Secret Music

YouGov
March 11, 2011, 7:08 PM GMT+0

Seventeen percent of the population has a type of music they secretly enjoy but won’t admit to listening to. Women are more likely to conceal a secret listening habit than men.

Pop music is by far the most popular music taste that people won’t own up to, with men particularly harboring a furtive passion for pop. 43 percent of male and 35 percent of female secret listeners were quietly indulging their secret pop passion.

Women seem to have a wide range of secret musical passions. A quarter of women who enjoyed music they weren’t prepared to admit to, were secret hip-hop fans, 24 percent were getting clandestine fixes of country and another 21% didn’t want the world to know they were musical fanatics.

Secret music passions are generational. The 16-34s who had secret music habits were generally hiding a love of pop and hip-hop. Those who were 55+ didn’t mind who knew they listened to opera but a third of them were not admitting their passion for folk music to anybody.