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Music Stats Science

What Happens To Our Musical Taste As We Age? 361

Posted by timothy from the it-gets-righter-of-course dept.
An anonymous reader writes: New research from Spotify and Echo Nest reveals that people start off listening to chart-topping pop music and branch off into all kinds of territory in their teens and early 20s, before their musical tastes start to calcify and become more rigid by their mid-30s. "Men, it turns out, give up popular music much more quickly than women. Men and women have similar musical listening tendencies through their teens, but men start shunning mainstream artists much sooner than women and to a greater degree."
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What Happens To Our Musical Taste As We Age? More

What Happens To Our Musical Taste As We Age?

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  • I know that happened to me. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by grimmjeeper ( 2301232 ) on Thursday May 14, 2015 @02:56PM (#49692471) Homepage
    As I sit here with "The Who" playing on my MP3 player.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gatkinso ( 15975 )

      The Who can only be appreciated on cassette.

  • New bands? (Score:5, Funny)

    by McGruber ( 1417641 ) on Thursday May 14, 2015 @03:01PM (#49692537)
    Why do you need new bands? Everyone knows rock attained perfection in 1974. It's a scientific fact.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Whiteox ( 919863 )

      You mean Disco don't you?

    • I think it is an issue that when you get into your 30's you are allowing your mind to close.
      As a Teenager, you are old enough to appreciate the quality of music so the music you listen to was new and exciting. As you get older you find the pattern predictable. The fact it has been predictable for hundreds of years, and every couple of decades a new element is brought in, but still most music is base on repeating over and over again.

      I find the new stuff isn't that bad, and I enjoy it, and it isn't any wors

      • Re:Allowing your mind to close. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by BlackHawk-666 ( 560896 ) on Thursday May 14, 2015 @03:44PM (#49692995)

        I think it's something else altogether.

        In your teens and early 20's you're partying hard with friends, getting laid, and making lots of good memories. The music playing at that time is the soundtrack to the happiest time of your life. Twenty plus years later and you're weighed down with a mortgage, several kids, a shit job, and an impending divorce. Now the music you hear is the soundtrack to a less wonderful part of your life.

        When you're young, you can't help but be exposed to new music. You have no control of the turntable at parties, or when visiting friends. You are challenged more often and learn to enjoy it. As an adult you just press the skip button when something doesn't immediately please you.

        TLDR: It's not the music, that's pretty much a constant, it's the memories you have when you were listening to that music.

        • Re:Allowing your mind to close. (Score:4, Interesting)

          by TWX ( 665546 ) on Thursday May 14, 2015 @04:14PM (#49693323)
          I don't think it's that either, at least not exclusively.

          When we're young we have no frame of reference for life. We roll with whatever life throws at us because there's no preconceived notion of what life is. Even into early adulthood we're still learning what life entails, but by the time we reach our thirties we usually have enough notion of life that we start to seek to stabilize it.

          I think that with music there's a distinct difference between what is good, what is popular, and what is both good and popular. When one looks at top-40 and top-100 lists from the past, one can see music that topped the charts when it was new that's not popular today right along with music that is still played. There's a lot of music that isn't played anymore that was popular; I'm sure the same will be said of music made today. We might well find that Taylor Swift becomes the next Linda Rhonstadt, almost completely disappearing from popular culture despite having made quite the splash for many years. By contrast, we might find Amy Winehouse being looked at as the next Janis Joplin twenty to thirty years from now.

          Another side is the following of short term trends or fads versus following long term trends. If the buying public trends away from autotone and other heavy post-production techniques, there will be a decade of music that falls into a catergory similar to how 'eighties' defines a genre whose constituent parts don't necessarly otherwise have a lot in common. We may look back on this era's music and those who continue to listen to it with the same mirth as we look at fans of groups like KC and the Sunshine Band.

          I still listen to new music. Some of it's good, some of it's crap. I also listen to older music that I didn't know about when it was new. Life would be kind of dull if I was stuck on bands from the late eighties and nineties; I can only take so much Hootie and the Blowfish.

