Social Capital and Music Discovery: An Examination of the Ties through Which Late Adolescents Discover New Music

Research on everyday life information seeking has demonstrated that people often relied on other people to obtain the information they need. Weak ties (i.e., acquaintances) were found to be particularly instrumental to get new information. This study employed social network analysis to examine the characteristics of the ties through which late adolescents (15-17 years old) discover new music. In-depth interviews with 19 adolescents were conducted, which generated a sample of 334 ties. A statistical analysis of the ties showed that these adolescents relied mostly on strong ties to expand their music repertoire, that is, on people to which they felt very close and with whom they had frequent contacts. These ties were predominantly homophilous in terms of age, gender and musical taste. It was also found that parents were more likely than friends or other types of kins to be instrumental for music discovery. These findings suggest that a better knowledge of the characteristics of the ties through which people discover new music could provide useful insights for the design of recommender systems that include social networking features.