Melodic Death Metal and Mozart:
The combination ensures a rather unusual and eye opening listening process. As a sudden urge to find music that truly moves me overwhelms me, I have broadened my horizons tonight, as well as re-evaluating my own little piece of philosophy on just what defines our music taste and our music personality.
A good piece of music or song is that which provokes a certain powerful energy inside you. It evokes emotions and demands a response. This can be sadness, joy or any range of emotions, as I have realized with classical music. Some songs can be both sad and depressing, or uplifting and joyous. It is in the ‘ear’ of the beholder.
This of course means good music as we all probably have gathered by now (through various drunken debates about why rock is better than hip hop and vice versa) our music taste is completely unique. Certain songs and artists evoke feelings in some of us yet other people do not feel anything when they hear that song, perhaps other than disdain.
I theorize that it is our personality which governs which forms of music we find attractive. We are more likely to be attracted to certain genres of music based on by who we are as a person. There was a recent study on the link between your music taste and your personality done by Professor Adrian North of Heriot-Watt University. The research drew the following conclusions about the mentioned genres below:
Blues fans have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing, gentle and at ease
Jazz fans have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing and at ease
Classical music fans have high self-esteem, are creative, introvert and at ease
Rap fans have high self-esteem and are outgoing
Opera fans have high self-esteem, are creative and gentle
Country and western fans are hardworking and outgoing
Reggae fans have high self-esteem, are creative, not hardworking, outgoing, gentle and at ease
Dance fans are creative and outgoing but not gentle
Indie fans have low self-esteem, are creative, not hard working, and not gentle
Bollywood fans are creative and outgoing
Rock/heavy metal fans have low self-esteem, are creative, not hard-working, not outgoing, gentle, and at ease
Chart pop fans have high self-esteem, are hardworking, outgoing and gentle, but are not creative and not at ease
Soul fans have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing, gentle, and at ease
The Pop Question:
I do find it hard to swallow that some people could argue using this philosophy that Katy Perry musical releases evoke a response as strong as some more accomplished musical compositions of this world. But I have come to the conclusion Pop music exists because there are no doubt certain arrangements, combinations of notes are more endearing to the human ear and easier to decipher and understand. It creates a quicker but weaker form of feeling (ever forgot that song you once loved in 2 or 3 weeks) or emotion within a person than most other genres of music.
It is important to note that the trade off of this quicker message and creation of emotion. Is the emotion comes in a weaker form and with a shorter life span. There is a reason why some songs remain timeless while others are forgotten in a month it is because these timeless songs take longer to decipher but result in stronger emotions once understood. I call these albums or songs growers, songs album artist you basically don’t understand or like till the 4th or 5th time round, sometimes more!
People that attract to pop music perhaps are those yet to fully experience the power of music’s effects on oneself and thus live in their own small realm. An analogy that comes to mind is if someone lives in the one suburb there whole life. They may like it, they may enjoy it, but there is indisputably a better suburb somewhere else out there, that could make them happier but they refuse to leave their comfortable realm to see it. This is life. Some people will live in the same town for their whole lives and some people will listen to the same type of music their whole lives.
Taking the aforementioned into account this is why it is important to explore one’s musical depth to its full capacity so you can truly find the music (or suburb) that’s best or most meaningful to you.
I’m ignoring trends in this blog for good or for bad. Those that pretend to like something but in fact don’t, and do it for the perceived social benefits of being seen to like it are not included in my theory at this stage.
Musical discovery at the end of the day should be about you. You identify with what you identify with, likely influenced by a range of factors from your peers to your personality but once you create your own musical realm it can be hard to leave. The chances are it will always be a safe house even if you stray for periods at a time. I don’t believe music taste or what you seek in music changes dramatically over time or once your taste is set. (You only have to look at your grandparents still raving about a song that was released in 1955 to realise this) You may pretend to like different music because it is cool or trendy but the core element of what you seek in your music is unlikely to change.
To illustrate this I will use an example from my life: I am aware of a friend’s brother who went from listening to Slipknot to attending raves (you did not read that wrong Slipknot to Raves). You may say he has completely changed his taste, and while it appears that is so what he seeks in his music (as governed by his music personality) energy and uplifting sounds which he can release himself to has not changed, so his music personality has not changed. What’s more he is still fond of Slipknot and attended their last tour so they remain a “safe house” in his music personality.
