The Behavioural Economics of Music: Systematic review and future directions

Abstract

Music-related decision making encompasses a wide range of behaviours including those associated with composition and performance, listening choices, and decisions involving music education and therapy. Although research programmes in psychology and economics have contributed to an improved understanding of music-related behaviour, historically these disciplines have been unconnected. Recently however, researchers have begun to bridge this gap by employing tools from behavioural economics. This paper contributes to the literature by providing a discussion about the benefits of using behavioural economics in music-decision research. We achieve this in two ways. First, through a systematic review, we identify the current state of the literature within four key areas of behavioural economics – heuristics and biases, social decision making, behavioural time preferences, and dual-process theory. Second, taking findings of the literature as a starting point, we demonstrate how behavioural economics can inform future research. Based on this, we propose the Behavioural Economics of Music (BEM), an integrated research programme that aims to break new ground by stimulating interdisciplinary research in the intersection between music, psychology, and economics.

Here comes the sun: music features of popular songs reflect prevailing weather conditions

“…[45][46][47]), psychological and cultural values (e.g. [48][49][50]) and social preferences and norms [16].…”

Your ears don’t change what your eyes like: People can independently report the pleasure of music and images.

“…For example, recent work has shown that individuals are more likely to buy an item if it is advertised with familiar, versus unfamiliar, music (Anglada-Tort, Schofield, et al, 2022). Similarly, a recent theoretical framework, The Behavioral Economics of Music, has proposed that decision-making about how much a listener enjoys a piece of music (and other aesthetic judgments) should be considered similar to other sorts of economic decisions (Anglada-Tort, Masters, et al, 2022). This framework considers contextual effects on musical judgments (such as influences of the composer, title, or performer of a piece) as a type of heuristic, similar to the affect heuristic-that is, information about the composer or performer evokes an emotion and that in turn is what influences one's judgments about the piece.…”

The effect of visual recognition on listener choices when searching for music in playlists.

“…Overall, our results support previous research in music-related decision-making showing that listeners are not utility maximizers who use all information and time available to make optimal choices. Instead, they use information selectively to apply fast and frugal STEFFENS AND ANGLADA-TORT decision strategies to achieve satisfying (instead of optimal) solutions (Anglada-Tort et al, 2022). This work was inspired by the extensive literature on the recognition heuristic on decision-making (Goldstein & Gigerenzer, 2002;Pachur et al, 2011), but many other insights from behavioral economics may also be valuable to improve our understanding of listening behavior and aesthetic preferences, such as choice overload, time preferences, and game theory.…”

“…For artists and labels, the decisions of streaming users are crucial, as royalties depend on click counts which have become an essential element of monetization after the steady decrease in record sales since the late 1990s (Routley, 2018). This raises the questions of (a) how listeners manage to choose music effectively from this vast number of choices and (b) which psychological mechanisms may influence music preferential choice in such situations (Anglada-Tort et al, 2022).…”

“…However, little is known about the precise cognitive mechanisms underlying decision-making when listeners search for and choose music in playlists. Research on the intersection between music and behavioral economics shows that when making judgments and decisions, listeners are constrained by the information available to them (e.g., artist's descriptions, song titles, or popularity ratings) and their mental resources, such as memory and emotion (Anglada-Tort et al, 2022). Consequently, listeners use information selectively and rely on cognitive heuristics to simplify complex situations into easier-to-calculate operations.…”