Why Can an Ordinary Song Sound Better After a Few Plays?

A song may sound unremarkable the first time, yet a few days later you catch yourself humming it. That does not necessarily mean you have finally discovered its “true value”. Part of the change may come from the mere-exposure effect: on average, repeated encounters can make a neutral or slightly unfamiliar stimulus more likeable.

In his classic experiments, Robert Zajonc used stimuli such as nonsense words and Chinese-like symbols to control differences in content. Items shown more often tended to receive more positive ratings. Later studies and meta-analyses found the effect across varied materials. One possible explanation is processing fluency: familiar rhythms, timbres and melodic contours are easier for the brain to process, and that ease can sometimes be experienced as liking. Controlled experiments support a causal link between repeated exposure and changes in evaluation, but they do not show that every everyday case of “liking it more with each listen” has the same cause. We also replay songs we already like, while recommendation systems can increase both exposure and apparent preference.

Nor does repetition guarantee affection. If a stimulus is unpleasant at the outset, further exposure may not reverse the response; too much repetition can also produce boredom. The practical point is not to distrust all familiarity, but to ask, when judging a song, brand or viewpoint: do I value the thing itself, or has it simply become easier to enter? Familiarity can reduce strangeness, but it cannot replace quality or reasons.

https://cdn.isr.umich.edu/pubFiles/historicPublications/Theattitudinaleffects_2360_.PDF
https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000085
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7866445/