Perceptual pleasure and its concomitant hedonic value play an essential role in everyday life, motivating behavior and thus influencing how individuals choose to spend their time and resources. However, how pleasure arises from perception of sensory information remains relatively poorly understood. In particular, research has neglected the question of how perceptual representations mediate the relationships between stimulus properties and liking (e.g., stimulus symmetry can only affect liking if it is perceived). The present research addresses this gap for the first time, analyzing perceptual and liking ratings of 96 nonmusicians (power of 0.99) and finding that perceptual representations mediate effects of feature‐based and information‐based stimulus properties on liking for a novel set of melodies varying in balance, contour, symmetry, or complexity. Moreover, variability due to individual differences and stimuli accounts for most of the variance in liking. These results have broad implications for psychological research on sensory valuation, advocating a more explicit account of random variability and the mediating role of perceptual representations of stimulus properties. Appreciation relies on perceiving sensory information. Ninety‐six nonmusicians rated the balance, contour, symmetry, complexity, unpredictability, and liking for a novel set of musical stimuli. Structural equation modeling (SEM) revealed that perceptual representations mediate the impact of stimulus properties on liking, with substantial variability between and within participants and stimuli. These findings underscore the importance of this neglected relationship and individual differences in understanding the psychological mechanisms of sensory evaluation.