Aging out of popular music study

[Amor de Cosmos]

Not something most of us didn't know, or suspect. But the numbers on males vs females, and the age when it happens, are somewhat interesting.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

Exceptions apply, although I will admit that I lost ground for a good few years during my kids' early years so parenthood is definitely a factor.

[3 Colours Red]

Going through my MP3 downloads and playlists, there's definitely a drop-off after about 2003. That was the start of a not-great (to put it extremely mildly) part of my mental wellbeing and I think I needed the comfort of familiarity rather than seeking out anything new, which applied to more than just music of course.

So yeah, taste freeze at age 21.

[DCI Harry Batt]

I dread to think what a taste freeze at 21 would have left me with. Thankfully I got bored with the whole "new music" thing a lot later than that.

[Sits]

Likewise, but what also happened to me was that from my early 30s (mid 90s) I began to appreciate the vast amounts of music I'd already missed previously. Discovering some of that blurred the lines as to when I became detached from the contemporary mainstream but I was definitely still engaging with some new music into the 2010s. Just not chart stuff as a general rule.

[Simon G]

Going through my MP3 downloads and playlists, there's definitely a drop-off after about 2003. That was the start of a not-great (to put it extremely mildly) part of my mental wellbeing and I think I needed the comfort of familiarity rather than seeking out anything new, which applied to more than just music of course.

So yeah, taste freeze at age 21.

I'm about the same, 21-22 years old. I've liked some stuff post 2006, and still find the odd new thing I like, but if you were to go through the music app on my phone, there's very little on there you'd consider modern.

[ad hoc]

That data seems to be about what the writer terms "mainstream music", which is a bit unclear to me. I listen to a lot of new music, but I'm not sure how "mainstream" most of it is. But I also listen to old music. For me there is a sort of blank period from about 1990-2004 (ish) during which time my location and my ability to access new music means that I really know extremely little that was released then.

[Furtho]

Is this to do with interest in currently popular stuff (what might previously have been framed as "the charts"), or interest in new music more broadly? It's at least 20 years since I had any awareness of what the number one single or album might be, but via Bandcamp in particular it's possible I buy more new music now than has ever been the case.

[3 Colours Red]

Personally, it's just new music in general. By the time I was in a better place mentally, other interests had taken over and filled that gap.

[Patrick Thistle]

I buy new "mainstream" music. Bastille, Avicii, George Ezra, Clean Bandit etc. I recently bought a 3CD compilation called "Back to the 2010s" - basically music from the last decade. I was surprised how many songs I knew.

I also buy new stuff released by non mainstream artists I like.

[Jah Womble]

This subject seems to come up quite often, eh?

Some interesting points, but that study doesn't really take into account a) when one (usually inadvertantly) lands upon what kind of music one actually 'likes', and b) how one chooses to classify current 'popular' music per se. I listen to shedloads of new artists, but have yet to see any of these preferred acts feature in the Top 40 - which, to me, has been tired and staid for years and doesn't truly represent a genuine barometer of taste, such as it may have done in the past. (I'll concede that a large amount of contemporary music I enjoy is clearly influenced by music from three-four decades ago, but it still feels like it has a lot more edge and energy than can be found in the mainstream. In any case, rock 'n' roll in particular has been recycling itself for aeons.)

Another factor is this inaccurate representation of the (supposedly) greater music resources that media now provides: to my mind, the fragmentation of music doesn't so much make music more available to listeners as it does create islands in which consumers isolate themselves, leaving them little access or exposure to other genres - thereby creating a world in which unchallenging mainstream styles dominate completely.

I've never really bought into the generational argument, either. It feels like there's been a complete aesthetic turnaround since my younger days: my near-default opinion might now be closer to 'it's not loud enough', 'you can hear the words', 'I can tell if that's a boy/girl', etc. The lack of character or charisma in modern pop music is frankly depressing. (All that said, my 23-year-old daughter has introduced me to some great music over the past decade or so - but she sources it from her own discoveries, or those of her friends, rather than 'if you like x, you'll like y'-type algorithms.)

