our research question

Illustration of a person on a ladder using large building blocks

How does album cover art influence the expectations of music content?

Hypothesis
If shown an album cover that aligns visually with the content of the music, people's expectations will be more closely met. If shown an album cover that is not visually aligned with the content of the music, people's expectations will not be closely met.

the papers we used to back our research

Research paper 1

The taste of typograhy in different countries

‍Carlos Velasco, Andy T. Woods, Xiaoang Wan,
César Bernal-Torres, Alejandro Salgado-Montejo, Adrian D. Cheok, Charles Spence.
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Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts© 2017 American Psychological Association2018, Vol. 12, No. 2, 236–248
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link to paper

Research paper 2

Does the typeface on album cover art influence the expectations and perception of music?

Tara Venkatesan, Qian Janice Wang, and Charles Spence.

Online First Publication, August 27, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/aca0000330
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link to paper

the research methods we used

To measure people's expectations of music content based on album cover art, we created a survey with four control groups.

Based on the research papers in our literature review, we created a "happy" album cover design (bright colors, rounded shapes and typeface) and a "sad" cover design (muted colors and angular typeface). We also chose a "happy" music clip, and "sad" music clip.

Then, we displayed the album artwork and asked our participants to rate their expectations of the music content using a scale of 1-5 (e.g. 1 being feminine and 5 being masculine) based on the criteria to the right.

Once the participants rated their expectations of the music content based on the album cover art, then they listened to a short music clip in the next section of the survey. After hearing the music clip, we asked them to rate the accuracy of their expectations on a scale of 1-5 (1 being not accurate at all, 5 being accurate) based on the same criteria.

Expectation Criteria:

Feminine vs. Masculine
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Slow vs. Fast
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Smooth vs. Rough
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Happy vs. Sad
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Innocent vs. Explicit
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Gentle vs. Violent
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Calm vs. Excited
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happy cover — happy song
‍https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCTDAI4s7hw

In control groups A & B, we aligned the album artwork congruently with the music content.

Group A - Displayed a "happy" cover with a "happy" song.
Group B - Displayed a "sad" cover with a "sad" song.

We hypothesized that aligning the album artwork with the mood of the song would result in people's expectation of the music content being met more accurately.

sad cover — sad song
‍https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEXT8z1XXDY

In control groups C & D, we aligned the album artwork incongruently with the music content.

Group C - Displayed a "happy" cover with a "sad" song.
Group D - Displayed a "sad" cover with a "happy" song.

We hypothesized that misaligning the album artwork with the mood of the song would result in people's expectation of the music content being met inaccurately.

what we found out — results

Participants in group A and group C both saw the happy cover and rated the happiness of it equally.
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Participants from group D rated the sad cover more violent that participants from group B.
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Participants who saw the happy cover DID NOT expect the sad song to be so slow.

Participants are significantly less accurate about the happiness and sadness of a song when the album art DID NOT match with the song.

Participants are significantly less accurate about the femininity and masculinity of a song when the album art DID NOT match with the song.

Participants are significantly less accurate about the calmness and excitement level of a song when the album art DID NOT match with the song.

discussion and conclusion

Did it meet our expectations?

Yes, we met our hypothesis because our test proves that the album cover influences expectations of the music content. When the cover did not match the music, the participants' expectations were not as accurate.

We can confirm that the album artwork should be aligned with the type of music it represents to more accurately influence the expectations of music content.

We also know that the album can have different songs on it that do not match the cover art, which influences expectations of music to be met less accurately. To further explore this, the next step would be to test the same album covers, but with a larger range of songs.

How to improve / what to do next time?
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Not all the groups had equal distribution of respondents or had enough sample size to be strong enough populations.

Have a test point in person on a public location where we can get more control on the amount of people in each group. Or, use a more robust survey tool that forces an even distribution of respondents between control groups.

Some people complained that it was hard for them to remember their previous answers when rating the accuracy of their expectations – use a better survey tool that makes it easier for them to compare answers.