How can you say you "LOVE MUSIC" when you dislike more music than you like?

I know there are obvious answers but wanted a space to discuss the limitations of connoisseurship and how it differs from appreciation or enthusiasm, and for ILXors to share their personal struggles.

Where do we stand on this currently? Do most ILXors dislike more music than they like, even?

This is something that's evolved and contiues to evolve for me, but that I haven't tracked too vigilantly. When I started on this journey I was fairly indiscriminate, though I gravitated more towards some things than others. From there I grew to be more selective and particular, then less. I think sort of maybe, as an oversimplification- I'll come back to this. But fatigue limits me and motivates my avoidance of music much more than connoiseurship these days.

The one constant I suppose has been that I've always purchased (or stolen) music in order to have the opportunity to hear something I've never heard before, and pretty seldom to have the opportunity to hear something again, or as often as I'd like. That's probably an obsolete way of thinking, at this point. Ultimately tho, I think thats what I look for, or at least relate to, in other "music people". Regardless what their preferences are, or whether they listen to a little music or a lot...

All of music:

Love 10%
Like 30%
Indifferent to 50%
Dislike 8%
Hate 2%

I limit the amount of stuff I listen to so that I can really get to know what I hear, but I am regularly trying to enlarge the scope of music I am familiar with.
For me, I listen to music I dislike just long enough to understand my antipathy and put it into words.

It's rare for me to dislike something immediately, but common to take a few listens to work out whether I love/like/am indifferent to it.

I think my deal on this site is that I listen to anything and I like most things and it has been work to get there

I think of "I don't like this type of thing, so I don't need to listen to this particular thing to be pretty sure I won't like it" as different from "I don't like this thing." I have the former thought a lot more than the latter. I read about a song, see a posted YouTube link, or whatever, and no longer feel the urge to click "just to see what the deal is" or "just to keep up." What's been a major breakthrough for me in the last few years is to shift my thinking from "this is bad" to "this is Not For Me."

The music that I love, I really love. I know because I can write a thousand words about it without breaking a sweat.

Percentage-wise, there is precious little music I actively dislike and the only genre my ears deem irredeemable is Broadway-style musicals. Everything else has the potential to be good, to varying degrees.

How can you say you "LOVE EVERYTHING" when you dislike more things than you like?

Percentage-wise, there is precious little music I actively dislike and the only genre my ears deem irredeemable is Broadway-style musicals. Everything else has the potential to be good, to varying degrees.

I struggle with that stuff as well, but it's a me problem more than anything.

I think a very small portion (<10%) of any genre is actually good. I don't hate the other 90%, I just try not to waste my time on it.

I love old movie musicals (just watched Greenwich Village with Carmen Miranda the other day) but I have no desire to listen to a soundtrack recording of it (if such a thing even exists.) But yeah Cole Porter, R&H etc. as sung by jazz or pop vocalists get a lot of play at my house.

"Shift my thinking from "this is bad" to "this is Not For Me" is exactly where I'm at. There are entire`genres of music that I rarely or never encounter, from opera to most current dance/house/rap to metal, and have no real need to explore.

I wish I could remember what metal album was playing when I visited Elysian Brewing in Seattle a few years ago though, it was great.

the more you love music, the more music you love

people who love the music I don't love, they don't love half the music I love

Good thread, good posts, don’t have much to add at this moment.

Except maybe

the more you love music, the more music you love

people who love the music I don't love, they don't love half the music I love

Oh wow, a little googling and I found that metal album! It was Windhand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziZ9w5OiyKo

Shift my thinking from "this is bad" to "this is Not For Me" is exactly where I'm at.

Same, but talking shit about music you struggle to get can be fun anyway, as long as the parties involved don't take themselves too seriously.

I saw this thread title and thought I had posted it and forgotten about it!
I consider most of my friends music-haters, not music-lovers, for this very reason. 90 percent of them rarely listen to much beyond white, guitar-oriented rock/pop/punk bands (bonus points if it's from the '80s). Most of them hate jazz, classical, reggae, blues, soul music, calypso, hip-hop (and lots more), as well as any music sung in a foreign tongue. And they all consider themselves music-lovers who disdain the mainstream. Aren't real music-lovers always searching for something more?

