It's True: Some People Just Don't Like Music

sciencehabit writes "Researchers have found that between 1 and 3% of people don't like music of any kind. These people aren't tone deaf or incapable of grasping the emotional meaning of a song—their brains simply didn’t find listening to music rewarding. While some psychiatric disorders are associated with the loss of the ability to feel pleasure, called anhedonia, the music-haters represent the first evidence for not feeling pleasure from only one specific pleasing stimulant, a condition that has been dubbed music-specific anhedonia. Curious where you fall on the music reward spectrum? The researchers have an online quiz." I know I actively prefer silence to most music, but what I like, I like intensely. Update: 03/06 21:48 GMT by T : Sorry for the garbled submission; now fixed.

Comments

Mind = Blown

[BisuDagger]

The amount of statistical information in the OP and the bonus "online quiz" has made this the /. article of the day!

Re:Mind = Blown

[mythosaz]

Study also shows that between 1 and 3% of online survey takers don't give a crap about the questions they're being asked, and just want the survey to be over with.

Re:Mind = Blown

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually "popular music" means "everything that isn't classical music." It is not a function of how many people like it.

HEY

[marcello_dl]

I didn't know there were so many fans of Bieber.

Re:HEY

[cayenne8]

Exactly.

So very little music you hear out today can be considered "musical" at all.

I prefer the days (I'm a rock/blues type) when people/groups generally wrote their own songs, played their own instruments, and aside from a bit of reverb, and other treatments shy of fucking Autotune...had real vocals on their songs.

I guess that's why I still see young kids of today, wearing AC/DC or Stones' tshirts (reproductions), and listening to Led Zeppelin, when they should have really come up with giants of music of their own day to replace the ones of my day.

I was shocked the other day really.

It was an afternoon on the way home from work not long ago. I was warm and I had the windows down on the car, and I was blaring Dazed and Confused, the 30 min live version from TSRTS album. It was during the extender part of Jimmy Page bowing his guitar, just a lot of noise really, and unless you knew this piece on a live recording...you'd not know what this noise was, especially considering the age of the piece.

Well, I pulled up, rolled up the windows, turned the music down and the car off and got out to walk into the store.

Just outside the store, a young stock boy, like in his upper teens, was sitting outside smoking a cig on break I guess. As I walked by, he spoke to me and said "Oh man, I love Zeppelin...dazed and confused!!"

I smiled and said yeah, good stuff or something like that.

As I walked in the store, I thought more about it and thought, goodness...HTF did he know that song?

Its that the old stuff is still around...because something happened along the way, and nothing really great or unifying in music happened much after my younger years, and the old stuff is still strong enough to keep a following. It hasn't been supplanted yet.

I think part of it was...most music through my era, had been very closely built or nicked from the music of the generation before it. Somewhere in the late 80s or 90's maybe, there was a break in the continuum. And music splintered, and money took over...and well, you just didn't get the continuing stream of artist with control over their music and time to hone their skills, style and following like say a Led Zeppelin did. Music became throw away, and while there have always been one hit wonders, that is now the norm. Groups don't earn or aren't given a chance to develop staying power. Or, maybe they just don't work as hard to know their instruments and music. I dunno.

Maybe some combination of all of the above.

Ok, now, get off my lawn, and lemme get my anti-static gun to "clear" my album I'm about to throw on the turntable.

Re:HEY

[Anonymous Coward]

Plenty of good modern music out there, it's just harder to find or not played on mainstream FM radio as in the 70s.

Re:HEY

[CanHasDIY]

It was an afternoon on the way home from work not long ago. I was warm and I had the windows down on the car, and I was blaring Dazed and Confused, the 30 min live version from TSRTS album. It was during the extender part of Jimmy Page bowing his guitar, just a lot of noise really, and unless you knew this piece on a live recording...you'd not know what this noise was, especially considering the age of the piece.

Well, I pulled up, rolled up the windows, turned the music down and the car off and got out to walk into the store.

Just outside the store, a young stock boy, like in his upper teens, was sitting outside smoking a cig on break I guess. As I walked by, he spoke to me and said "Oh man, I love Zeppelin...dazed and confused!!"

I smiled and said yeah, good stuff or something like that.

As I walked in the store, I thought more about it and thought, goodness...HTF did he know that song?

To be fair, the Zep represents that rare breed of musician whose art transcends generations. Just so happens the 1960's and 70's were chock-full of that kind of artist: Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Pink Floyd, the Beatles...

Well, OK, maybe just those four. Now that I think about it, I don't know anyone under the age of 25 or 26 who can name even one Jefferson Starship or Bread song.

