How AI is shaping the music listening habits of Gen Z

By Beatriz Ilari, Lynne Snyder, University of Southern California

For four years, we’ve been teaching a class on music and the mind. We’ve asked the students at the start of each semester to complete a short, informal survey on their music education and favorite songs and artists.

Our students’ musical education backgrounds always range from none to more than a decade of lessons and ensembles. But we’ve watched the list of favorite songs and artists get longer and more varied each year. When we ask the entire group about certain songs, it is often the case that no one, save for the person who included it, has heard it.

The findings from these informal classroom surveys are consistent with recent research showing diverse and eclectic musical preferences among adolescents. In a study on the listening habits of Los Angeles middle school students, we found that they appreciate artists representing a range of genres, from the K-pop supergroup BTS to the heavy metal band System of a Down to Beethoven.

But what happens when, as we’ve observed, young people don’t know what their peers are listening to? And does it matter that teens aren’t necessarily choosing the music they’re using to understand themselves and the world, let alone that no humans are selecting songs they’re exposed to?

A shared soundscape goes private

For centuries, the only way to experience music was to see it live – at small, private performances, in community gatherings or in large concert halls.

Radios and record players transformed how people interacted with music. But because these devices were initially stationary, there was still a social element to listening. You might gather in a friend’s basement to hear hits on the radio, throw a listening party when a new album was released, make a mixtape for your beau or belt out a favorite song on the car radio with your best friend.

Introduced in 1979, the Sony Walkman marked another major turning point in how people listen to music.

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