"Lover" or "traitor": Comparing playlists curated for love-related contexts

Extending the work of Krause and North (2014) on contextual listening, the present research considered whether there would be differences in the music selected for playlists concerning two loverelated contexts, “romance” and “break-up”. Specifically, it was hypothesised that the preferred music would (1) be characterized by adjectives signifying the broader situation, (2) differ in terms of Mehrabian and Russell’s (1974) Pleasure-Arousal-Dominance (PAD) dimensions, and that (3) there may be differences in how similar participants think their playlist is to that made by others for the same situation. Based on previous work regarding differences in cultural context of popular love songs (Cachia & Tsai, 2021), an additional research question concerned whether there would be cultural differences. Participants (N = 479), residing in Australia, Singapore, and the United States) completed an online survey, in which they were asked demographic questions, to describe their song choices for each playlist using Krause and North’s (2014) measure, and to characterise each situation via Mehrabian and Russell’s (1974) PAD measure. Data analysis is currently underway. Implications of this study concern improved recommendation algorithms for playlists designed for the public, based on preferred listening choices