How Heterogeneous Are Music Genre Listeners?

Abstract

Understanding music listening behaviour benefits those seeking to market music to the general population and those choosing music to feature in retail environments or advertising. In particular, understanding how consumers consume different genres is important. There are, however, two conflicting bodies of knowledge. One finds segments of music listeners who differ on music genre preferences, while the other finds (media and brand) user profiles are more similar than different. Our research provides additional evidence by surveying over 1,000 representative respondents in the United States regarding their listening behaviour of 13 music genres. The proportion of listeners of each genre is compared with the average profile for all genres using those segmentation variables previously found to cause differing genre preferences (e.g. age and income). While some minor differences exist, notably that younger listeners prefer electronica/dance, the overall results show genre user profiles are more similar than different. The theoretical implication is that using approaches designed to find minor differences will do precisely that and magnify them. At the same time, for those marketing music in the industry, achieving a broader market coverage may be more effective in expanding their listener bases than focussing on narrower segments.

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