Aren't real music-lovers always searching for something more?

honing in on this part - i'd say no. i'm not sure what love is, but it doesn't mean always wanting something new, or more. i think a lot of people who love music are always searching for more, it's not like they're not correlated. but it's kind of like loving nature. some people are always traveling the world searching for new places they haven't seen, like a checklist. but there are also people who have a special spot, or a particular trail or river or whatever, and they are perfectly fine being there. that's love too.

life is like a river basically

and that's why it's ok that i'm listening to a love supreme for the millionth time this morning, even though i know i haven't heard so many other recordings, or even half of coltrane's own catalog

i don't think it's a good idea to think in terms of who "really" loves something. what does that mean? is there a threshold where i'm a real music lover, or where someone else is not? are there things that the real music lovers can do, once you've established membership? if so, like a cd mix club trade or something, i could see taking the steps necessary to first establish a zone of objective music love and then stepping within it. but otherwise - who cares? if someone ever told me i didn't love music, i would...? i don't even know what i would say. i think the reason i can't think of what to say is i've never considered the possibility of telling someone else they didn't love music, or caring about that, so i can't game out what the response would be. maybe it would be like "...what?"

i realize this post challenges the entire premise of ILoveX. but that is because i was raised in an ilm environment of challops

i think loving music, or anything, is defined by feeling love. that's it. if someone says they love music, they do. if someone says they're making art, they are. it's very difficult/pointless to start interrogating the deeply held feelings of someone else, even if the details and definitions of what they love don't exactly align with others

for example, i love baseball, but i think i love it in a way that is different from a lot of bros. i love the meta of baseball, and i love the statistical/probabilistic underpinnings of the game. some people love the big home runs, some people love the 7th inning stretch, other people love getting wasted and booing the other team's pitcher when they check the runner at first base. do any of us not truly love baseball? i watch/listen probably at least 120 of the games in a 162 season. my friend Dan gets obsessed about the Cardinals only on years where they are doing well and it's almost time for the playoffs. we both have a lot of fun at the games

More good posts.

i realize i'm getting way off the thread topic and also that i'm talking about baseball. sorry lol!

I was thinking yesterday about how ILM has become pretty barren to me over the past year or so. Trying to avoid poutily declaring that "ILM suxxor now" as an indefensible "objective" opinion, I wondered whether this frame makes sense for others: some people tend to love music--to use this thread's premise--intensively and others extensively, which I think matches your nature analogy Karl.

They're not mutually exclusive, and I think they can function as much as moods as something as strong as a tendency or mindset. You could be intensive in certain situations--e.g., hanging out with a friend and talking about an artist you both have liked for ages--but my preference for message borad posting is strongly extensive in a way that doesn't entirely reflect my whole music fan person.

But I was trying to figure out why scrolling through ILM new answers looked so bleak to me (apart from the general attrition of posters around here, which I think is objectively a bummer), and I realized that my kneejerk "ILM has given up on new music" explanation wasn't adequate or fair.

Is the problem that people aren't talking about the music you like, they dislike the music you like, or you aren't being introduced to stuff you might like?

Xpost — I'm not saying that people who call themselves music-lovers don't actually love the music they listen to. I have a friend whose love for The Replacements I suspect is even deeper than mine, but he basically eschews anything else that's not rock and roll made by white people. Perhaps I'm in the minority on this, but I've just always thought of music-lovers as being open to many different genres. Otherwise, practically everyone could be considered a music-lover.

I'm on Team Karl. But I also do roll my eyes at ppl that Jazzbo describes. I'd like to think I have broader tastes, but I've noticed that I seek out music across genres that shares one or more of just a few qualities: pretty, funky, trippy

A lot of people don't care much for or about music at all, and wouldn't consider themselves music lovers. I think even you only care deeply about a limited range of music, you should qualify for posting on this board (as long as you don't go stinking up a bunch of threads saying how much you hate other music, or whatever).

xp
(assuming that Halway's post was directed at me) I guess the third option is closest, but it was more disappointment with what I was seeing as the general drift of the board and which topics were drawing enthusiasm. I could go on I guess, but I feel like I'm derailing the thread somewhat—I just wanted to otm Karl in that I think you can love music intensively or extensively (or both), and even if I tend to prefer the latter it's not because it's the superior mode.

