How We Consume Music

 I typically post in this blog in Finnish, but it is also the only blog where music is covered.

I got an odd query from a poster at a message board relating to the Beatles. My tendency is to go off topic on musical questions, because I look at it rather broadly. Though I was as much a Beatle fan as all us were, I only looked at "what do they represent?" and then compared to the rest of my 60s and 70s records.

And yes, he (the poster) was indeed a BIG Beatles fan so the rest of music was from that angle. Many of us growing up in the 60s discovered MUSIC, our music, through them. He was asking how our musical tastes were formed by them. Were we limited, or was it just a door to all music? (He worded it really badly, so I left the thread soon, I don't need that kind of stubborn person this morning).

It influenced how I listened to music. The tempos, the style, the "energy" as some people label it, those controlled what else I listened to. I barely knew the lyrics past the title that I tried to pronounce. In a few cases the lyrics were printed. With the Beatles, Magical Mystery Tour (I am the Walrus!) and Sgt Pepper had printed lyrics. Prior to The Beatles music to me was just songs I learned in school and sang in the choir. Patriotic songs or Christmas songs.

I then moved on to listen to even baroque music by age 17. It was mainly Bach and Vivaldi and instrumental music. Zappa and Hot Rats had also come in by then.

Looking at record collection and CD collection on people's shelves, I concluded that most people get kind of stuck listening to some bunch of music, broad or narrow, between ages 15-35. many never buy of consume new stuff past age 35. If the bands still exist, they follow them, and a few more in the same genre.

There are lot of us, though, that follow music through our lives. We are not musicians, but find music meaningful and worth following and keeping up with even pop artists or metal or whatever it is, through the current decade. I found some guitar and instrumental music I can listen to such as Polyphia or The aristocrats that I might listen to. Nearly all the people my age would not care for it.

I am guessing that we are no more than 10% of the music consuming public, but we definitely are much more open to new material than the ones stuck with the music they heard when they were 15-35. I listen to that stuff myself and I get the nostalgia and memories attached to them. But that is just one sort of "folder" of music for me.