Introduction. While previous musicological research has broadly addressed the functions and strategies explaining musical judgments, specific musical styles have received less attention. This study explores musical taste explanation strategies across fans of EDM, jazz, classical, folk, metal, pop, rap, punk, and rock. The aim is to investigate how fans develop their preferences, the functions their preferred music serves, how they explain their taste, and how they respond to negative judgments.
Method. A total of N=844 participants selected one of 17 musical styles they were particularly passionate about. Four questionnaires were used, assessing factors influencing musical taste development, functions of music listening, musical value judgments, and possible rejection reasons by others. Data were analyzed using factor analysis, followed by random forest regression, to identify key predictors across styles, considering sociodemographics and musical engagement.
Results. Key predictors for style classification included social factors, which were crucial in shaping musical taste, particularly for punk, metal, and rock. In contrast, these factors were irrelevant for classical and jazz. Personality expression and the significance of lyrics were highly important for punk, metal, and rock fans. Pop and rap listeners cited the perception of their music as mainstream as a key reason for its rejection by others, while classical, metal, and rap fans pointed to prejudices as an important factor in negative judgments.
Conclusion. The findings highlight the importance of style-specific approaches in understanding musical taste, revealing significant differences in the musical taste explanation strategies across styles. Further research should continue to explore these nuanced distinctions.