Music Listening Culture and Musical Preferences of Students in Final Grades of Primary General Education and Music School

Musical preferences serve adolescents as an indicator of social identity and contribute to a sense of belonging to a particular peer group, which is of great importance at that age. Within the framework of this paper, research was conducted with the aim of determining the differences in musical preferences and culture of listening to music between two groups of students; in final grades of primary general education schools and music schools. The online survey, which took place in 2020 and 2021, included 200 students in final grades of primary general education and music schools from five Croatian counties. The research results showed the following: music school students prefer art and pop music and general school students prefer rock and turbo-folk music; the vast majority of students listen to music passively and daily; one-third of music school students and the vast majority of general school students do not attend classical music concerts, while they go to popular music concerts in equal proportions; almost all students stated that the popularity of a song does not affect their musical preferences.