I do think it's weird to say "I LOVE music, by which I exclusively mean the collected works of Van Halen" instead of just saying "I love Van Halen" but I don't know where the threshold would be—when would your tastes be eclectic enough to count as loving music in general?

As I get older it find it harder to understand people who at least appear to actively spend as much time and energy on those acts they hate as they always did (eg as a teenager/early 20s)

Not that any discussion of music should be blanket positivity but it’s almost as if for some people what they dislike is as important as what they like, and I don’t understand that at all (if it’s real and not affectation)

If someone only loves Van Halen and has interesting things to say about them, why not post here instead of a VH-specific board (if they find some reason to post here)?

i love music -- it doesn't have enough notes

tbh as i have gotten older i have started feeling a sort of envy for people who truly love things that i dont like. nothing is more fun & deeply soul-satisfying than discovering art so thrilling and exciting that it tips over into complete deep-dive catalog-devouring obsession. and while that still happens to me (albeit less often than it did in my youth), if i encounter someone who says "I LOVE music, by which I exclusively mean the collected works of Van Halen", theres a big part of me that remembers past joyful feelings of complete i-only-wanna-listen-to-this-forever obsession, and i think "man, that person must be having so much fun experiencing that when they listen to van halen. i wish i could get that into van halen."

haha, that's me listening to metallica right now :D

also, i have an old friend who truly loves music, to a disturbing degree, an obsessive degree, and his preferred mode of listening is to listen to albums on repeat for days on end

I think even you only care deeply about a limited range of music, you should qualify for posting on this board (as long as you don't go stinking up a bunch of threads saying how much you hate other music, or whatever).

― Shallot Shortage 2021 (morrisp), Tuesday, August 17, 2021 12:46 PM (eighteen minutes ago)

If someone only loves Van Halen and has interesting things to say about them, why not post here instead of a VH-specific board (if they find some reason to post here)?

― Shallot Shortage 2021 (morrisp), Tuesday, August 17, 2021 1:02 PM (one minute ago)

Are these responses to my post? Must've been a bad post if so, because I have zero objection to anyone posting on this board for any reason whatsoever! The van halen thing was just a response to Jazzbo's post and wondering whether or not you can claim to "love music" (in general, putting aside the board name) if you only love a very very narrow subset of the vast category Music.

theres a big part of me that remembers past joyful feelings of complete i-only-wanna-listen-to-this-forever obsession, and i think "man, that person must be having so much fun experiencing that when they listen to van halen. i wish i could get that into van halen."

― nobody like my rap (One Eye Open), Tuesday, August 17, 2021 1:06 PM (three minutes ago)

oh yeah I get this too. I have almost never been a completionist listener and have fond memories of the few times it has happened plus some envy for people who can become obsessives at that level

I have almost never been a completionist listener and have fond memories of the few times it has happened plus some envy for people who can become obsessives at that level

When I get interested by a band/artist I often have the urge to buy everything, even if I know I'll never listen to certain albums. And when I don't own all the albums by a band I like, it bugs me a little — for example, I own the first four Metallica albums and the last two, but nothing in between (the Black Album, Load & Reload, St. Anger). And I sometimes feel like I should, even though I know if they were here I'd never play them.

i don't think it's a good idea to think in terms of who "really" loves something. what does that mean? is there a threshold where i'm a real music lover, or where someone else is not? are there things that the real music lovers can do, once you've established membership? if so, like a cd mix club trade or something, i could see taking the steps necessary to first establish a zone of objective music love and then stepping within it. but otherwise - who cares? if someone ever told me i didn't love music, i would...? i don't even know what i would say. i think the reason i can't think of what to say is i've never considered the possibility of telling someone else they didn't love music, or caring about that, so i can't game out what the response would be. maybe it would be like "...what?"

i realize this post challenges the entire premise of ILoveX

Great post.

I don't think there is really any doubt that 'music snobs' love music. Thread title was meant to be attention-grabbing, like "FREE FOOD!!"

What's been a major breakthrough for me in the last few years is to shift my thinking from "this is bad" to "this is Not For Me."

I don't remember exactly when or how I became mistrustful of "bad music", and that is something I want to explore. But increasingly I regard "good" music that ticks all the right boxes as suspect.

