Music education in the digital age: Challenges associated with sound homogenization in music aimed at adolescents

Abstract

Adolescent music preferences revolve around so-called popular music, specifically that which is highly manipulated by audio and music production technologies and aimed at the mass market. These processes can result in music genres that lean toward sound homogenization, a phenomenon that could gradually restrict adolescents’ access to the acoustic richness of other music styles that have emerged throughout history. The objective of this work was to analyze the music genres favored by a sample of Spanish adolescents ( n = 464), based on their acoustic qualities (timbre, rhythm, and dynamics). The results of the automatic analysis indicated a great deal of overlap in terms of sound, which corroborated the homogeneous character of the genres. This calls for an approach to secondary music education that helps preserve musical richness and stylistic variety in the classroom.