Can Your Musical Tastes Reveal Your Social Class?

by Monica Joshi

Gossip Girl showed us that social class and elitism haven't died just yet. It seems that if you crank up Top-40s and can't stop listening to Taylor Swift, it's not simply an indicator of your preference for pop music, but also a statement on your socio-economic status. According to new research from University of British Columbia, your musical tastes may say more about you and your “class” than you think.

The connection between “class” and economic means or opportunity is clear: the higher your class (i.e. the higher your household income) the more likely you are to pursue more extravagant pleasures. It seems quite intuitive that people who are upper class have the means to go to the opera, and therefore might develop a taste for it. But what about the other music genres?

According to the study, recently published in the Canadian Review of Sociology, wealth and education do not influence a person's breadth of music taste, but rather other factors, such as age, gender, immigrant status, ethnicity, and class, might likely influence musical tastes.

Gerry Veenstra, lead author and professor at UBC's Department of Sociology, said:

"Breadth of taste is not linked to class. But class filters into specific likes and dislikes.”

The study used 1,600 telephone interviews with adults in Vancouver and Toronto about their likes and dislikes pertaining to 21 musical genres. The study concluded by stating that poorer, less-educated people tend to like country, disco, easy listening, golden oldies, heavy metal and rap. On the other hand, their wealthier and better-educated counterparts prefer genres such as classical, blues, jazz, opera, choral, pop, reggae, rock, world and musical theatre.

It seems like what people don't want to listen to also plays a key role in creating class boundaries. For instance, the least-educated people in the study were over eight times more likely to dislike classical music compared to the best-educated respondents. Genres such as country, easy listening and golden oldies were highly disliked by higher-class listeners.

As the research touches on a very controversial topic in cultural sociology, namely whether one's class is accompanied by specific cultural tastes, or whether "elites" are defined by a broad range of preferences that sets them apart, it might be necessary to really define what class and social status mean before understanding the sociological implications of this study. In the case of this study it seems, at least according to the researchers, that “class” does not encompass wealth and education, even though it seems to use those two as criteria to determine the class to which the respondents belong.