I'm still at the stage of identifying little personal anecdotes that relate to this problem. I'm not up to the part where I survey all the fragments of information and hopefully form some kind of cohesive thought about it.

Things i was shockingly old when i learned: I use music to regulate my emotions. I've been doing that all along, but for whatever reason, I never noticed until a couple of months ago.

So there's always been some discrepancy between "music i like", in a formalist sense, or a futurist sense, on the one hand- and "music i actually listen to all the time" on the other.

I'm wondering if the mistrust of snobbery, or the more exclusionary approach, might be rooted in that discrepancy. It feels dishonest even though it isn't.

i love most of yesterdays music and hate most of todays music so is that clear enough?!

I think sometimes you can absolutely make a distinction between "this music is not for me" and "this music is bad"; the vast majority of Taylor Swift's music is Not For Me, for example, while the vast majority of Lana Del Rey's music is Bad. It's still 100% subjective but also (for me, anyway) ties to an ill-defined sense of respect for what it feels like the music is trying to do. (See also: Danny Brown vs Chief Keef)

just wanted to say that hating music rules

it's got too many notes

the vast majority of Taylor Swift's music is Not For Me, for example, while the vast majority of Lana Del Rey's music is Bad

Heh, I'd personally swap those two.

What ever happened to Tanya Headon? She's probably due for a comeback

'British writer Tanya Headon commits suicide'

Oh.

all my homies hate music

music is not cool

One of the anecdotes i keep thinking of regarding this:

I have this friend, a professional musician, who has extreme 'fight or flight' reactions to what he considers "bad music". The last time he was in New York, I went to dinner with his family and he insisted on moving tables several times because the music bothered him so much. It wasn't anything too abrasive, just 80's new romantic synthpop at a moderate volume. His kids were complaining "oh my god, he always does this, it's awful" and if his son hadn't been so keen on trying the particular restaurant, I'm sure he would have asked that we move to another.

But of course music and sound elicit very strong, sometimes physical reactions and of course it makes sense that someone who is very sensitive to music should experience extremely negative reactions as well as positive ones.

This has only happened to me once due entirely to the selection of music, not the volume or other circumstances. I was shopping for basics at I think H&M or one of those stores and "Baby" by Justin Bieber came on... And I HAD to leave the building immediately, it was so intolerable. I really felt I could not endure it for a couple of minutes. I really surprised myself.

Many people who say they "love music" have a narrow definition of what music they love. Typically it's the music they grew up with, and once "taste freeze" sets in (typically around mid-20s) they are happy to just listen to the small subset of stuff they know. It's taken me a long time to stop judging these folks and just focus on my own happiness.

For me, and I suspect many of you, I am still chasing that feeling of hearing something and thinking "oh my God, what is this??". It happens far less often now that I'm older but recently I was on a music store crawl and Herbie Hancock's "Sextant" was playing and I flipped out. Jazz is a new-ish interest for me and my reaction still takes me by surprise sometimes. I expect I'll keep searching for the new-to-me for the rest of my life, even though by rights I should be happy to revisit the thousands of beloved recordings I already own.

I love music!

Many people who say they "love music" Typically it's the music they grew up with

I know this is glib but I don’t really care what other people listen to anymore, I’m too busy enjoying all the great music out there. It never gets old, there’s always some new/new to me music to trip out on.

By “care” and “other people” I just mean the whole “what the hell do people see in this artist? Emperor’s new clothes!” type thing

Yeah, f other people’s tastes for sure, except when they introduce you to a genre vaporwave and deriative products

"Many people who say they "love music" have a narrow definition of what music they love. Typically it's the music they grew up with"

that's my experience

"this is not for me" has been my outlook for a few years now, ever since i started listening to music i wouldn't normally listen to for work. it's led to a lot of growth in my taste tbh.

also, reflecting a lot on themes i'm drawn to, expanding my ability to hit different pleasure centers. for instance, "i'm hot" or "i have money" is not usually a theme that's drawn me in when i'm listening on my own, but i've been expanding my facility with it and connection to it since it works on a dance floor. looking for "i'm hot" and "i have money" songs that are more brilliant than dumb and generic. even though "cathartic relationship realizations" or "love songs" move me, they can really flop on a dance floor without the other 50-70% being about hot/sexy/dangerous stuff.

