Death by 1000 ‘true fans’: Do marketing laws apply to music listening?

The advice to musicians and marketers is to focus on what they love: a truism for practitioners is to find 1000 ‘true fans’ and make $100 from each of them (Kelly, 2008. 1000 True fans. The Technium). If this advice is correct, we should see musicians with loyal user bases engaging more with their favourite artists and less with other music, suggesting a narrow targeting strategy would suffice. On the other hand, the established marketing laws indicate that the listeners of very different genres should overlap more than conventional wisdom would suggest, supporting the need for a much broader approach to targeting potential audiences. Given these conflicting views, musicians need to know if they should market to their existing listeners, the listeners of music similar to theirs (i.e., the same genre), or if they should try to reach a much wider audience. We turn to established choice patterns from the marketing literature to address these questions in the music context. This study examines 84,000,000 observations of music listening from 27,000 unique global users between 2013 and 2014 and survey data from 2019 containing music listening from over 1000 representative respondents in the United States. The results show that listening follows the Duplication of Purchase law for genres, artists, albums, and songs, at an annual, 6-months, 3-months, 1-month, and 1-week period, with no indication of partitioned music listening. The implication is that musicians should try to reach all potential listeners, regardless of what they already listen to. These findings contribute to the theoretical knowledge about duplication analyses of various durations, extend the contexts of choice behaviour that exhibit this pattern, and managerially, to knowledge about the extent of potential audiences and ‘share of ear’ competition.     

Listening as Religious Practice (Part One): Exploring Quantitative Data from an Empirical Study of the Cultural Habits of Music Fans

This article explores and reflects upon the role that music consumption may be playing in the flexible field of cultural expression, identity formation, and meaning-making activity in the West, as overt commitment to organised religion continues to decline and prove fragile. Using quantitative data from a 2009–2010 study of 231 music users, the authors locate and analyse the respondents’ declarations about their listening practices in relation to their other socio-cultural habits and life-commitments. The article explores the genres and themes of music listened to, the means by which the music is accessed, the frequency of listening, and the scale and nature of non-musical commitments. The significance of differences between replies of male and female respondents and between replies of self-identified religious and non-religious respondents is also considered. The article concludes that, while listening habits differ only slightly between religious and non-religious respondents, there are differences in three significant respects: music use with respect to political self-expression; access of ‘life-worlds’/the narratives that people live by; the frequency and technological format of listening.     

Music listening and emotional well-being in adolescence: A person- and variable-oriented study

The principal aim of this study was to determine if different profiles (types) of emotional reactions following music listening (happiness and sadness) characterized different levels of emotional well-being (i.e., positive and negative affects) in adolescence. The secondary aim was to examine relationships between social congruence in music tastes with friends or parents (i.e., sharing similar music tastes and having fewer conflicts about music) and emotional well-being in adolescence. This study's sample was composed of 316 adolescents (M = 15.32 and S.D. = 0.90 years of age; 172 girls and 144 boys). Cluster analysis identified three profiles: (1) ‘emotionally-negative listeners’ (medium happiness and higher sadness); (2) ‘emotionally-limited listeners’ (lower happiness and lower sadness); (3) ‘emotionally-positive listeners’ (higher happiness and lower sadness). Results indicated that ‘emotionally-negative listeners’ had less emotional well-being, that ‘emotionally-positive listeners’ had more emotional well-being, and that social congruence in music tastes with both friends and parents were related to more emotional well-being.     

Young people's topography of musical functions: Personal, social and cultural experiences with music across genders and six societies

How can we understand the uses of music in daily life? Music is a universal phenomenon but with significant interindividual and cultural variability. Listeners’ gender and cultural background may influence how and why music is used in daily life. This paper reports the first investigation of a holistic framework and a new measure of music functions (RESPECT‐music) across genders and six diverse cultural samples (students from Germany, Kenya, Mexico, New Zealand, Philippines, and Turkey). Two dimensions underlie the mental representation of music functions. First, music can be used for contemplation or affective functions. Second, music can serve intrapersonal, social, and sociocultural functions. Results reveal that gender differences occur for affective functions, indicating that female listeners use music more for affective functions, i.e., emotional expression, dancing, and cultural identity. Country differences are moderate for social functions (values, social bonding, dancing) and strongest for sociocultural function (cultural identity, family bonding, political attitudes). Cultural values, such as individualism–collectivism and secularism–traditionalism, can help explain cross‐cultural differences in the uses of music. Listeners from more collectivistic cultures use music more frequently for expressing values and cultural identity. Listeners from more secular and individualistic cultures like to dance more. Listeners from more traditional cultures use music more for expressing values and cultural identity, and they bond more frequently with their families over music. The two dimensions of musical functions seem systematically underpinned by listeners’ gender and cultural background. We discuss the uses of music as behavioral expressions of affective and contemplative as well as personal, social, and sociocultural aspects in terms of affect proneness and cultural values.     