          • Re:Allowing your mind to close. (Score:5, Interesting)

            by Mr D from 63 ( 3395377 ) on Thursday May 14, 2015 @04:30PM (#49693461)
            I'm in my 50s, but I can say that my tastes have not narrowed but certainly become more demanding. I want more complexity in my music, and a greater attention to detail. Maybe as the article points out its partially boredom from the "I've heard it all before", but I have some relatively recent albums that I enjoy just as much or more than my younger year classics. There is great musical talent out there and I like new stuff. There are many obscure albums from the past that the pop world completely missed, and it is fun to discover them.

            It takes harder work to find what I like, and I don't have as much time to devote. I am lucky to see a live show more than a few a year, even though I keep vowing to do better.
            • ^BTW, forgot to mention that I do get a kick from J. Roddy Walston & the Business. (too bad they did the beer commercial ..but even that doesn't bother me like it used to).

        • Re:Allowing your mind to close. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Nyder ( 754090 ) on Thursday May 14, 2015 @04:35PM (#49693497) Journal

          I think it's something else altogether.

          In your teens and early 20's you're partying hard with friends, getting laid, and making lots of good memories. The music playing at that time is the soundtrack to the happiest time of your life. Twenty plus years later and you're weighed down with a mortgage, several kids, a shit job, and an impending divorce. Now the music you hear is the soundtrack to a less wonderful part of your life.

          When you're young, you can't help but be exposed to new music. You have no control of the turntable at parties, or when visiting friends. You are challenged more often and learn to enjoy it. As an adult you just press the skip button when something doesn't immediately please you.

          TLDR: It's not the music, that's pretty much a constant, it's the memories you have when you were listening to that music.

          Glad I'm in my 40's and I'm not weighed down by a mortgage, several kids, a shitty job and an impending divorce. I mean, seriously, what a fuck up way to look at life.

          • Re:Allowing your mind to close. (Score:4, Informative)

            by Grishnakh ( 216268 ) on Thursday May 14, 2015 @07:28PM (#49694641)

            Glad I'm in my 40's and I'm not weighed down by a mortgage, several kids, a shitty job and an impending divorce. I mean, seriously, what a fuck up way to look at life.

            Like it or not, that's reality for lots of middle-aged people. How many people really, really love coming to the office day in, day out, and putting up with the same corporate BS? And at least 50% of marriages end in divorce, so it's not like that's unusual either.

        • If your life goes well, your kids will introduce you to new music in your 40's. That's what happened to me, although it's also true that my favorite bands from college kept cranking out albums for a few more decades, and I kept buying them.
      • I don't know. Hair bands were popular when I was in high school. I'm pretty sure that aside from disco, it doesn't get much worse than that.

    • May I make that 1979? I've long held the theory that Rock n' Roll reached its logical conclusion in 1979 when Pink Floyd released "The Wall." There was nowhere to go after that.

      This adequately explains, for example, the emergence of rap and hip-hop in recent years, which are distinguished from prior popular music by the explicit absence of singing. It also explains why the current generation embraces the music of their parents, a.k.a "Classic Rock", rather than rejecting it - as did every prior generatio

      • I'm a huge Pink Floyd fan, saw "the wall" in concert in LA (1980 i think it was); but no way that was their peak. "Dark Side of the Moon" was their Zenith; even egomaniac Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull said it was more influential than Zeppelin II .

        Back on topic, I think most adults gravitate to the music they listened to when they were younger; for obvious reasons. No need for the snarky "calcify" comment from the submitter.

        • Actually, I'm not arguing that "The Wall" was their peak, simply that there was nowhere to go afterwards. I agree with you that "Dark Side of the Moon" was better or maybe more groundbreaking in some ways. Still, it's like asking which one of your children you love the most: you love them all, each for what are, even though they're all different.

          My point on The Wall was simply that there wasn't anyway to expand the scale what had been done in Rock n' Roll. It kept a coherent theme album going for two who

    • While Rush started in 1974, I think perfection was more like later albums such as 2112. They did go on to achieve perfection though :-)

  • That's cause we're cooler (Score:4, Funny)

    by rwise2112 ( 648849 ) on Thursday May 14, 2015 @03:01PM (#49692539)

    but men start shunning mainstream artists much sooner than women and to a greater degree

    That's cause we're much cooler than women.

    • I think it is because the social value of music may be different for men and women. Unless you are in a band, most guys could care less what their friends are listening to and this becomes even more pronounced as you age. Perhaps this is different for women.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday May 14, 2015 @03:06PM (#49692575)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Pop themes like true love, freedom, rebellion, and partying fall on the deaf ears of millenials who've seen systemic police corruption and racism as a tool of an increasingly totalitarian state basically wipe the concepts out.

