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What Happens To Our Musical Taste As We Age?
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."
pop music is 'given up' because it targets a demographic of youth as a branding and marketing driver. Bieber sells the idea of manufactured sex appeal to young women, while angsty pop rock sells the idea of rebellion and individuality through consumption to boys. LMFAO and Pitbull are just clever branded advertising for premium alcoholic spirits and luxury apparel/vehicles. They set a standard outside of childhood that no self-respecting adult would entertain.
30somethings are a very difficult democraphic to market anything to. 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. Miley Cyrus' magical transformation into some glam rocker didnt shock us because we didnt grow up caring about the moral majority and conservative culture war dogma.
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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.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.