The perception of tempo in music

Tempo is one factor that is frequently associated with the expressive nature of a piece of music. Composers often indicate the tempo of a piece of music through the use of numerical markings (beats min(-1)) and subjective terms (adagio, allegro). Three studies were conducted to assess whether listeners were able to make consistent judgments about tempo that varied from piece to piece. Listeners heard short extracts of Scottish music played at a range of tempi and were asked to make a two-alternative forced choice of "too fast" or "too slow" for each extract. The responses for each study were plotted as proportion of too fast responses as a function of tempo for each piece, and cumulative normal curves were fitted to each data set. The point where these curves cross 0.5 is the tempo at which the music sounds right to the listeners, referred to as the optimal tempo. The results from each study show that listeners are capable of making consistent tempo judgments and that the optimal tempo varies across extracts. The results also revealed that rhythm plays a role, but not the only role in making temporal judgments.     

Going backstage: a psychoanalytically informed study with amateur musicians in adult mental health services

Many mental health service users engage in potentially therapeutic amateur music practice, though the role of this in the maintenance of mental health is largely unexplored. The application of psychoanalytic ideas to music-playing gives suggestions for how this activity could helpfully sublimate distress. For this study, six men who attend adult mental health services and play a musical instrument took part in three unstructured hour-long interviews. The material was analysed with a psychoanalytically informed method. Four inter-related themes emerged: ‘Left on the outside’; ‘Playing and linking’; ‘A beautiful gift to myself’; and ‘Frustrating play’. In the lives of these amateur musicians, music’s role as a transitional object and means of containing distress is explored. There is discussion of the narcissistic function of music and the dynamics around music as an exhibitionistic act. The value of paying attention to music in the life of a patient is considered.     

音乐情感交流研究中的透镜模型

介绍了研究音乐情感交流的透镜模型和透镜模型等式及其在音乐教育中的应用。透镜模型旨在解释演奏者如何通过多种或然且部分过剩的线索表达情感,听者如何使用这些线索识别演奏者表达的情感。透镜模型等式（LME）将演奏者和听者线索利用的回归模型联系起来。以透镜模型为理论基础,LME为数学基础产生了用于改善音乐演奏中的情感交流的认知反馈法（CFB）,即在演奏者演奏结束之后,向演奏者反馈其线索利用与欣赏者的线索利用相比较的结果,以提高演奏者与听者线索利用的一致性     

Instituting heteronormative belief in the law: the case of California's Proposition 22

This paper is based on ethnography of the ‘worship time’ at ‘Breakfree’ Church, a Pentecostal congregation in suburban Perth. I begin by exploring the ritualistic ways in which music is used to catalyse an ecstatic experience. Making use of the metaphor of ‘break free’, borrowed from a popular worship song, I demonstrate that music is used in deliberate ways to assist people in leaving behind the profane and encountering the sacred. Drawing on the thought of theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher and philosopher Paul Ricoeur, I explore the ways music facilitates and symbolises this experience. I demonstrate that for church members, the ecstatic divine-human encounter is the centre of their church worship and the antidote to difficult experiences such as grief or illness.     

‘It is safe to use if you are healthy’: A discursive analysis of men’s online accounts of ephedrine use

Ephedrine use in sport is a common practice among men. Less well understood is men’s use of ephedrine as a slimming aid. Arguably fuelled by the ‘war on obesity’ and the drive for muscularity, the Internet has become awash with claims presenting ephedrine as safe. The use of this psychoactive substance can have acute health implications such as tachycardia, arrhythmias and cardiovascular disease. Given the tension between health risk and ephedrine-induced weight loss, how men justify their use of ephedrine becomes an important question. In particular, we wished to analyse how male users talked to others about ephedrine in discussions linked to an online version of a popular men’s magazine. Because we were particularly interested in how men accounted for their ephedrine use, we used discourse analysis to examine their posts. In analysing the data, we noted that a ‘community of practice’ was constructed online categorising legitimate (and barred) users, emphasising the benefits of ephedrine and downplaying health-defeating side effects. Our analysis has clear implications for engaging men who use ephedrine in health promotion interventions.     