Re:HEY

[Anonymous Coward]

So very little music you hear out today can be considered "musical" at all.

I prefer the days (I'm a rock/blues type) when people/groups generally wrote their own songs, played their own instruments, and aside from a bit of reverb, and other treatments shy of fucking Autotune...had real vocals on their songs.

I hope this is sarcasm.

Every generation has great well crafted music, and every one has outside-written, overproduced pop that "real music" fans loathe. Believe it or not, we STILL have rock and blues. Just because you haven't made an attempt to find it doesn't mean it isn't there. It's hilarious that when people compare their favorite older music to modern music they always compare it to top-40 pop rather than the actual genre that would match. That autotune sentence of yours topped it off for me.

Somehow you manage to make Zeppelin and the Beatles represent the late 60s (not Three Dog Night or Neil Diamond), yet you automatically make pop radio music represent current music rather than, the MANY MANY bands who are extremely talented and creative without needing a lot of producing.

Ok, now, get off my lawn, and lemme get my anti-static gun to "clear" my album I'm about to throw on the turntable.

...

We still have turntables and EVERY BAND STILL RELEASES VINYL. I have vinyls of all of the music I consistently listen to and the only time I listen to MP3 is when I'm traveling.

Before you rant about an entire generation of musicians, please at least try to learn something first.

Re:HEY

[wisnoskij]

Well you got to remember. There is that the new generations "greats" are Justin Bieber's. But also these bands are often still playing. There are lots of 60-70 year old rockers out their still playing concerts.

I think it is simply the money angle. You make more money taking some nobody off of the street, getting him to sign over 99.5% of their income for 5 years, making them a star overnight, and then dropping them when the contract runs out and they demand more money. They do not have to be good, even the highly modified songs they put out do not have to be good, as long as the entire industry keeps the general same quality, no one will know what they are missing.

Re:HEY

[Megane]

To be fair, the '80s had its share of good stuff too. The Police, Phil Collins both Genesis and solo, David Bowie, Huey Lewis, Michael Jackson before he got too weird, and a load of one-hit-wonders. (And nobody can name any Starship songs from the '80s either, except the heavily overplayed and overrated We Built This City.) I've got an iTunes playlist called "'80s Radio", which I have been filling up as I acquire old used CDs to rip from. It's mostly stuff from 1975-1988 (with some earlier stuff too) that you would hear on the radio during the early to mid '80s.

But the '90s? Hardly anything interested me from then. Black Hole Sun, and maybe a couple of things from Nirvana and RHCP. Then I discovered music from Japan, where they were making stuff that still had a lot of the feel of western music from the '80s, and also some German dark wave industrial (Rammstein and Eisbrescher). But the only new music from US/UK that I'll buy these days is when Weird Al comes out with a new CD.

Oh, and I think you forgot to mention The Rolling Stones, man.

Re:HEY

[Cimexus]

Agreed. There's heaps of excellent new (mostly indie) music being produced these days. Pop, rock, electronica, all genres under the sun. Problem is that most of it doesn't ever make the radio (particularly in the US). You kind of have to go out actively looking for good stuff ... it won't hit you in the face by chance as you'll never hear any of it in the mainstream media or in public places etc.

Re:HEY

[cayenne8]

Plenty of good modern music out there, it's just harder to find or not played on mainstream FM radio as in the 70s.

Possibly...

But maybe that's one of the things that went wrong...I mean since there's no real good mainstream way to easily discover new good music, if it is there but not easily accessible, then it really "isn't there" in actuality.

I mean, unless you're a kid or still living on the parents' teet, to have the free time to actively search for good music in the sea of banality, you don't see any good new stuff.

I mean, I have a day job...and my time away from that is spoken for, I don't have time to sit and devote hours to search the haystack for the odd shiny needle here and there.

But there may be something else. I mean, I speak with younger folks today about music, and to them, it is disposible. They tell me the download of even buy stuff, but it isn't something to keep and listen to for the rest of your life. It isn't worth it to get a GOOD listening set of tools, a good stereo, to listen to the music...I mean, the songs I grew up with, I BOUGHT all of it, and I feel so strongly about it, I invested over the years (not at once) quite a bit building a high quality home sound system, so that I can enjoy it to the fullest.

I can't imagine parting with my songs/albums/CDs ...I mean, if I"ve lost my hard copy I replace it and I keep hard copies to rip my digital versions I use for lessor listening environments (ipod in gym, the car, etc).

To me, the music that captures my heart, has never been disposable. What makes todays music disposable?

Re:HEY

[Darinbob]

I'm sick of you young kids no longer listening to the legends of Liszt and Haydn.

