The music that new generations listen to: preferences and stereotypes

Abstract

For young people, music is not just meaningful as an object of aesthetic consumption; it also has a social function to which they attribute different values that influence their identity and social relations. Thus, the aim of this article is to evaluate how their musical preferences are struc-tured and what differences exist by gender and age range, as well as studying what stereotypes they associate with the styles they listen to most in comparison with these variables. To do so, an updated and adapted version of the questionnaire by Cremades et al. (2010) was used. This was answered by 1020 adolescents from a district of the city of Madrid: 540 female (52.9%) and 480 male (47.1%) aged between 12 and 20. The results reveal which styles of popular urban music young people prefer, with older ones listening to a wider range of styles than the younger ones, and female respondents favouring mainstream music and Latin music. The stereotypes they most associate with their preferences are “generation”, “personality”, and “be-haviour”, something that is related to the development of the adolescent’s own identity. Therefore, starting from knowledge of the meaning young people attribute to music, it is necessary for music lessons to improve their listening and critical capacities, as a way of creating competent lis-teners, with sufficient musical and social knowledge of the music they prefer.