Passmore, SamWood, Anna L.C.Barbieri, ChiaraShilton, DorDaikoku, HideoAtkinson, Quentin D.Savage, Patrick E.2025-05-302025-05-302041-1723PubMed:38729968WOS:001221549300052ORCID:/0000-0002-5302-356X/work/168232444http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85192877401&partnerID=8YFLogxKhttps://hdl.handle.net/1885/733755096Music is a universal yet diverse cultural trait transmitted between generations. The extent to which global musical diversity traces cultural and demographic history, however, is unresolved. Using a global musical dataset of 5242 songs from 719 societies, we identify five axes of musical diversity and show that music contains geographical and historical structures analogous to linguistic and genetic diversity. After creating a matched dataset of musical, genetic, and linguistic data spanning 121 societies containing 981 songs, 1296 individual genetic profiles, and 121 languages, we show that global musical similarities are only weakly and inconsistently related to linguistic or genetic histories, with some regional exceptions such as within Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Our results suggest that global musical traditions are largely distinct from some non-musical aspects of human history.We thank all the individuals and researchers who previously contributed and curated the genetic, musical, and linguistic data. We thank Alan Lomax, Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Victor Grauer, Steven Brown, Sarah Tishkoff, Floyd Reed, and Armand Leroi for inspiration and discussion about comparing global patterns of musical and genetic diversity. We thank Russell Gray, Shinya Fujii, and members of the CompMusic Lab, NeuroMusic Lab, and Language, Culture, and Cognition Lab for feedback on earlier versions of the manuscript. The Global Jukebox has been developed with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Concordia Foundation, the Rock Foundation, and Odyssey Productions. SP, HD, and PES are supported by funding from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (Grant-in-Aid #19KK0064); the Yamaha corporation; and grants from Keio University (Keio Global Research Institute and Keio Academic Development Fund). SP is also supported by the Evolution of Cultural Diversity Initiative at the Australian National University. PES is also supported by the Royal Society Te Aparangi (Rutherford Discovery Fellowship RDF-UOA2202 and Marsden Fast-Start Grant MFP-UOA2236). CB was supported by the University Research Priority Programme of Evolution in Action of the University of Zurich, the NCCR Evolving Language, the Swiss National Science Foundation Agreement (#51NF40_180888), and the SNSF Sinergia project 'Out of Asia' (183578). Article Processing Charges are supported by the University of Auckland Faculty of Science Open Access High Impact Publication Fund. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.12enPublisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2024.ReconstructionCultural-evolutionUniversalsLanguageLightBiologyPackageExpansionReveal2024-05-1010.1038/s41467-024-48113-785192877401