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arXiv · 2506.13199

Do Music Preferences Reflect Cultural Values? A Cross-National Analysis Using Music Embedding and World Values Survey

Yongjae Kim·Seongchan Park
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Abstract

This study explores the extent to which national music preferences reflect underlying cultural values. We collected long-term popular music data from YouTube Music Charts across 62 countries, encompassing both Western and non-Western regions, and extracted audio embeddings using the CLAP model. To complement these quantitative representations, we generated semantic captions for each track using LP-MusicCaps and GPT-based summarization. Countries were clustered based on contrastive embeddings that highlight deviations from global musical norms. The resulting clusters were projected into a two-dimensional space via t-SNE for visualization and evaluated against cultural zones defined by the World Values Survey (WVS). Statistical analyses, including MANOVA and chi-squared tests, confirmed that music-based clusters exhibit significant alignment with established cultural groupings. Furthermore, residual analysis revealed consistent patterns of overrepresentation, suggesting non-random associations between specific clusters and cultural zones. These findings indicate that national-level music preferences encode meaningful cultural signals and can serve as a proxy for understanding global cultural boundaries.

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Yongjae Kim, Seongchan Park. 2025-06-16. Do Music Preferences Reflect Cultural Values? A Cross-National Analysis Using Music Embedding and World Values Survey. https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.13199

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