Use The Right Music - A quantitative study of how Popular and Up-and-Coming music can affect the perception of a brand

Abstract: The use of music in commercials has often been an aid in order to make customers experience the brand more positively. What have not been fully investigated are the different uses of hit list music, Popular music, and the so-called Up-and-Coming music, music that has not yet reached the hit lists. An experimental study with 392 respondents using Spotify's streaming service, investigates how brands are evaluated depending on which music is played and how congruent the brand is to that music. The results indicate that it does not matter what type of music is being played, as long as the listener likes it, and it is only when the music is liked that the listener evaluate the brand perception as more favorable.