      Lol. That's been going on a lot longer than "millenials" have been around.

      I used to listen to Rage Against The Machine. Now I'm a cog in the machine. It was all bullshit anyways.

      As for my demographic, there's no pop music about cubicles, TPS reports, traffic jams, mortgages, diapers, etc.

    • By "pop" music are we talking about the current, popular [adjective] music genre/scene, or are we talking about the mass-market, lip-syncing dancer(s) with canned music written by someone else where the rest of the performing band (if present at all) is faceless? If it's the second, I've always detested that crap, even as an elementary school kid!

  • ... but mine is unchanged. I still like new stuff of a certain style, and that is all I ever liked. I am quite offended by your assumption that your faults would apply to me.

  • As a kid born in the early 1980s, I mostly listened to pop.
    In the mid-1990s I started listening to mostly what would then be called "alternative rock".
    In the mid-2000s, I switched to mostly pop.
    In the 2010s, I'm listening to mostly pop and dance music, with a lot of EDM, and some hip-hop. My musical tastes are wider than ever.

    As I post this I'm listening to the last song added to my music library Ariana Grande's "One Last Time" [youtube.com].

  • Really, what more needs to be said?
    Gabba Gabba Hey!

  • and wish their kids only listened to the good stuff they grew up with. my dad grew up with classic rock and hated 80's metal bands that i listened to. listening to rap around him was likely to get you a beating

  • Cigars, Scotch, and Sinatra (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gatkinso ( 15975 ) on Thursday May 14, 2015 @03:09PM (#49692623)

    One day you'll learn, youngsters.

  • Used to listen to rock and metal but I acquired tinnitus several years ago racing motorcycles. Listening to anything else is painful, but I have also really grown to appreciate classical for it's own merits. There is something amazing about music written almost 300 years ago that is still moving and relevant.

    An example would be Bach's paritas and sonatas for violin which are still considered to be an apex in music.

    • Re:Went to classical myself (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ClickOnThis ( 137803 ) on Thursday May 14, 2015 @03:21PM (#49692749) Journal

      I think older music (including classical) benefits from a survivor bias: the bad stuff has been forgotten, leaving only the good stuff.

      The same thing will happen to the music we knew as kids, and the music we hear from pop artists today.

      • Re:Went to classical myself (Score:4, Informative)

        by avandesande ( 143899 ) on Thursday May 14, 2015 @03:34PM (#49692881) Journal

        That's what is interesting about classical music though- unlike popular music often times the music does not become popular until the public is ready for it. Bach finished the Sonatas and Paritas for Violin in 1720 and the music was not actually published until 1802, long after his death. Even then it was not popularized until 50 years later.
        If anything this is a testament to Bach's genius, discussed more in the book "Godel Escher and Bach" which I highly recommend.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by PPH ( 736903 )

          If anything this is a testament to Bach's genius,

          Of course, you mean PDQ Bach.

  • Either it becomes more diverse or more narrow. For examples of the latter, I offer up dead heads.

  • Not sure (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Quirkz ( 1206400 ) <ross @ q u irkz.com> on Thursday May 14, 2015 @03:14PM (#49692681) Homepage

    I realize this analysis is about "popular" music, so this may not entirely fit. But last year I listened to one of those Great Courses sets on "How to Listen to and Understand Great Music" and really changed what I've been listening to, which now includes quite a bit of concert music (baroque, classical, etc.) that I never really appreciated before. Am I an outlier that I'm picking up something new just as I turn 40, or does this not count because it's not pop music, and old fogies are supposed to drift into listening to this ancient stuff anyway?

    I'd say I've also picked up a lot of new material recently because of Pandora, but I'll admit most of that is older music, where it's a genre/style I liked, but I somehow missed some of the artists from that era who are similar to ones I already liked.

  • I must move in different circles. (Score:3)

    by Godwin O'Hitler ( 205945 ) on Thursday May 14, 2015 @03:18PM (#49692703) Journal

    Many if not all of my fellow musician friends actually stop being such fucking snobs as they mature and realize just how well conceived a lot of pop music is.

    • Many if not all of my fellow musician friends actually stop being such fucking snobs as they mature and realize just how well conceived a lot of pop music is.

      i do not think that word means what you think it means...

