Identification of the influential social processes on musical tastes

Sociomusicology (sociology of music) as a branch of art sociology aims at identifying the relationships between music and social structures. The main question faced by the sociologists of music is how the conditions of a given social system affect the dominant music style of a culture or the subculture of a group and how the public tendencies for a specific music style affect a social system and its features. To answer these two and other issues such as the relationships between social distribution of cultural consumption tastes, social distinction in cultural consumption, determining the shaping of cultural tastes and consumption with the purpose of differentiation and demonstration of class borders, one faces two prominent theories; on one hand the proponents of Bourdieu's theory believe that the higher social classes possess a sublime musical taste and individuals of lower social and economic status listen to genres of little value and on the other hand the advocates of Peterson believe that the taste of higher social classes is mixed while the taste of the lower social classes is one-dimensional. The related literature has presented various and at times contradictory results in confirming or refuting the claims of the aforementioned theories. Given the special conditions of Iranian society and its religious and traditional texture on one hand and the spread of media technologies and easier access to musical sources, etc. on the other hand, the current qualitative research aimed at identifying other possibly significant factors. The goal of this research was to investigate the music consumption patterns amongst students of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad and the social factors affecting their musical tastes. Applying qualitative methods, it was of interest to closely study the effect of various cultural and social contexts and the role of agency in dealing with them. The applied method in this study was in-depth interview for studying the musical taste of eleven students who were fans of one of the major music styles like classical, traditional Iranian music, pop, rock and rap. The findings of this research indicate that although the theories of music taste were in some cases reconfirmed, it seems that in Iranian society other factors are also at play affecting individuals' tastes. They include reference groups, an individual's favorite musical instrument, peers, visual effects (the attractiveness of the music videos), personality of the singer and musical knowledge, music as a tool to express identity, music as a tool to express resistance and protest, ethical judgments, religious judgments, getting affected by collective feelings, ethnic orientation, recall of memories, impact of environment and environmental sounds. According to the present study, it can be claimed that if taste is a tool for social differentiation, such differentiation does not only show itself in social differentiation. Sometimes, individuals use their musical taste as a tool to express their privileged social identities. The identity of a protesting individual or attached to a certain ethnic group is best reflected in their musical taste. In this case, music is not a medium of excellence demonstration or avoidance of social inferiority, but a means to self-expression. This research belongs to sociological studies on musical activity and music consumption and lies within cultural sociology.