[San Bernardhinault]

I stopped buying CDs around the time when CDs began to stop being a thing, which also correlated with when I moved in with the missus and therefore didn't blast my own music 100% of the time as she has different tastes and I didn't want to be an arsehole subjecting her to stuff she didn't like. That said, my thing was largely guitar band music and it was also around that time that I realised that British guitar band music had largely been going down a very dull cul-de-sac for a while and none of the stuff I bought hoping it would be good because it was hyped turned out to actually be good.

Now, I still occasionally listen to new stuff, often thanks to contributions on here, but because of the nature of streaming I'll probably listen to an album a couple of times and then forget about it. I no longer have a limited number of CDs or records and have to listen to them multiple times, and I no longer have my student bedroom/tiny flat in which to just put on record after record for hours on end. And I also don't seem to have the obsessiveness of youth that makes me want to get sucked deeply into a single track.

And I'm good with all this. Even if it means my musical knowledge seems to have got stunted somewhere around 2005 or so.

[Fussbudget]

Is this to do with interest in currently popular stuff (what might previously have been framed as "the charts"), or interest in new music more broadly? It's at least 20 years since I had any awareness of what the number one single or album might be, but via Bandcamp in particular it's possible I buy more new music now than has ever been the case.

Yeah this:

Whether the demands of parenthood and careers mean devoting less time to pop culture, or just because they’ve succumbed to good old-fashioned taste freeze, music fans beyond a certain age seem to reach a point where their tastes have “matured”.

seems only loosely related to what they've actually measured, which is whether or not American people stream mainstream chart stuff. Only limiting it to Spotify and not including Bandcamp, physical formats, even more "audiophile" streaming platforms like Tidal is also already excluding the most invested and active listeners.

It does actually mention halfway through that one of the factors behind people listening less to new mainstream music is that they might be listening to new but less mainstream stuff instead, and yet it doesn't try to separate that out from people just not listening to any new music at all, and files all of this together under 'taste freeze' instead. Meaningless study

[BallochSonsFan]

I'm not sure that the data is particularly reliable.

It's easier now than it ever has been to find new music. Conversely, streaming sites can make it tougher to find new music as they tend to suffer from confirmation bias. People who liked song X tend to like song Y. You like song X, so we think you'll like song Y. Every now and again we'll throw in a complete curve ball and play song Z, but it'll maybe be once every 20-30 tracks. So you end up disappearing down a very limited rabbit hole, listening only to songs you already like and songs that the algorithm tells you that your peers also like. Unless you're taking random punts then nobody really embraces new things completely and without any kind of influence. I find new music every Sunday afternoon when I listen to my mate's radio show, but it's not really random. It's an Americana show. I know the kind of stuff he plays. So whilst I'll listen to somebody like Bella White and absolutely fall in love with her music, it's still part of the "listeners who liked X will also probably like Y".

I think unless you're willing to take yourself completely out of your comfort zone then there's always going to be an element of confirmation bias and of only accessing new music that's similar to your existing tastes. So Bella White, as fantastic as she is, might be new to me but I've found out about her because I like similar artists. The sheer amount of music out there means that people will always find new acts to love, but at some point all of us tend to find that the new bands or artists we love tend to be from genres that we're familiar and comfortable with. At 43, I think my days of being shocked by a new song that I fall in love with are coming to an end, even if I can still listen to folk like Rozi Plain who aren't really like the majority of my music collection.

[Satchmo Distel]

It's particularly odd that the study conflates "new" with the charts given that the market has always been fragmented. Even in 1967, you could be a devoted fan of new music by, say, Velvet Underground or MC5 that never went near the charts.

[gjw100]

I still listen to and download a fair amount of new music, mostly jazz, but sometimes wonder if I ought to dial it back and just spend more time enjoying the huge number of albums that I have already, some of which I've been listening to for close to 50 years and love just as much now as when I first bought them. Of course, that never happens and in some ways I think I’m still suffering from the musical FOMO that I had as a teenager, when limited funds always meant that hard choices had to be made when riffling through the racks at my local record shop. Nowadays I’m not so much constrained by budget and the music is available in quantities and ways that I couldn’t even have dreamed about back when I had to decide between the new Greenslade, Gilgamesh or Gentle Giant albums, but the thought that I will definitely miss something brilliant if I don’t keep pace with the new releases is more pronounced than ever.

