Gendered scrobbling: Listening behaviour of young adults on Last.fm

Combining insights from the psychology and sociology of music, this article addresses the extent to which the listening behaviour of young adults differs between men and women with regard to (1) preferred music genres, (2) gender of music acts and (3) omnivorousness. Drawing on innovative data from the music-based social networking site Last.fm, the analyses show that young females listen more often to 'softer' and more mainstream music genres, to female acts and to a wider range of genres than males. Furthermore, by looking into actual listening behaviour and user-generated genre classifications - instead of self-reported preferences - this study contributes to research on gender stratification in music taste, showing that within male-dominated genres young women have carved out particular feminized niches, that women's pro-female bias is stronger within male-dominated music genres and that the gender difference in omnivorousness disappears when we examine only respondents' favourite music genres.