Re:HEY

[TapeCutter]

I grew up in the 60's and 70's, really good music has always been "harder to find", only cream of 70's musicians lived on, the rest were promptly forgotten. Same with any era, my adult kids still listen to the Nirvana and Gun's and Roses they grew up with and enjoy it just as much as I enjoy Floyd and Marley. The difference since about the late 80's is that parents and their children often have similar tastes in music.

I can't comprehend how someone could not enjoy ANY music, music is the fundamental pre-cursor to language, not only is it deeply ingrained into humans but species as diverse as whales and grasshoppers use music to communicate with each other.

Re:HEY

[jxander]

Once music started to make a ton of money, it shifted from an art to a business

Why wait for years while bands practice, learn instruments, tour to build a following and all that... skip it. Tell people "here's the latest band to be exited about," and just auto-tune them, have studio musicians play on the CDs, and lip sync in concert. We can now do in days or weeks what used to take years. And then we move onto the next big thing. There's no money to be made in people wearing the same band's tshirt for years on end. Make them buy new tshirts once a month for the new band that just newly got popular. And again and again and again.

Sarcasm aside, there are still plenty of good artists out there. Musicians who make great music, tour and genuinely love what they do. But they just don't get any of the publicity or marketing. "It's just business." I think the pendulum will swing back eventually. In the meantime, I think I'll listen to some Chickenfoot.

Re:HEY

[Anonymous Coward]

Its true, I have no feelings for any music I have had friends in the past try exposing me to different forms of music thinking that it was just because I haven't found what I liked nothing worked.

I can appreciate the skill that some musical forms take (like complex singing or skilful instrument playing) but have no feelings for any of the musical forms. I don't like or dislike any form of music apart from my appreciation for the skill.

I have not been in any accidents have suffered no trauma, I own no music & no cd's or any music players (no mp3 player's, record) no posters or music merchandise, when I drive I watch the road it doesn't even occur to me to turn the stereo on.

I do not enjoy ANY Music, oh and I speak 3 languages so I'm not sure how much of a precursor to language music is or its just an assumption made that music came before language.

Re:HEY

[melchoir55]

I can't comprehend how someone could not enjoy ANY music, music is the fundamental pre-cursor to language, not only is it deeply ingrained into humans but species as diverse as whales and grasshoppers use music to communicate with each other.

IAAL (I am a linguist)

Music is not the fundamental precursor to language. Language is just a fancy way of diong communication. Communication itself is a common thing that organisms do. The likely precursor to human language would be symbolic rperesentation without things like syntax. "Music" doesn't enter into it.

Animals aren't doing "music", unless by "music" you mean a form of communication which depends on repetitive pitch patterns or something like that. If that is what you mean, then you havnen't managed to distinguish between language and music. Language does that too. Most people think of music as an artistic twist on language. Pitches are held longer than is "normal" in the dialect. A prosody pattern is represented with a guitar rather than a human voice doing actual speech. The list goes on at length.

Animals are communicating with one another, and they tend to do it in a very similar way to humans. Most animals aren't doing anything you can reasonably call music if you want the words "music", "communication", and "language" to have any distinction. Your example of a whale using music to communicate is anthropormorphization. Whale speech happens to sound like music to you because your brain is keyed to represent certain tones in certain patterns in certain ways. It isn't any different than an a squirrel chriping, it just sounds more beautiful to humans because the tones are low and held for long periods.

Language is a precursor to music. It isn't the other way around. All that being said, I am surprised there are humans who don't enjoy any kind of music at all at any time. I suspect the results are either being exagerated, the survey results were contaminated, or the people being surveyed had a tenous grasp on language in general

Sorry...

[meglon]

Another psychological pseudo experiment that draws incredibly stupid conclusions from a meaningless, waste of time, poorly thought out, mess. Read the description of what they did.

Re:Sorry...

[plopez]

So in other words, no different from any other /. post.

Oblig XKCD

[scorp1us]

XKCD

Oliver Sacks

[snooz_crash]

...has already written about this phenomenon. http://www.oliversacks.com/books/musicophilia/

Jazz

[Curate]

I know a few people who can't stand music of any kind. They prefer jazz.

Ringing in my Ears

[Danathar]

Most of my youth was listening to Rush, Metallica and other hard rock/Metal bands of the 80's.

As a result I have ringing in my ears that I only notice when it's silent.

Have you ever heard "The Silence is Deafening?" Well, for me silence can literally BE deafening.

Re:Ringing in my Ears

[Morpeth]

Just curious, have you ever had an extended period of silence, like hours or days? Why I ask is this, most people have some ringing in total silence (which is rare because we live with SO much background noise these days), but it settles down after an extensive period of being in silence or near silent conditions. Whenever I go backpacking somewhere very remote, my ears ring like hell for the first day or so, by the 2nd or 3rd day, not so much.

