Exploring the longitudinal effects of nudging on users’ music genre exploration behavior and listening preferences

Previous studies on exploration have shown that users can be nudged to explore further away from their current preferences. However, these effects were shown in a single session study, while it often takes time to explore new tastes and develop new preferences. In this work, we present a longitudinal study on users’ exploration behavior and behavior change over time after they have used a music genre exploration tool for four sessions in six weeks. We test two relevant nudges to help them explore more: the starting point (the personalization of the default initial playlist) and the visualization of users’ previous position(s). Our results show that the personalization level of the default initial playlist in the first session influences the preferred personalization level users set in the second session but fades away in later sessions as users start exploring in different directions. Visualization of users’ previous positions did not anchor users to stay closer to the initial defaults. Over time, users perceived the playlist to be more personalized to their tastes and helpful to explore the genre. Perceived helpfulness increased more when users explored further away from their current preferences. Apart from differences in self-reported measures, we also find some objective evidence for preference change in users’ top tracks from their Spotify profile, that over the period of 6 weeks moved somewhat closer to the genre that users selected to explore with the tool.