Intercultural Changes in Music Tastes of Iranian Adult Population: The Role of New Technologies, Media Convergence, and Globalization

Abstract

Music consumption, as an important form of cultural consumption in the daily lives of Iranians, has been the subject of political focus before and after the Revolution, 1979. During past decade, high penetration of information and communication technologies, specifically convergence as well as globalization of various media, has affected the rate of use and preferred content choices. Specially, the development of satellite television channels and the use of smartphones, have shifted the way Iranians listen or watch domestic/foreign music, thus, changing the place of music in the cultural rearticulation of Iranian society and people. While most previous studies have focused on domestic factors in their analysis of current changes rather than intercultural and global issues, this study attempts to focus on the role of latter factors to identify why and how music consumption has undergone rapid and dramatic shifts in Iran. By addressing the gap, this paper represents a close look at Iranian music tastes using quantitative data collected during a survey of 3400 adult respondents aged between 18 to 60. The findings show that like most of other countries, diverse genres of music are popular in Iran but Iranian classic music and pop music are more popular than other genres. Iranian music is more popular to Iranians than foreign music tracks & Iranian traditional music and integrated music (Iranianan classic music integrated to pop music) are very popular in Iran.