Musical preferences are short-term liking assessments which form under the influence of various factors, where music teaching has an important place when it comes to directing them. The theoretical part of this thesis deals with a review of researches which offers former findings in directing musical preferences. Through research, which is realized with the aim of assessing students’ musical preferences towards artistic and popular music, as well as the influence of familiarity of a musical example on students’ musical preferences, the attempt is to determine current musical preferences of students of the fourth and eighth grades in elementary schools. The results of the research indicate that most of the students prefer popular music. The students of the fourth grade like all of the musical examples played in the research significantly more, as opposed to the students of the eighth grade. Taking gender into the account, there is no difference when it comes to recognizing musical examples. What is more, both boys and girls manage to recognize the examples equally. There are no differences when it comes to recognizing musical examples considering gender. In other words, boys and girls manage to recognize said musical examples equally successfully. When it comes to recognizing musical examples according to age, there is a difference with the composition John Cage: Amores, which is more recognized with the students of the fourth grade, as opposed to the students of the eighth grade. Considering the research results, the contribution of this thesis is crucial in indicating the importance of music teaching in directing musical preferences, as well as the need for greater implementation of popular music in teaching music culture.