Is memory for music special?

Although psychologists since Hermann Ebbinghaus have studied memory, research in this area has focused on visual and verbal stimuli with little attention paid to music. This bias is surprising because of the ubiquity of music in human cultures across history as well as current cultural beliefs that memory for music is "special." This paper examines the question of whether memory for music is special by addressing two related questions: First, do cultural beliefs about the mnemonic power of music stand up to empirical test? Second, can theories designed to explain memory for non-musical stimuli be applied to musical stimuli? A review of the literature suggests that music is special in some circumstances but not others and that some theories designed to explain cognitive processing of linguistic stimuli apply reasonably well to musical stimuli. Thus, although the question of whether memory for music is special remains open, the unique structure of musical stimuli strongly suggests that memory for music is indeed special.