also, in relation to this thread title, i think i actually believe that it's totally inaccurate because it's impossible to like or dislike music if we don't listen to it, and probably 95% of the time these days we like the music that we choose to listen to. i feel like not having a choice in the matter of what music is being played where we are plays a big part in us not liking it. anyway just some random thoughts

"I'm hot, and I have money"

Most of the casual listeners among my friends can reasonably keep up with new stuff - they're not stuck and I don't feel like they're doing things very differently from the avid music listener. They're just more focused and less ambitious and won't spend hours listening to unknown things and doing the spadework. Neither will they argue or rationalize if something is top 10% of its genre, sell-out, or interesting on some historic or meta-level. They don't stray too far from what they know.

With time, after previous "extensive" phases, I behave much more like a casual listener, at least casual-in-hiding. It has much to do with the enjoyment / effort ratio to be kept. I'm also just profiting off past explorations and my personal advantage of having a good idea of popular music in the last 60 years. This year I spent a couple months re-listening to hundreds of classics, some weeks I focused on MPB, some on jazz, deep house... genres and periods are a little interchangeable because they're all familiar. That's what's atypical.

But the fundamental attitude and enjoyment is not really different and I can re-listen to formative stuff from my teens without feeling like it was a different world. I also feel like experience only increases the passion, and discovery feeds on itself. What I cannot understand is being stuck or very narrow - but that's a personality or ideology of mine.

some great posts in this thread already.

i feel like at different points in my life, or even different weeks in this year, i'm more like "putting on the old favorites again" or more like "i wanna put on something i don't know as well." at 39, i'm probably more appreciative than ever of some of the genres i've loved since i was a teen, even if i'm burned out on some of the specific acts/albums. (and that's leading me to check out new-to-me stuff in, for example, general 70s rock/soul/pop continuum). but in either frame of mind, when i'm listening, i'm loving the music; i'm even loving the fact that i'm listening to the music, that I have time to do so and remembering to keep it in my daily life as something that brings me joy, etc. and i think that would obtain even if i had just locked on to the stuff i liked when i was a teen and was still just digging deeper and deeper into the Beatles and TMBG and the Smashing Pumpkins and Wu-Tang. or even if i was someone who'd found contentment with just the CDs i owned at a certain point... it's pretty far from my experience but i can imagine someone for whom that didn't feel stale, and where they still engaged in the loving of music every time they put those CDs on.

but i feel like the Q is really about being a "music lover," or "loving music" being kind of a general thing, "loving Music" as opposed to "loving music" or "loving this music." feel like they're all happy states for various different folks.

I don't know if this thread was created in response to a general sense that writing on this board seems to focus on negative evaluations. I find it can be more interesting and create more dialogue to post a reasoned critique of a piece of music, especially if it's well-known and people don't really need to be alerted to its existence.
I have noticed that posters react more defensively to "certain parts of this song/certain songs on this record aren't as good as the rest" than they do to people who completely dismiss a genre or artist.

i probably listen to between 10-20 new songs a day and have for about the past 15 years.

I don't know if this thread was created in response to a general sense that writing on this board seems to focus on negative evaluations

Not really, I wanted to get into, like, how does someone become a 'music snob' of any description in the first place? And to what extent is that an entrenched position, vs. something you grow out of? And how does it impact your enjoyment of music? The development or cultivation of a more discriminating taste, I mean- does it serve us more than it's distracting or limiting.

Because I think the puritanical implications in my OP are also very questionable. Like, it's fairly ridiculous to suppose that a lover of musuc should love all music equally, indiscriminately. And yet... I started from a position pretty close to that.

Sort of, where am i now, how did i get here kinda thing.

Connoisseurship - what is it good for?

I have noticed that posters react more defensively to "certain parts of this song/certain songs on this record aren't as good as the rest

It's funny cause I would say the board tends more toward the view that an album is a collection of good songs than a good collection of songs (I'm in the latter camp).

A lot of what I have to say in response to some posts here would be more or less tangential, so I'll hold off for now. Agree that there are lots of good posts already.

I hope not to imply that ILXors are a bunch of music snobs, i do think there's an emphasis on tracking consensus on ILM, and relatedly "ingroup cohesion" (which, i mean, of course there is, it's an internet messageboard).

