alt Hacker NewsI've read a paper which had a similar theory - music is a reward hack for the brain - the brain is a prediction machine, and it gets rewarded when it correctly predicts stuff. Music is highly predictable due to it's rhythmic mathematical structure, thus very easy to predict, with a lot of content to predict (hundreds of events per minute) thus you get a lot of reward from it.
As an example, EDM music is highly predictable, and highly popular.
African tribal drum music is also highly predictable, while also being complex in poly-rhythmic ways.
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> and it gets rewarded when it correctly predicts stuff.
Yet it's way more fun if the music evolves and takes twists you don't expected. I actually get quite aggressive from to predictable music, basically most modern pop music, but I guess that's highly subjective. For me good music must be intellectual exhaustive.
And then there is whatever copulation the Jazz players are doing with their saxophones.
Interesting. I think there is a relationship to expectations/predictability but we also enjoy subversion of those expectations like syncopation in a second verse or bridges, etc.