Perceived Popularity's Effect on Music Preference

When consuming music, the platform by which the music is presented may contain information that influences personal opinions of the music. Modern platforms such as streaming services provide complete transparency and access to the metrics and opinions surrounding a piece of music. The current experiment examined whether view counts would influence listeners’ opinions about a new song. To test this, a song was created for this experiment. Each participant listened to the song individually over YouTube in a testing room. Half of the participants were shown a YouTube screen that contained a low view count, and the other half were shown a YouTube screen that contained a high view count. Preference for the song was then measured on a Likert scale. Participants who saw the high view count reported significantly higher preference ratings for the song than those who saw the low view count. This effect was displayed in participants who remembered noticing the view count as well as those who reported not noticing, suggesting that the influence of view counts on musical preference may occur without conscious awareness.