Musical preferences in EUrope and in ROmania

 

Inscop Research conducted research on the musical preferences of Romanians in 2013 and 2023. At European level, the most recent data on musical tastes were published by Eurostat in a barometer from 2002. Later, Eurostat data no longer included research on preferred genres, but only indices of consumption and participation in music events, downloads, streaming, other forms of music consumption in public or private space. Several research institutes in several European countries have published more recent studies, but these are not carried out at European level, but only in a few countries, or do not include all the phenomena related to music consumption, but only some of its aspects (e.g. consumption online, where studies indicate the emergence of an omnivorous public, represented especially by young people, who consume all genres of music, without having clear preferences).

Note: The categories tested in the studies carried out in Romania are only partially consistent with those in the Eurostat barometer. For details, see the asterisks in the infographic.

Who prefers classical music?

With a European average of one in three, classical music has very good audience shares, far above the common perception that indicates a dramatic decline in its popularity. The countries where classical genres have the highest audience indices are Luxembourg (45.8), Sweden (41.3) and Great Britain (then in the EU – 40.9). In Romania, classical music registered a remarkable growth in the period 2013-2023, from 22 to 28%.

The rock audience has decreased by 3 percent in 10 years, from 19.5 to 16.5%.

The Romanian study measured rock and pop audiences separately, unlike the European study, which integrated the two categories. As a result, the audience figure for the two studies cannot be truly compared.

At the European level, most respondents declared that they listen to rock and pop with the greatest frequency. The European average was 55%. Denmark (69.9%), France (69.1%) and Belgium (64.8%) were the countries with the most pop-rock listeners. The lowest percentage was in Greece – 24.1%.

Traditional music

The popularity of popular music, although declining, still remains well above the European average. But there are (or were) countries where traditional music had much higher shares than in Romania: in Portugal and Greece almost two thirds of the audience. These countries were followed in the Eurostat research by Austria, with a share of 44%, below that of Romania. It should also be noted that, as far as traditional music is concerned, there are very large differences even within the same country. In Germany, for example, in the New Lands (Brandenburg-Saxony area) it had a favorability of 44%, well above the national average.

see the article in CULTURA (ro)

Nicu Ilie Blog - Infographies