Getting Down to Business
The first example of the application of the music personality theory to the business world is: using someone’s music personality to identifying likely personality traits, to help a business or prospective business selling a new product or service, or using the information to discover niche markets within the music industry for example:
If you discover through your own marketing research that takes into account the music personality concept that teenagers who listen to metal eagerly spend on clothing but there are limited metal clothing shops around you are then in a position to setup a business that is poised to take advantage of a gap in the market. If you then set up a business that sells metal clothing you have the battle half won. You firstly have a product, a market that will not fail you if you researched it properly and clothing has some fairly respectable profit margins last time I checked. You are on your way to running a successful business. You may also use the information you learn from music personality profiles in other operations as well. If metal kids are presumed shy or with low self esteem friendly sales stuff and compliments may be the way to get them to the cash register.
The true power of understanding a target markets music personality though, is that you can supplement your core business with other products that the target market are likely to respond too with very low failure rates. A license to expand! If you have a music personality profile of Billy who is a grunge kid before even walks into your store you know all about him, before you even begin pitching to him, you recognize he is at ease and this gives staff a chance to convince him with sale tactics. You realize through profiling that grunge fans are at ease but not outgoing and also that grunge fans also identify with certain fashion elements which you can sell to him. So basically Billy comes to your store to get a Nirvana T Shirt and he might end up leaving with a pair of converse shoes and a pair of ripped jeans also in his trolley!
In a nutshell the philosophy states that if a business can define someone’s musical personality it can make marketing more effective by understanding a person’s likely traits more which enables more effective marketing be carried out. Understanding a music personality such as ‘enjoys edgy and aggressive music’ can help a company or individual build psychological profiles and accurately predict what types of products or services this person is drawn too and offer them for profit.
Looking at the music subscription service Stripe, we should already be able to see the business opportunities for this relatively new business using the theory of music personality. In this business’s case their main core business basically allows them to understand all the listening habits and hence likely music personalities of all their clientele (your music taste indicates what you seek in music and from there your music personality can be defined and certain conclusions and traits can be predicted about you as a person). Their service inter-relates with market research and thus the business is prime example of a business which could capitalize on their knowledge of music personalities.
The first area in which they could expand and make money is a gig guide for a small fee. They already aware of what a certain person likes by their music tastes so it would be a straight foreword task of simply messaging someone upcoming gigs they may be interested and could be added to the $7.95 a month subscription fee. In further detail it may be deemed a baby boomer to be an exceptionally busy but with available disposable income and this gig guide system may be offered to the baby boomers as they money rich but time poor.
A second expansion idea is forming strategic alliances with other companies in order to help Stripe make the most their information. For example if someone listens to the trance station regularly we may draw the conclusion using their music personality theory that their listening habits indicate high energy and the immediate thing that comes to mind is dancing. This is not complex at all Stripe could simply alert the user about a shop that sells electro fashion and the business could pay Stripe small amount. If a deal could be done businesses would have direct access to their target market and Stripe would have increased revenue streams.
Music Personality and now:
A key advantage of understanding this theory is it is not hard, and the payoffs include: great market targeting, expanding business services, understanding consumer behavior, more effective marketing practices and the ability to identify a niche or an opportunity in the music business and be able to make it profitable as opposed to a pipe dream. With profits continuing to slide in most areas of the music industry understanding the consumer should be paramount. The music industry also doesn’t have the best record for understanding three own consumer and has paid dearly in recent years. But it is never too late to change.
For the market researchers being able to define a music personality can be as simple as including these questions in surveys of your clients:
When you listen to music what is the predominate feeling you get from it?
Where do you spend most of your money?
These two questions can determine someone’s music personality and also give you an idea as to how you can use it to sell them further or related products. If John listens to metal then John is possibly a shy person. If shy people have tendency to wear black then we can market the following products to John. Personalization of marketing by business’s to consumers using their music personality and psychologically profiling to understand how they buy and what they are interested in and for the identification of market gaps.
As opposed to this more simple process a more complicated one exists which more accurately predicts the target markets personality traits and likely susceptibilities to certain products or services which involves a longer style questionnaire and delves into more psychological aspects .
Understating the concepts of Music personality can help your business, or your prospective business to more efficiently target the consumers through refining marketing techniques.
Music Taste: The bands we like.
Music Personality: The emotions sought by an individual in their music.
