Why does song order matter? A doctoral dissertation by Pedro Alcantara Senra Oliveira Neto at the University of Jyväskylä examined how professional musicians sequence songs and how song order influences listeners’ experience of music.

Sequencing is important for many of the things that we do in life. Whether cooking, performing a scientific experiment or doing a workout routine, we often follow an ordered list of actions that must be performed to achieve our goals. The study analyzed how professional musicians decide the order in which their songs are presented to the listener, as well as the effect that different song sequences have on the listener.

The research combined a computational analysis of 50,000 released music albums with interviews of more than 100 professional musicians. Several interesting statistical patterns remained consistent throughout the studies. For instance, musicians tend to open and close their albums with energetic and positive-sounding music.

Listeners’ perceptions change depending on what they heard before

The dissertation also included a psychological study with around 250 participants. The results showed that the perception of a song depends on what was heard just before it.

“If a song is very energetic, the next song you listen to tends to be perceived as slightly quieter. Overall, we provide the first robust evidence that sequencing is relevant to professional musicians, as well as to the way that music is experienced by the listeners,” Neto comments.

In the age of technology, these findings may be used to inform music-recommendation algorithms and automated DJ systems. Artistically, the findings are relevant to musicians, producers, and artists who, in one way or another, must decide how a set of musical pieces is presented to their audience.

“Scientifically, our findings provide new insights into how musicians decide the order of songs, as well as the psychological and perceptual effects that may influence their decisions,” Neto says.

The findings are presented in Pedro Neto’s doctoral dissertation in musicology, publicly examined at the University of Jyväskylä on 19 September 2026.
The whole study: https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-86-1771-6