At the other end of the spectrum, both my brother (61) and brother-in-law (65) never listen to anything other than the soul and jazz-funk that they first bought back in the 70’s/80’s, and have no real interest in venturing beyond those genres or that timeframe. It would bother them not one jot that if asked I could name a hundred other albums that I know they would enjoy just as much; they are perfectly happy with what they have and there's nothing wrong with that.

[Hot Pepsi]

The new music I listen to tends to sound a lot like the music from the 70s, 80s and 90s that I like.

[Janik]

Yes, some definite flaws on the methodology here. For instance, if a teenager was mostly focused on the current hits from the days big name artists, but they started to find more esoteric stuff from lesser known performers, that would result in the same increase with age. But that would be the opposite of a taste freeze, that would be taste developing, broadening and become more complex with age (and really quite conservative with youth). The key data here would be how many artists people are listening to - if this is constantly expanding then this explanation fits the overall score better.

There is one minor aspect that points this way rather than a taste freeze, which is the score apparently hitting a limit. That doesn’t actually make sense by the process described - if there are constantly new artists taking the most popular spot, pushing the previous holders out then the drift for everyone would be constant. So the shape should continue to spiral outwards (something like the golden ratio). That it increases to a limit fits better with tastes getting more varied as people age.

[Amor de Cosmos]

As noted in the opening post, the contention that interests me most is the gender differential. Depending on measurables, which are arguable, it's interesting that Taylor Swift is, I think, the first female performer to match Elvis or the Beatles in terms of generational popularity. Does the study's assertion that women sustain an interest in contemporary popular music longer than men, have anything to do with her success? Or vice-versa?

[Patrick Thistle]

I think Janik makes an important point there about tastes widening as you get older and discover music that is less superficial than a lot of chart stuff. (Superficial might be the wrong word. Manufactured? Corporate?)

When I was a teenager I had very little interest in pop / chart music because I liked metal. I had friends into the Madchester sound who kept trying to get me to listen to Stone Roses et al and I ignored them. (Just given as an example of how rigid I was as a teenager rather than suggesting the Stone Roses et al were superficial.)

Now there is a lot more variety in the music I listen to, and I like a lot of 'pop' that younger me would have been too snooty to listen to.

tl;dr kids grow up

[WOM]

A friend of mine since high school was THE music woman in our crowd. She worked at a record shop at a mall, and then one of the big ones downtown. After college, she worked at a Canadian indie label and then Sony Music for many years. Now she's a tv segment producer. She led a crowd going to see The Beat last week on yet another revival tour. But when I mentioned a few upcoming shows, she said "I have no idea who those are." She's also said that there's just so much music that she doesn't know what to listen to, so she just plays what she knows. If it can happen to her, it can happen to anyone.

[WOM]

We should do a project whereby we post the Home album of the week and we all have to listen to it at least once. See if we can stop the atrophy.

[delicatemoth]

album of the week

Track of the week rather than album or you'll miss out on most of what you want to hear.

I can listen to internet radio and go on music streams and hear fun new music every day. The issue for me isn't hearing new music, but remembering names of artists and songs, a factor that makes it harder to talk about.

[DPDPDPDP]

I moved abroad from the UK in the late 80’s aged 27. Most of my favourite music was UK based and when I moved away, it was before the internet, so no iTunes or YouTube (Or itube and YouTunes as Mrs DP regularly calls them, much to you my and children’s amusement) to keep you up to date with new stuff. Moved back to UK aged 40, with two young kids and still never got into “new” music. Then slowly started disappearing down rabbit holes, many of which turned out be rabbit warrens. A lot of the “new” stuff I liked was discovering “new” old stuff, like the stuff on Sarah records (eg, The Orchids, The Field Mice, Trembling Blue Stars etc) which turned out to be the stuff I now like best of all and delving into the back catalogue of bands like The Bathers (my favourite band) and again discovering “new” old stuff.