asks whether the music is associated with personal memories and, if so, with whom they were listening, or whether they were listening alone. Finally, it asks what styles of music they were listening to, and the music media they were listening with, in different periods of their lives. The results show a regular progression through the life span of listening with different individuals (from parents to children) and with different media (from records to streaming services). A number of effects found in previous studies were replicated, but the study also showed differences across the birth cohorts. Overall, there was a song specific age effect with preferences for music of late adolescence and early adulthood; however, this effect was stronger for the older participants. In general, music of the 1940s, 1960s, and 1980s was preferred, particularly among younger participants. Music of these decades also produced the strongest emotional responses, and the most frequent and specific personal memories. When growing up, the participants tended to listen to the older music on the older media, but rapidly shifted to the new music technologies in their late teens and early 20s. Younger listeners are currently listening less to music alone than older listeners, suggesting an important role of socially sharing music, but they also report feeling sadder when listening to music. Finally, the oldest listeners had the broadest taste, liking music that they had been exposed to during their lifetimes in different listening niches.

The self-defining period in autobiographical memory: Evidence from a long-running radio show

“…If music can offer such an important route to access, reinforce, and share memories with others, then maybe this explains why people are drawn so strongly to music from the SP—a time that is full of important self-defining experiences. This is consistent with findings from Krumhansl (2017) , showing that MEAMs occurred most often for songs that were popular during the ages of 13 to 29 years.…”

“…They invited 108 participants to rate 28 popular songs released between 1932 and 1986 and demonstrated an inverted U-shaped curve, such that preference ratings peaked for songs that had been released at the age of 24 years. Numerous studies have found this same pattern of a greater liking of songs released during the SP (e.g., Hemming, 2013 ; Janssen et al, 2007 ; Krumhansl, 2017 ). Other researchers have focussed more specifically on the ability to recognise music from different eras and the extent to which music activates the retrieval of autobiographical memories (e.g., Cady et al, 2008 ; Schulkind et al, 1999 ).…”

Effects of familiar music exposure on deliberate retrieval of remote episodic and semantic memories in healthy aging adults

“…One caveat is that this process cannot guarantee that participants were exposed to the music clips during the intended time periods, as opposed to later in life. However, the use of top-charting songs may maximize the likelihood that participants were exposed to them shortly after their release, particularly through radio or television airplay (Bartlett & Snelus, 1980;Krumhansl, 2017). To test if this was indeed the case, we will include a manipulation check to assess the timing of music exposure (see song exposure timing manipulation check).…”

Music-evoked autobiographical memories in everyday life

“…To summarize, previous studies have revealed that music can elicit a diverse array of memories, which display some common features, such as a predominance of positive emotions and social themes (Janata et al, 2007), a greater prevalence of perceptual details than other autobiographical memories (Belfi et al, 2016), and some connection to the reminiscence bump period (Krumhansl, 2017;Platz et al, 2015;Rathbone et al, 2017;Schulkind et al, 1999). In addition, MEAMs may be more involuntarily retrieved than other memories, which may at least partially explain the relative preservation of MEAMs in clinical cases where other aspects of autobiographical recall are impaired (El Haj, Fasotti, & Allain, 2012;El Haj, Postal, & Allain, 2012).…”

“…The reminiscence bump is a robust effect within autobiographical memory research in which older people disproportionately recall events from adolescence and early adulthood (ages 10-30 years) in comparison with other lifetime periods; these memories are also typically rated as more vivid and more important than other memories (Rubin et al, 1986(Rubin et al, , 1998. Research in the music domain has revealed that popular songs released when a participant was 10-30 years old are preferred, better recognized, and elicit heightened emotional responses compared to songs from other periods (Bartlett & Snelus, 1980;Krumhansl, 2017;Platz et al, 2015;Schulkind et al, 1999;Zimprich & Wolf, 2016). Some evidence also indicates that music from the reminiscence bump period may cue more MEAMs (Krumhansl, 2017;Rathbone et al, 2017), although experimenter-selected songs from the reminiscence bump period have failed to cue many autobiographical memories of specific events in two studies (Platz et al, 2015;Schulkind et al, 1999).…”