      Most Pop music, music on the top 40, is very formulaic and overly processed. I agree that some of it is actually produced well and will a lot of talent. But those tend to be few and far between in the top 40.

      • But those tend to be few and far between in the top 40.

        Sure. But they are there, and anyone who likes to bang on about how they hate all pop music is just a snob.

  • My musical tastes soured because of all the corporate bullshit. Now it's indie YouTube videos for me. AdBlocker is my friend.

  • I didn’t RTFA, but I suspect the truth is more complicated than the summary. I was a child in the 60’s and didn’t pay attention to music back then. Somewhere in my 40’s I was like Whoa! Why wasn’t I paying attention to Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin when it was on the radio??? I liked disco and still do. I liked New Age in the 80’s but now I’m like WTF was I thinking. Current music seems pretty good to me especially groups like Maroon 5 and OK Go. I even find my foot tapping to Katy Perry.

    Different genres seem to have different peeks in different years to me. Funk was at its best in the 70s and 80s., Rap the late 80’s early 90’s. Blues and Jazz seems good in all eras. Hard Rock 60s and 70’s. Heavy Metal 80’s and 90’s. Techno from 90’s through today.

      My dad on the other hand only liked Jazz and thought Rock was fad even in the 80’s and 90’s and opined several times that he thought its age was almost over (seems Rock has out lived my dad).

    • New music is unfiltered. The majority is crap being pushed by record labels. Some is good. Some is great. Most is not.

      Music of previous decades has been filtered. You only hear the good stuff. Go back and look at the charts and radio play of the 60s, 70s and 80s. It's full of crap. But no one plays that any more, so you only hear or buy or download the good stuff from those decades.

  • I'm 29, and I grew up listening first to the usual children-related pop stuff, then mostly what was played on the radio and popular. In my late teens and early twenties I was deep into metal, no other genres were acceptable. Now, over the last 6-7 years, my music tastes have broadened enormously, I listen to everything from country to jazz to rock to classical and just about everything in between.

    I have hundreds of CDs, gigabytes and gigabytes of downloaded and ripped music, all of it something that struck

  • Our tastes calcify (Score:3)

    by goarilla ( 908067 ) on Thursday May 14, 2015 @03:35PM (#49692891)
    Our tastes don't really calcify we just don't have any buttload of free time anymore to go exploring new music. So
    we stick with what we do know and like. It doesn't help that pop music is an even bigger marketing behemoth than before.
    And the length of the monthly pop music carrousel keeps shrinking.

    • And if you take the time to explore new music, it still works. You still find new music when you try. The internetz helpz a lotz.

    • don't have any buttload of free time anymore to go exploring new music.

      There has literally never been any time in all of human history better for discovering new music than now. Bandcamp. Youtube. Soundcloud. And many others I'm sure I've never heard of. And it has never been easier to record and disseminate music than it is today.

  • I came of age in the late '70s and early '80s, and my musical tastes reflect that.

    There have been some new discoveries along the way. I adore Sheryl Crow, and thought Lady Gaga was a breath of fresh air. With those exceptions (and a few others) I haven't heard much of interest since the early '90s.

    I remain baffled by rap.

    ...laura

  • Freddie Mercury. Harry Belafonte. Led Zeppelin. Highway Star. Cyndi Loper. Pumped Up Kicks. Tron & Switched-On Bach. The Sons of the Pioneers. Chip Tune. Paranoia. Jimmy Hendrix. The Bobs. The Grateful Dead. R.E.M. Moonlight Sonata. The Disney Electric Parade. The Final Fantasy VI soundtrack. Forever Young. The Hukilau Song. Over the Rainbow, and Make New Friends. Joy of Man's Desiring. Gnarles Barkley.

    It seems like every year, I get into more music. I discover things that I never

    • Same here. I'm 45 and as far as I can recall, the music I've always been the most passionate about is stuff I heard for the first time within the prior five or so years (currently a lot of Flogging Molly, Frank Turner, Gogol Bordello, and Authority Zero). I still have a fondness for classic rock on occasion, but I don't understand how some of my contemporaries can listen exclusively to the local classic rock radio station year in and year out. Freebird!!!!

  • Always listened to a broad range of music. Not a fan of atonal jazz/classical, rap, hip-hop, or trance. Pretty much open to anything outside of that.

