RNCM to conduct first study on ‘earworms’ in live music

Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) has been awarded funding from AHRC to conduct the first ever study into involuntary musical imagery – often known as earworms – in live music.

An earworm is a fragment of music that plays in a person’s mind without external stimulation – sometimes referred to as having a song ‘stuck’ in one’s head.

The project will be led by Dr Michelle Phillips, the RNCM’s assistant head of undergraduate programmes, and Dr Ioanna Filippidi, the new AHRC Creative Economies Engagement Fellow, in collaboration with Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall and the Science and Industry Museum.

Dr Phillips said: ‘Big data and live concert audiences are an exciting combination. Music is universal, and learning what makes it replay in our minds is important in furthering our knowledge of the role of music in our lives.

‘We hope to not only learn about musical earworms in live performance, but also to explore wider questions such as what makes music memorable, and how does our relationship with technology and the digital world influence our listening experience.’

Dr Filippidi said: I’m so pleased to be funded for this project and can’t wait to get started. I’ve been studying the topic for seven years now and there are still so many unexplored aspects of music and memory to delve into. I’m very grateful to the AHRC North West Consortium Doctoral Training Partnership and my hopes are that we will add another piece to the puzzle of the involuntary musical imagery experience.’

https://www.rncm.ac.uk/