Music classification, genres, and taste patterns: A ground-up network analysis on the clustering of artist preferences

This article reflects on the use of predetermined genre lists to measure patterns in music taste and, more specifically, cultural omnivorousness. The use of a predetermined array of genres assumes that music genres are rigid and stable concepts, whereas in reality genre boundaries continually emerge, evolve, and disappear. Inspired by Lamont’s (2010) call to study classification systems ‘from the ground up’, we present an alternative strategy to measure patterns of music taste using an open question about artist preferences. We build a two-mode network of artists and respondents to identify clusters of respondents that have similar relationships to the same set of artists. Our results show that research using measurements of cultural omnivorousness based on genre preferences might be hampered, as it misses important subdivisions within genres and is not able to capture respondents who combine specific aspects within and across music genres.