So like, my tastes evolved very rapidly between the age of 8 and 13-ish. So rapidly that it's very difficult to establish a chronology between 8 and 10 in particular.

I had this tape when I was 8 or 9:
https://www.nowmusic.com/albums/now-thats-what-i-call-music-26/

I liked just about everything on it, I mean, there were a handful of songs I especially looked forward to when I played it, and a couple that bored the daylights out of me (John Lydon - though I knew who he was and wanted to like it).

I also remember watching the 1993 VMA's and feeling very excited, liking everything and recognizing for the first time that I was really into music. I was drawn in particular to the hard rock end- 'Jeremy', Aerosmith... Lenny Kravitz performing 'Are you gonna go my way?' was such a thrill. I was just buzzing with excitement, maybe seeing preferences start to emerge but certainly not to the exclusion of anything.

In that same year, I was into Bee Gees style pop that nobody my age knew or care about ("From Genesis to Revelation", Status Quo's "Spare Parts") and random oldies (Paul Revere & the Raiders) that were I guess very unlikely points of interest for a 9 year old in 1993.

But I didn't like the heavy, sludgy end of grunge at all. And that was very much a visceral reaction, it gave me this Seasick, queasy feeling.

So this interest in rando 60's pop-lite and aversion to grunge put me at odds with my age group and I guess the mainstream to some extent. And this was where biases, not just preferences, start to form- the beginnings of my evolution as some kind of music snob.

So that by the time I was 10 or 11 there was a ton of stuff I probably wouldn't want to admit to liking or disliking, regardless of the visceral reaction.

As best i can remember, anyway.

I don't think I was still listening to Eurodance hits at 10.

I think there were biases in place, especially against "new music" and "alternative music"... Though there were exceptions. It started with an unpleasant physical reaction but took on a life of its own very quickly

Which again changed very quickly once "alternative music" was completely decoupled from "grunge". Then I became biased against classic rock :)

I def encountered some hostility, like, I'd be listening to "starship trooper" or "conmunion with the sun" on the bus to our field trip at the met, and some kid would be like (aggressively, mockingly) "why do you listen to music from the 30's"

Anyway, that's more than enough for now.

One thing that has definitely faded with age for me is a real hatred of music I don't like. Every once in a while something will really get under my skin and irritate me but mostly I'm just indifferent

I don't know if I've really hated any musician since Bryan Adams was big. I still do hate him, though.

When did you guys begin identifying as "music lovers"? I never thought of myself that way, but looking back, I guess music was always a focus for me, I just didn't think of it as something special or particular.

Don't think I ever identified as a music lover, i thought Music was corny af tbh. But 1993 VMA's was the moment when i had the thought, "music is my thing now", and it was undeniable.

The last time I really hated something was probably The Strokes and I was extremely biased against all the "return of rock" stuff that followed. It's not just that I thought their music was fashion bullshit with no grit. I had quite a futurist attitude and they were going to ruin everything. I didn't mind White Stripes, really. But all the LES bands where every member had the same haircut, it was just like "what is all this fucking nonsense", Timbaland wiped the floor with those guys.

Between 2000 or '01 and maybe 2006, I just did not wanna know about new music unless it was mainstream rap or pop. I'd go to Black Dice shows but that's about it.

I've chilled out a lot since :)

One thing that has definitely faded with age for me is a real hatred of music I don't like. Every once in a while something will really get under my skin and irritate me but mostly I'm just indifferent

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, August 18, 2021 7:19 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

^^^
This. Some of it is having access to so much more music, why spend a bunch of time/mental energy on something you don't like, instead of moving on to something you do or might like.

Yeah I think streaming changed things, you just kind of live in your own world of stuff you know and tailored recommendations it's pretty easy to avoid even the biggest pop music, like I just made a point to listen to a couple of BTS songs for shits the other day

ums, when I read your post, I was thinking about Greta Van Fleet.

But even then, they're just easier to clown on than really hate.

