Existing research on the effects of background music on learning remains controversial, potentially due to differences in learner characteristics. This study investigated the effects of popular background music on college students’ leisure reading in the digital age, with a focus on learners’ prior knowledge and music familiarity. Two experiments were conducted with university students as participants. Experiment 1 found that the addition of background music delayed learners’ initial attention to the titles, reduced effective reading speed and reading comprehension rates, and impaired both retention and transfer test performance. Experiment 2 revealed that, compared to low prior-knowledge learners, high prior-knowledge learners perceived the reading material as less difficult, fixated on both the article title and body text faster, exhibited longer initial processing time, achieved higher effective reading speed, and demonstrated superior retention test performance. Additionally, the high music-familiarity groups showed faster reading speed, higher comprehension rates, and better retention test scores than the low-familiarity groups. These results demonstrate that even for contemporary university students accustomed to multitasking, popular background music exerts a detrimental effect on reading, particularly for learners with low prior knowledge or low familiarity with background music. This study provides novel empirical evidence for understanding how background music influences learning in digital contexts, offering critical implications for designing effective learning strategies in technology-mediated environments.
