Most folks in the states know that Democrats are by and large young, city folks. Republicans are older people who live in rural areas (fly-over country). So it's not very surprising that Republicans like country music and Democrats like younger pop music.
Two things stuck out. One, that Pink Floyd listeners trend Replubican! Who knew? Second, that Democrats have a much more diverse taste in music than Republicans (not news, probably, but interesting).
I'd have accepted the beatles-ish even split, since everyone likes Pink Floyd and the Beatles even though both are very counter-culture. But leaning Republican is just plain weird for the band that made "Us and Them", "Another brick in the wall", "Have a cigar", etc.
Of course, any band with enough albums is likely to have both conservative and liberal-leaning songs. Even the Beatles - a song like 'Taxman' isn't exactly liberal.
I do really think that once we get better at "artist evolvement" (separating Pink Floyd into two or three separate artists as they had very distinct phases) the PF signifier will drop. I only listen to Syd and "It Would Be So Nice" era PF and definitely am not a Romney booster.
> Artists whose fans are most correlated to Democrat
I'm French. I have never heard of the first eight artists listed as Republican friendly; I know and am familiar with most artists in the Democrat list (all but two).
Do "Republican artists" target something very American that doesn't appeal to an international audience?
I would guess this "music analysis" is in fact a proxy for other predictors such as location (inland / coastal regions) and age, no?
And there's a natural alignment between country music and conservatism: both celebrate certain attitudes epitomized by the cowboy persona (strong, independent, hard working, etc.) while simultaneously trying to forget that those pesky intellectuals, liberals, foreigners, and minorities even exist. In case you think that last comment is unfair take a quick peek at the white/black ratio of those top 10 artists: 10/0 for Republican, 4/6 for Democrat.
Unsurprisingly, country music finds most of its popularity in the US, Canada, and Australia. Interestingly, however, there has been a country music festival in France for over 20 years, Country Rendez-Vous. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_music#Other_internation...
Meh... as much as I don't care for a lot of what passes for "conservatism" these days, one has to be fair and say that being conservative doesn't preclude you from being an intellectual, a foreigner, or a minority. Yes, the stereotype is that intellectuals lean left, and that minorities lean left, but it's hardly that black and white (no pun intended).
[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Big-Sort-Clustering-Like-Minded/dp...
It's not an article about politics. It's an article about binary classifiers.
Music demographics data is fascinating!
For example, Paul van Dyk, Three Drives, and Ferry Corsten all have "IT Specialist / Programmer" as highly over-represented (wow!).
In addition, Tiësto (had to look up Tiesto) shows that advertising does in fact, work! ... 92% of the listeners on Grooveshark uses Windows Live Spaces.
He was hired by Microsoft to sell Vista to the Dutch market: http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/04/15/music-tiesto-dc-id...
Good find! :)
In any given election in the US you have about 40% of the general population who votes Democrat always, 40% who vote Republican always and 20% who decide the election results. Even the massive landslides of Reagan in 84 and Nixon in 72 didn't go more than about 60-40.
Politics on a mass scale is so predictable that maps are produced of political leanings that are used for redistricting.
A lot of these same factors can be used to predict music tastes. Age and where you grew up are probably the two biggest. So don't make the mistake that many in the press often do and mistake this for causation for correlation. Correlation isn't surprising given the common factors.
Hmm... I'm a huge metal fan myself, and very much an anarcho-capitalist / libertarian / voluntaryist / $whatever_term_you_prefer. But, to be honest, I haven't really noticed much correlation between a preference for metal, and 3rd party political affiliation, at least among my metal loving friends. If anything, I'd say that metalheads perhaps run towards "politically apathetic / don't care" more than other groups. But that's a pretty subjective and totally non-scientific observation.
"I found it neat these non-predictive artists were mainly metal. Perhaps the genre that can finally bring this divided country together or break the lock on the two party system."
then it's a small bit of inference to think that they are suggesting metal fans are more likely to go for something other than the two incumbent parties.
Anyway, I'm generalizing a bit here. It's not always necessary to reply only to the conclusions than the authors of an article explicitly drew.
Indeed. The saying attributed to Winston Churchill (he didn't actually say it)
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/List_of_misquotations
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill#Misattributed
"Show me a young Conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains." is a familiar statement that people change their political opinions over the course of life. I might add that most observers of politics in the United States think neither "conservative" nor "liberal" are useful terms for describing where people fit in United States politics.
For the record, my radio presets in my car are to "classic rock" stations (of which there are usually at least two at any one time in my town) and most of the music I rip to my computer is similarly music that was top-airplay pop music for the Baby Boom. When the Baby Boomers were young, that was probably considered somewhat radical, antiestablishment music, but I've been surprised at how many of my contemporaries have grown up into middle-aged people who might be characterized as "conservative" politically active voters today, while keeping the same musical tastes.
It's worth pointing out that the artists listed in the red box do actually have younger fans (Kenny Chesney, Jason Aldean, Blake Shelton).
Surprised to see no mention of Radiohead...
...why do YOU know so many people that "like all music but rap and country"? We're well-to-do, educated, white boys.