Yeah I think streaming changed things, you just kind of live in your own world of stuff you know and tailored recommendations it's pretty easy to avoid even the biggest pop music, like I just made a point to listen to a couple of BTS songs for shits the other day

it's pretty easy to avoid even the biggest pop music

Those of you that came of age since the internet have no real understanding of just how hard it was to avoid having music shoved down your throat. In the late 80s, it was nigh impossible to avoid Whitney Houston, Madonna, or whoever the flavor of the day was. You'd hear the same small number of tracks in every store, the mall, coming out of car radios, on TV, movies, in commercials, and at every party. Just everywhere! Even when I liked some of these things, the over-exposure killed them for me. Yes, you could isolate yourself to some extent by only listening to college radio or listening to a Walkman out and about but it only went so far. Culture has been atomized since then, too, and it's now easy to live in a micro-scene bubble if desired.

streaming changed things, you just kind of live in your own world of stuff you know and tailored recommendations

Still haven't tried this, for better or worse.

i feel like not having a choice in the matter of what music is being played where we are plays a big part in us not liking it. anyway just some random thoughts

I had the same thought yesterday...

it's impossible to like or dislike music if we don't listen to it, and probably 95% of the time these days we like the music that we choose to listen to.

... But this hasn't been my experience, with the advent of portable speakers (nature areas), smartphones (enclosed spaces like ke public transit), I'm subjected to other people's choice of music constantly, like never before. Especially since Apple took the headphone jack off their iphones, I mean, i only got a smartphone last summer and had no idea why nobody bothers to wear headphones on the train anymore.

It's not the same small number of tracks coming out of every speaker, tho.

Whitney Houston, Madonna, or whoever the flavor of the day was. You'd hear the same small number of tracks in every store, the mall, coming out of car radios

When my family arrived in the US in 1989, my great aunt sent a taxi to bring us to her house. Hearing Bon Jovi and the theme from Dirty Dancing on the car radio was so incredible, I'll never forget it.

For me, and I suspect many of you, I am still chasing that feeling of hearing something and thinking "oh my God, what is this??". It happens far less often now that I'm older...

I was, for a long time. Apart from the dimishing returns you mention, it was so exhausting.

I had a job in my 20's that allowed me to listen to music on my headphones all day as I worked... I'd put my headphones on the second i walked out the door at like 5 am, and wouldn't take them off until i got home most days. So like, 9+ hours a day, 5 days a week listening to all mp3's of music I'd never heard before that I'd pitated over the weekend. And then I'd come home and listen to more familiar stuff on my shitty desktop speakers. So I know ear fatigue has a lot to do with it, too.

But when I left that job, it was over. I stopped making music completely. I continued virtual crate digging for a couple more years, but that slowed to a stop pretty fast. I don't listen to music at all most days and maybe listen to a handful of albums a year now that i've never heard before, and that's it.

A lot of the time when i go out, I'll put my headphones on in anticipation of wanting to hear music but the mood never strikes and I'll wear them around like earmuffs for hours without pressing play.

Living above an ageing Deadhead landlord during that time, sweet though he was, didn't help either. I.e. trying to fall asleep in the Phil Zone every night.

I only hear music I hate in ubers and lyfts. So I can't really complain, even though I know there's a big ol' world of detestable music out there.

When did you guys begin identifying as "music lovers"? I never thought of myself that way, but looking back, I guess music was always a focus for me, I just didn't think of it as something special or particular.

― Shallot Shortage 2021 (morrisp), Thursday, August 19, 2021 3:10 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Does it sound snobbish ? I thought it was only descriptive. I guess from the special feeling of communion with an artist you've found or after organizing your evenings around long listening sessions, when it becomes a hobby. It's maybe also semantics: if you're into books you'll just say you're a reader rather than a book-lover, but you can't say you're a listener, and just saying you like or are into music sounds a bit plain, because everyone likes music.

, like I just made a point to listen to a couple of BTS songs for shits the other day

I know I've done this more than once but I still couldn't hum one or even describe their sound very well. It actually scares me a bit how many things I just forget or that seem to pass in one ear and out the other the older I get.

When did you guys begin identifying as "music lovers"?

Basically as long as I can remember; there are recordings floating around my parents' house somewhere of all of the songs I started making up when I was 5 and I started stealing my older brothers' albums when I was 7.

started identifying as a music lover when I found out that most people don't spend the majority of their time listening to / buying / writing about / thinking about music.