But if it's always there, you may have tinnitus, which unfortunately medicine been able to cure/resolve yet... :/

Re:Ringing in my Ears

[labnet]

Which is called tinnitus.
If you put anyone in a sound proof room for long enough, they will eventually hear noises.
The most common form of tinnitus is a high pitch ringing and the most common source is now believed to be in neural cortex (related to memory and overactive neurone feedback) rather than the ear, although the original source is often a defect in ear mechanism, such as a loss at a certain frequency where the brain is attempting to compensate.
In my case, it is 24x7 for the last 15 years. I can hold a hair dryer up to my head and still hear it.
The only medically accepted treatments are habituation(TRT)/masking which is teaching your brain to break the fight/flight response.
There are other techniques that have variable results, such as xanax, hypnosis, vegas nerve stimulation, notched music, and playing tones either side of the tinnitus frequency.
I heard a quote recently that if you could hear pain, that would be the sound of tinnitus.

Re:Ringing in my Ears

[rts008]

You should just have your blood pressure checked.

That's HOW I keep track of my blood pressure, you insensitive clod!

All lame jokes aside, the volume and pitch of my tinnitus changes with my BP changes.

If it's louder than normal, and higher pitched than normal, it's usually a sign I have forgotten to take my BP med.'s.

Really?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

They must really hate this.

Re:Really?

[CanHasDIY]

They must really hate this.

I do.

Namely because, to me, it represents that self-serving form of 'performance art,' that has absolutely no artistic value but rather is an expression of the "artists" narcissistic desire to be the center of attention by doing something remarkably weird and/or stupid, and subsequently pontificating on the topic as if they're the first person in history to ever do anything weird and/or stupid. You know, the kind of garbage that art snobs devour.

FWIW, I despise most of Andy Warhol's work for pretty much the same reasons.

"Study"

[grimStone]

what a horrendously designed experiment. Population bias? Sample size? Different musical tastes? I don't know about the rest of you, but i'd prefer silence over that what is "popular" these days.

Right... I believe You.

[lunchbox134]

"...the students were asked to listen to popular music and rate how pleasurable they considered each song." I have to wonder how many hipster-types just dont find popular music pleasurable. I for one cant find much Pop music, as that is what pop basicallly means; or for that matter much popular music all that pleasurable. The overwhelming majority of it hits that subliminal message trigger in my brain. That and ask most music majors or theorists. much of it is composed of the same limited set of chord progressions.

The fuck kind of story...

[meta-monkey]

In other news, 1-3% of /. articles aren't complete shit.

Everyone I know hates music

[Cro Magnon]

As soon as I start singing, they throw rotten fruit at me!

Now are these people trainable?

[hey!]

Let's discard the people who can't recognize tunes or recognize emotions in music -- although they are interesting in themselves. Can the people who don't like music be trained to like music? In other words do they lack associated life experiences with music?

Another question is whether a better understanding would lead to enjoyment. We tend *not* to like music we haven't been exposed to (e.g. foreign music or young people's music).

Personally, I like to listen to music when I'm building something; this also correlates to what works for me when listening to lectures. I seldom need to look at notes, but I have to take them otherwise my mind wanders. I can even doodle, it doesn't matter. Somehow having my hands occupied seems to help my mind track external stimuli better.

Re:Now are these people trainable?

[ThatAblaze]

No.

I am one of the 1-3% mentioned. When I put my headphones on it's always an audio book. When I'm not listening to a book or doing something useful I find silence to be a lot more fulfilling than music. Music just gets in the way of constructive thought, and once you have heard a song a couple of times you've heard the song. Time to move on to something new.

Music just seems like a low-productivity and meaninglessly repetitive medium, irregardless of the quality of the song being played.

This is something I've always believed, but this is the first time I've ever seen that belief validated in any way by anyone. I think society does an excellent job of training people to like music already, and of telling people that they are weird if they don't.

Re:Now are these people trainable?

[hey!]

I'm not saying you *should* like music, questioning your personal experience with music, or challenging your position on the value of music.

What I'm interested is in whether the ability to like music or not is "baked in", either by genetics or early childhood experience. I think there's a good chance it could be, given the close relationship of music to language and what we think we know about neural plasticity and learning language. But that's just a hunch. Maybe it's a wrong hunch.

Who knows? Maybe if we figured out how to switch on music appreciation we might be a step toward enabling older people to learn to become fluent in foreign languages, something which is clearly practical.

Re:disliker!

