Your music taste goes through a bizarre change when you hit 30

https://www.indy100.com/article/science-suggests-theres-an-age-after-which-you-stop-discovering-new-music-8402336

Deezer, the website which tracks huge amounts of data in order to tailor recommendations to its users, relied on a 1000 person survey to find out about listening habits.

Cheaper than actual advertising, I suppose.

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What a pile of bollocks.

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My taste has got broader and more experimental and varied as Iā€™ve got older. Iā€™ve listened to so much music in my life that Iā€™ve become less and less tolerant of stuff that is safe and unadventurous. Iā€™m always looking for something Iā€™ve not heard before.

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Same here. When I was a teenager I had my tribe that I belonged to. As I got older I branched out and followed the branches of the musical tree. My listening - and the stuff I play when DJing - is far more broad now than it ever was.

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Hasnā€™t changed at all in the last month

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I think having grown up on Peel I always had fairly wide taste. Iā€™ve never really understood people who just listen to indie guitar bands or just listen to hip hop or just listen to electronica (although I love all of those things). What has happened over the years is that
Iā€™ve become more selective and less trusting of critical orthodoxy. Even in my twenties Iā€™d think I bought into the latest music press ā€˜hot bandā€™ much more than I should have done. Itā€™s easy these days to give those things a quick listen and discount any claim they might have to originality - experience gives you the confidence to make quick judgements you can have faith in. Because I always want new music to listen to that forces you out to the margins to find something that is both new and of value.

I still love a lot of the music Iā€™ve always loved and Iā€™m very happy when it comes up on shuffle, but if I have an hour to sit down and listen to a record it will be something new 90% of the time. That normally means newly released but also explorations of bands and genres you havenā€™t listened to before.

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As for originality, I believe that Billy Childish had it right when he said that ā€œOriginality is overrated.ā€

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Itā€™s probably the wrong word, but I canā€™t think of one that expresses what Iā€™m looking for better. Not necessarily a brand new sound but some spark of something new and unexpected or different or individual. I like lots of new music that sounds like old music but it has to have something in the songwriting that lifts it above the crowd.

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Jordan_inmy30s

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I have got more adventurous as time has gone on with music. Probably more to do with availability and lack of fucks given than anything else. 16 year old punk me would have been unlikely to spend money on a Joanna Newsom record as it would have been a punt and I would be afraid of looking like a dork. No issues now though.

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Hitting 30 this year, put on Radio 2 out of choice in the car the other day. Can only conclude that this article* is 100% accurate.

*I havenā€™t read it. Iā€™m 30 soon and canā€™t afford to waste time reading things.

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In my teenage years I was very tribal and only listened to stuff I thought I should like

In my twenties my tastes expanded, I realised there was good music in all sorts of genres and I listened to loads of different stuff.

Now Iā€™m 30 Iā€™ve pretty much given up on proactively seeking new music and just listen to stuff I know I like, but at least it has a fair range.

This is the opposite from what Iā€™ve experienced - maybe a good 90% of bands that I listen to Iā€™ve discovered since turning 30. I think a lot of that had to do with the sudden existence of Spotify, and also being relocated across the country at that age to the suburbs of a city where I knew no one for a job I loathed. I pretty much did nothing in my free time other than try to find new music. Finding this place has pushed that even further - itā€™s weird looking back to when I considered years where I found four new albums (three of which were probably by bands I already knew) as productive.

As Iā€™m approaching 30 (it feels weird to be saying that), I am finding with regard to music that (a) thereā€™s less time to really invest in music as there was when I was younger (even considering that my hours are fairly flexible at this point in time); and (b) itā€™s harder to be as passionate about a larger pool of music as I was about the smaller amount I was aware of when I was younger.

Still bloody love music, though. I really canā€™t see myself suddenly thinking ā€œmusic has stopped nowā€ at the age of 30.

definitely changing, want to hear more middle aged people moaning about life not so interested in lovely harmonies or broken hearts.

So many things I really liked when I was 20 that I couldnā€™t be bothered to listen to anymore.

I do not think age changes music taste much. I do think trends and not being part of those trends can make older listeners less likely to seek or feel part of ā€œnewā€ music and rely too much on the easy option - which would be listening to what they already know.

see also: age

I decided to stop working in a record shop at the age of 30 after working there for 7 years. Crap pay but on reflection a dream job. I figured at the age of 30 if I didnā€™t go to Uni then I never would. Wish I was still there in ways but 30 does feel like a pressure age to be an adult, etc, blah, blah.

Most of my friends couldnā€™t name a single band that came out in the past 20 years and use that fact as the centerpiece of their argument that music has been terrible for the past 20 years. How could it be good if they havenā€™t heard it? They were like that long before they turned 30 but theyā€™ve really doubled down since then and are unwilling to even listen to a ten second clip of anything and automatically mock it just for existing. I guess itā€™s the first stage of the whole ā€œkids these daysā€ thing.

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