    My modus operandi on Spotify is to type in some word I see when stopped in traffic and peruse the results. The only problem I encounter is that there is much, much more mediocrity out there (in all musical styles) than there is truly innovative stuff. So I have to sift through a lot of sand to find the gems.

  • In my teens and twenties I listened to a pretty diverse selection of music, just not much that was too popular, and not very loud. I mean, as a teenager still living in my parents' house my father would play on the computer in my bedroom and comment how he couldn't hear the music I as playing (which half the time was Venom or Slayer, that he hated anyway...)

    But then in my thirties I lived in urban India, where the noise from outside my apartment was usually louder than I liked music, people yelling, maids

  • Yep, pretty much (Score:4, Insightful)

    by istartedi ( 132515 ) on Thursday May 14, 2015 @03:57PM (#49693149) Journal

    Music virtually died in the late 90s, as far as I'm concerned. I was in my 30s. Nirvana is a lonely signpost on a desolate two-lane highway, leading into a rap desert.

  • by 'musicians' like Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, and boy bands.

    It's not that my tastes calcified, it's that I know music from the 50s-80s wasn't as brutalized and over manipulated by audio engineers, and musicians used to be able to actually sing and play instruments.

  • I was listening to rock and metal as a teenager, things like Motorhead, Judas Priest, Blue Oyster Cult. I still enjoy hearing the 'soundtrack of my life' from back then, but I can think of nothing more boring and tedious than listening to nothing but all of that for the rest of my life. I enjoy hearing new music on a regular basis. Of course there is some utter and complete crap out there, too, that I can completely do without, but that's not different than it ever was for me either. Looking at me, you woul

  • Give up "popular music" != calcify. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Atzanteol ( 99067 ) on Thursday May 14, 2015 @04:06PM (#49693245) Homepage

    I'm in my late 30's (*sigh*) and my music tastes have only expanded. Thing is - they expanded into areas that still aren't the current "popular music." It's difficult to tell how that would be represented in this report.

    Granted I'm likely an outlier of sorts but it's not clear that the methodology would consider me such.

    • Ah, and *now* I find this paragraph:

      "Kalia himself indicates the study refers to popular music and not specific genres or time periods with the title of his analysis: “Music was better back then: When do we stop keeping up with popular music?” It’s not that you stop listening to new artists or even discovering new styles as you age, just that you won’t care as much who is taking home platinum records and leading the iTunes downloads race."

      That's a long way from calcifying...

  • I wouldn't say that people's tastes calcify. Good music holds up to the tests of time and bad music doesn't.

    There is a lot of music of low quality produced in every age that became popular then but doesn't hold up. Even in the 19th century there were then popular composers that practically nobody listened to ten years later.

    I started liking early '80s synth-pop when I was in my mid-30's - a genre I didn't listen to when I was younger because it had its peak when I was in kindergarten. But I listen to only

  • We kind of forget that most popular music of every generation sucks. Listen to the oldies station and you hear the few good songs from that era, the rest are thankfully forgotten. As you get older you don't want to listen to the current generation of crap until it ages a bit and the good stuff survives.

  • A bell curve and magic formula. (Score:3)

    by Hussman32 ( 751772 ) on Thursday May 14, 2015 @04:29PM (#49693451)

    I can't help but think there are many types of people on this survey, some will be rigid, others will always be dynamic. I personally listen almost exclusively to alternative rock stations, and while I like my favorites, I quickly tire of the repeat playlist on your Morning Zoo.

    But most importantly, I follow the 5/10/85 rule. 5% of music is timeless brilliance, 10% is listenable yet disposable, and 85% is crap. Those percentages vary by genre.

  • Confounding factors (Score:3)

    by dorpus ( 636554 ) on Thursday May 14, 2015 @04:59PM (#49693679)

    Retail music stores have disappeared, MTV has faded into irrelevance, so how does anybody know what the "top charts" are anymore? In all seriousness, where does one find these? There are a million web sites all claiming to have authoritative lists. Also, with the recent availability of unlimited streaming, I have experienced an explosion in diversity of musical tastes in my mid-40s. I no longer have to take chances on albums or individual tunes I might not like -- I can listen to a hundred different artists in one day.

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday May 14, 2015 @06:22PM (#49694255)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

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