[cayenne8]

These days I still dont get gangster rap... except for a few rare cases.

Well, to be fair, the words rap and music ARE mutually exclusive terms.

;)

Count Feynman as one who disliked music

[jmichaelg]

Richard Feynman said music sounded like noise to him. Didn't make any difference what type of music it was. He did however, like rhythm which is why he played percussion instruments.

Re:I don't like most popular music either.

[Anrego]

Uhh...

From the article:

"...the students were asked to listen to popular music and rate how pleasurable they considered each song."

Music

[ledow]

I have never bought a record, tape, CD, MP3 or anything else in my life.

Music is one of those things that just has no part in my life. I can appreciate it. I've been to concerts and ochestras. I quite enjoy it. But not enough to listen to it on loop 24 hours a day.

I spent many years spending hours travelling in the car with the radio on. It was for nothing else but to cure the "drone" of the car. I've not missed having it since I quit that job and don't travel far enough to even turn the radio on any more.

You know how the average person consider paintings? That's me with music. Yeah, I might have a few that I like, but I don't consume them all day long. I have enough to adorn my stereo to cover the occasional awkward silence and that's about it, and most of those someone has bought for me or I've been given for free.

I disable all music in games. It's the first thing I do before I even try the game - install, load up, turn off music. I just find it a distraction and don't get any value from it at all. (And yet, I have written games and put music into them because I understand some people like that).

If I do listen to anything, it's gentle, smooth music with predictable backings. Think "Sitting on the dock of the bay". I don't even have a single music file on my phone.

It's not something important to me, nor is it something I hate (there's a lot of music I hate, but it's not enough to be generalised hate of music). I can go to parties where music is playing and not go out of my mind, but my preference is no music.

Think of that next time you write a game and INSIST that the volume slider affects both sound effects and background music. You're just annoying me for no good reason.

Re:Music

[ThatAblaze]

Our society is so mindlessly pro music that whenever I've told people that "I don't like music" they look at me with a blank stare. It's just not something you are allowed to say in society today because some people define their lives by what music they like and what music they don't like. I, personally, find music to be a waste of time and meaninglessly repetitive in most situations.

Cudos to the people who made this study for bringing this phenomenon out into the open. For a long time the people who spend all day obsessing about which type of music they like have drowned out the voice of the people who would rather do something more productive.

Not that it's a revolution or anything. It only really becomes important when marketers or, say, someone you are on a date with asks you "what type of music are you in to?" The assumption there is that you must be in to some kind of music, because everyone is. But not everyone is.

Re:Music

[Cinder6]

Yeah, there's always that awkward silence when somebody finds out that *gasp* you don't listen to music. I think people tend to find it a little more acceptable when I "explain" that I listen to audiobooks, because they absolutely cannot fathom the idea of driving in silence.

They may not have found it.

[gurps_npc]

Until I was 30 I disliked most forms of music. Frankly I was shocked that so many people thought sound designed to influence their mental state was a good idea. Especially when you most often have no choice about what is playing.

Then I found dance and I fell in love with tango.

If I had not found it I might still dislike music.

It does not surprise me that 1-3% of the population has not found music they like - yet.

RIAA's Response

[Jason Levine]

RIAA's Response: These people *claim* not to like music? Why that's unamerican! If this catches on, the entire music industry will collapse!!!!! We must pass immediate legislation declaring "not liking music" to be illegal. To prove consumers like music, they will be required to purchase at least three albums from RIAA-approved labels every year. Failure to do so will be considered proof that the consumer is actually an Internet pirate stealing our works and will be sued into oblivion.

What Percentage of Adults are Deaf?

[ohieaux]

I've seen estimates from the US government at 2%. Sounds like 1-3% wouldn't be able to hear music anyway. Didn't RTFA, perhaps they accounted for that.

Re:I don't like most popular music either.

[Alain Williams]

Agreed. The slashdot summary is badly worded; the phrase don't like is ambiguous, it can either mean want it to stop or it does not speak to them (how the original article words it).

You use the different meaning than the article when you talk about is 'popular music'. In that I agree with you as, to my ears, most modern 'music' is not worth listening to and often grates my ears. I like Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Handel, etc, in the main but also trad jazz, some rock is OK. I get wound up by what I consider noise being blasted at me in some shops, swimming pools & other public places. I do realise that some people must like modern/pop stuff, but I do wonder how much of it will still be played in 20 years let alone 200.

There is no ringing in your ears

[SmallFurryCreature]

The ringing is your brains signalling your taste center has never grown in, as you grow older but not wiser the ringing will increase trying to signal you to develop some taste and individuality.

Really? Metallica?

Have you no shame whatsoever?