Tonal hierarchies in the music of north India

Cross-culturally, most music is tonal in the sense that one particular tone, called the tonic, provides a focus around which the other tones are organized. The specific organizational structures around the tonic show considerable diversity. Previous studies of the perceptual response to Western tonal music have shown that listeners familiar with this musical tradition have internalized a great deal about its underlying organization. Krumhansl and Shepard (1979) developed a probe tone method for quantifying the perceived hierarchy of stability of tones. When applied to Western tonal contexts, the measured hierarchies were found to be consistent with music-theoretic accounts. In the present study, the probe tone method was used to quantify the perceived hierarchy of tones of North Indian music. Indian music is tonal and has many features in common with Western music. One of the most significant differences is that the primary means of expressing tonality in Indian music is through melody, whereas in Western music it is through harmony (the use of chords). Indian music is based on a standard set of melodic forms (called rags), which are themselves built on a large set of scales (thats). The tones within a rag are thought to be organized in a hierarchy of importance. Probe tone ratings were given by Indian and Western listeners in the context of 10 North Indian rags. These ratings confirmed the predicted hierarchical ordering. Both groups of listeners gave the highest ratings to the tonic and the fifth degree of the scale. These tones are considered by Indian music theorists to be structurally significant, as they are immovable tones around which the scale system is constructed, and they are sounded continuously in the drone. Relatively high ratings were also given to the vadi tone, which is designated for each rag and is given emphasis in the melody. The ratings of both groups of listeners generally reflected the pattern of tone durations in the musical contexts. This result suggests that the distribution of tones in music is a psychologically effective means of conveying the tonal hierarchy to listeners whether they are familiar with the musical tradition. Beyond this, only the Indian listeners were sensitive to the scales (thats) underlying the rags. For Indian listeners, multidimensional scaling of the correlations between the rating profiles recovered the theoretical representation of scales described by theorists of Indian music.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)     

Shared musical knowledge in 11‐month‐old infants

Five‐month‐old infants selectively attend to novel people who sing melodies originally learned from a parent, but not melodies learned from a musical toy or from an unfamiliar singing adult, suggesting that music conveys social information to infant listeners. Here, we test this interpretation further in older infants with a more direct measure of social preferences. We randomly assigned 64 11‐month‐old infants to 1–2 weeks’ exposure to one of two novel play songs that a parent either sang or produced by activating a recording inside a toy. Infants then viewed videos of two new people, each singing one song. When the people, now silent, each presented the infant with an object, infants in both conditions preferentially chose the object endorsed by the singer of the familiar song. Nevertheless, infants’ visual attention to that object was predicted by the degree of song exposure only for infants who learned from the singing of a parent. Eleven‐month‐olds thus garner social information from songs, whether learned from singing people or from social play with musical toys, but parental singing has distinctive effects on infants’ responses to new singers. Both findings support the hypothesis that infants endow music with social meaning. These findings raise questions concerning the types of music and behavioral contexts that elicit infants’ social responses to those who share music with them, and they support suggestions concerning the psychological functions of music both in contemporary environments and in the environments in which humans evolved.     

Personality and aesthetic preference in Spain and England: two studies relating sensation seeking and openness to experience to liking for paintings and music

In two studies, one employing Spanish students and the other English students, questionnaire measures of Sensation Seeking and Openness to Experience were correlated with liking for major music types, several short music excerpts, and eight categories of painting (presented as slides). Inter‐correlations between music preference measures, painting preference, and personality are reported. In both samples, the Sensation Seeking Scale (Form V) and, particularly, the Experience Seeking sub‐scale were associated with a factor contrasting liking for ‘hard rock’ music and ‘violent–abstract’ art with liking for ‘neutral–realistic’ art and ‘easy listening’ music. Several substantial relationships between aesthetics measures and Openness to Experience (from the NEO‐PI‐R) were also found, though mostly in the English sample. The results reinforce the view that personality dimensions such as Sensation Seeking and Openness are important influences on aesthetic judgment. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Musical preferences during and after relaxation and exercise

