Duration, song section, entropy: Suggestions for a model of rapid music recognition processes

In an online study, N = 517 participants rated 48 very short musical stimuli comprised of well-known pop songs with regard to arrangement parameters and cross-modal variables. Identification rates for songs and artists ranged between 0-7%. We observed associations between increasing stimulus durations as well as structural sections (chorus or verse) and detection rates. Analyses of the cross-modal variables revealed a main factor, representing the perceived ‘orderliness' of a plink as a strong predictor for title recognition. When psychoacoustic low-level features were entered, Spectral Entropy became the main predictor. The presence of a singing voice additionally seemed to facilitate recognition processes.