Our new paper on the effect of repetition in music is finally out. This has been a great joy to work with Lucas Parra and Elizabeth Margulis, merging the knowledge from music cognition, neuroscience and data science.
As a musical piece is repeated the listener’s “neural engagement” decreases for pieced that are composed in a familiar style, but pieces of unfamiliar style keeps the listener engaged. This effect is most pronounced for listeners that have some musical training. Musicians also seem to be significantly more engaged with the classical pieces than with non-musicians.