Effects of the listening context on responses to music largely have been neglected despite the prevalence of music listening in our everyday lives. This article reports 2 studies in which participants chose music of high or low arousal potential during (Experiment 1) or immediately after (Experiment 2) exercise or relaxation. In Experiment 1, participants preferred appropriate arousal-polarizing music over arousal-moderating music. In Experiment 2, participants preferred arousal-moderating music over arousal-polarizing music, such that their listening times contrasted clearly with those in the first study even though the same music and methods were used. Thus musical preferences interact with the listening situation, and participants' music selections represent an attempt to optimize their responses to that situation. When motivated to maintain a state of polarized arousal, listeners use music to achieve this; when they have no such goal, they use music to moderate arousal.     

Specific previous experience affects perception of harmony and meter

Prior knowledge shapes our experiences, but which prior knowledge shapes which experiences? This question is addressed in the domain of music perception. Three experiments were used to determine whether listeners activate specific musical memories during music listening. Each experiment provided listeners with one of two musical contexts that was presented simultaneously with a melody. After a listener was familiarized with melodies embedded in contexts, the listener heard melodies in isolation and judged the fit of a final harmonic or metrical probe event. The probe event matched either the familiar (but absent) context or an unfamiliar context. For both harmonic (Experiments 1 and 3) and metrical (Experiment 2) information, exposure to context shifted listeners' preferences toward a probe matching the context that they had been familiarized with. This suggests that listeners rapidly form specific musical memories without explicit instruction, which are then activated during music listening. These data pose an interesting challenge for models of music perception which implicitly assume that the listener's knowledge base is predominantly schematic or abstract.     

“I don't reject the Catholic Church—the Catholic Church rejects me”: How Twenty- and Thirty-somethings in Poland Re-evaluate their Religion

Abstract

Given measures of religious belief and participation, young adults in Poland are becoming increasingly disengaged from the Catholic Church. Broad theories of secularisation are less useful for making sense of this trend than an analysis of the role of Catholicism in Polish society in the twentieth century, which demonstrates the ways in which forms of belief are contingent upon wider social and political transformations. This article argues that, since 1989, attempts by the Catholic Church in Poland to influence public life through conservative social and political interventions have alienated young people who are looking for religious resources with which to make sense of their lives in a rapidly changing social milieu. Alongside disengagement from conservative, propositional forms of Catholic truth and rejection of direct authority, young people still possess ‘religious capital’ and look upon religious ideas to orientate their personal lives. However, disaffection from the propositional truths offered by the Church and disengagement from rituals and practices of ‘folk Catholicism’ at the level of the family and local parish have not led to widespread expressions of atheism among young people. Instead, there is a sacralisation of everyday life and there are attempts to use ‘religious capital’ to help young people make choices for life. The reconfigured ‘religious capital’ is often expressed through diffuse Catholic symbols and sentiment as well as the periodic use of major religious festivals as a means of finding access to some form of collective religious experience. The article concludes by reflecting on the implications of these changes for the future religious landscape of Polish society.     

An analysis of information visualisation

Philosophers have relied on visual metaphors to analyse ideas and explain their theories at least since Plato. Descartes is famous for his system of axes, and Wittgenstein for his first design of truth table diagrams. Today, visualisation is a form of ‘computer-aided seeing’ information in data. Hence, information is the fundamental ‘currency’ exchanged through a visualisation pipeline. In this article, we examine the types of information that may occur at different stages of a general visualization pipeline. We do so from a quantitative and a qualitative perspective. The quantitative analysis is developed on the basis of Shannon’s information theory. The qualitative analysis is developed on the basis of Floridi’s taxonomy in the philosophy of information. We then discuss in detail how the condition of the ‘data processing inequality’ can be broken in a visualisation pipeline. This theoretic finding underlines the usefulness and importance of visualisation in dealing with the increasing problem of data deluge. We show that the subject of visualisation should be studied using both qualitative and quantitative approaches, preferably in an interdisciplinary synergy between information theory and the philosophy of information.