Let Me Introduce You: Stimulating Taste-Broadening Serendipity Through Song Introductions
Brett Binst, Ulysse Maes, Martijn C. Willemsen, Annelien Smets
TLDR
Song introductions can stimulate "Taste-Broadening Serendipity" by making users interested in music outside their usual preferences, driven by transportation.
Key contributions
- User study explores how song introductions foster interest in new music genres.
- Identifies "transportation" (narrative absorption) as a key mechanism for broadening taste.
- Finds "cognitive elaboration" (learning context) also contributes, though less strongly.
- Proposes song introductions can enhance music exploration and listening diversity.
Why it matters
Music recommender systems often fail to encourage users to explore new genres. This research shows that well-crafted song introductions can effectively stimulate interest in unfamiliar music, enhancing user exploration and diversifying listening habits. This could lead to more engaging and personalized music discovery experiences.
Original Abstract
Research on how people experience music emphasizes the importance of exploration and diversity in listening. However, music recommender systems struggle with facilitating exploration. Even when music recommender systems are able to recommend something valuable to users that is outside their typical preferences, it still remains difficult to spark their interest. This paper presents a user study examining the efficacy of immersive and informative introductions in stimulating interest in songs that are beyond one's usual preferences, an experience called Taste-Broadening Serendipity. We uncover two important mechanisms behind the effect of introductions: transportation and cognitive elaboration. Our findings indicate that transportation (i.e., being absorbed into a narrative world) is the strongest predictor of Taste-Broadening Serendipity, while cognitive elaboration (i.e., learning something new about the artist or social context in which the music emerged) has a weaker effect but is easier to stimulate. We propose that song introductions can play an important role in facilitating exploration and increasing diversity of listening on music streaming platforms.
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