The Whole is Not Different From its Parts

Music psychology has a long history, but the question of whether brief music excerpts are representative of whole songs has been largely unaddressed. Here, we explore whether preference and familiarity ratings in response to excerpts are predictive of these ratings in response to whole songs. We asked 643 participants to judge 3,120 excerpts of varying durations taken from different sections of 260 songs from a broad range of genres and time periods in terms of preference and familiarity. We found that within the range of durations commonly used in music research, responses to excerpts are strongly predictive of whole song affect and cognition, with only minor effects of duration and location within the song. We concluded that preference and familiarity ratings in response to brief music excerpts are representative of the responses to whole songs. Even the shortest excerpt duration that is commonly used in research yields preference and familiarity ratings that are close to those for whole songs, suggesting that listeners are able to rapidly and reliably ascertain recognition as well as preference and familiarity ratings of whole songs.