Knowledge of the music preferences of pupils and students is an extremely important factor in the planning of the music education curriculum. The aim of this study is to examine students’ preferences for popular music in the original version and the version with the changed tonality with respect to age/year of study, type of secondary school completed, the field of study (social sciences and humanities or natural sciences) and the knowledge of music. A survey was carried out on a sample of 260 participants – students from the University of Split Faculty of Philosophy, Faculty of Science, Department of Forensic Sciences, Department of Marine Studies and Department for Mediterranean Agriculture. For the survey, a two-part questionnaire was designed. The first part of the questionnaire contained questions relating to the socio-demographic characteristics of respondents and the second part was a questionnaire to survey the music preferences of students. For the purposes of the study, a musical sound carrier consisting of ten 30-second fragments of music was constructed, containing five fragments of original versions of popular music and five fragments of popular music with changed tonality. The results of the study confirmed that students generally show greater preference for original versions of popular music compared to variants with changed tonality. Furthermore, completed secondary education has proven to be an important predictor of the preference for original versions of popular songs, with the field of study, the year of study and the knowledge of music being significant predictors of the preference for original versions of popular music and their variants with the changed tonality. The results obtained have significant musical and pedagogical implications, in terms of planning of the music education curriculum, but also musical-psychological implications, in terms of consideration of the different variables that influence musical preferences.