Social Differentiation in Musical Taste Patterns

In this article, we investigate patterns of musical taste using a large sample from the Dutch population. It is found that members from higher-status groups tend to be more omnivorous (that is, they like more different musical genres) than those from lower-status groups, which is in line with Peterson's (1992; Peterson & Simkus 1992) hypothesis. The actual difference is, however, rather small and occurs only with regard to the number of genres that respondents like at least "more or less," not with regard to their favorite genres. In order to discover the combinatorial logic by which musical genres are clustered into specific taste patterns, a factor model is estimated. The results indicate that musical genres can be structured on the basis of three basic "discourses" (highbrow, pop, folk). The so-called omnivores comprise a specific fraction of the higher-status groups known as the new middle class, whose tastes combine a set of genres related to all these discourses.