Setting the Stage: Enhancing Music Recommendations with Spoken Introductions to Stimulate Serendipity

Abstract

People like to keep their music listening fresh and interesting, but recommender systems often struggle to support this need. Even when a recommended song is potentially refreshing and enriching, listeners may not perceive it as such. Building on Silvia's appraisal theory of interest, this paper studies whether enhancing recommendations with spoken introductions, immersive or informative, can stimulate two distinct flavors of experienced serendipity: taste-broadening (sparking interest in music outside one's typical preferences) and taste-deepening (deepening interest in music within one's typical preferences). Results from a large-scale user study show that both introduction types stimulate taste-broadening and taste-deepening serendipity. Taste-broadening is most effectively stimulated through transportation (absorption in a narrative world), whereas taste-deepening is most effectively stimulated through cognitive elaboration (learning something new about the artist or the social context in which the music emerged). We discuss how these findings could be translated into practice through curated taste-broadening playlists, where both introduction types appear promising, and taste-deepening playlists, where informative introductions seem particularly effective.