Wednesday, 10 September 2025 Soundtracks of Our Lives: How Age Influences Musical Preferences

Prof. Marko Tkalčič and Assist. Arsen Matej Golubovikj from the Department of Information Sciences and Technologies at the University of Primorska's FAMNIT have co-authored a new international study titled Soundtracks of Our Lives: How Age Influences Musical Preferences. This research was carried out in collaboration with Assoc. Prof. Bruce Ferwerda from Jönköping University and Assoc. Prof. Alan Said from the University of Gothenburg.

Drawing on 15 years of music-listening data from over 40,000 Last.fm users—and encompassing more than half a billion plays—this longitudinal study tracks how our musical tastes evolve over the life span. Findings reveal that while younger people tend to explore a wide array of contemporary hits, musical taste becomes increasingly nostalgic and personal past the age of 40. Music from youth gains prominence, even as listeners continue to discover new artists.

The study also highlights that older listeners develop more specialized and unique preferences compared to the broader, more homogeneous tastes of younger users. These insights are especially significant for the design of music recommendation systems, suggesting the importance of tailoring recommendations to long-term listening trajectories and nostalgia-driven patterns.

The paper was presented at UMAP ’25, the 33rd ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization, held in New York City (June 16–19, 2025).

For companies or individuals behind a recommendation system, such as Spotify's suggestions for new music to its users, the study's findings present important challenges and opportunities. This type of lifelong analysis of listening habits hasn’t been possible until recently, simply through the fact they haven’t been around for long enough until now.