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Do You know Anyone Who Doesn’t Like Music?

it is extremely rare not to like any music (some people have very limited knowledge of music and they listen only to very few things they like), however love for music is a learning process, so it depends very much on what kind of music you have been exposed to during your childhood, youth and gradually the rest of your life. More music and of different types you are exposed to and the more your appreciation of music becomes wide and without specific preferences, expanding also into traditional music of other countries and nationalities, even to "musical noises and rythmic patterns".
One risk, when your appreciation of music becomes so wide, is boredom, when you hear "the same old stuff" or music that sounds "too simple" to you. Your ears look for new and unheard sounds and rythms.
Regretfully with age my hearing has deteriorated, so I fully agree with whoever was saying "if it has to be garbled noise in the background, then better switch it off"!
 
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Some scientists argue that music might be a by-product of other cognitive functions like language and auditory processing—a kind of “auditory cheesecake” (Pinker, 1997).

Becoming music? I guess that's no joke according to a new [one of many, over decades] international study relating to "music therapy" or 'music intervention'. It suggests that when we listen to music, something much deeper happens than just hearing a tune -- we actually 'become' the music. Researchers found that our brains and bodies naturally sync up with the rhythms and harmonies, helping explain why music can make us feel emotions, tap our feet or move [groove] to the beat. This study concludes that the finds could lead to better music-based therapies for conditions like Parkinson's, stroke recovery and depression. Other studies conclude that music-based therapeutic interventions to improve quality-of-life for those with dementia.

From managing chronic pain and regulating mood to enhancing mobility and preserving memory, music offers an accessible way to heal the brain and treat mental health conditions.
Music delays neuro-degeneration in conditions such as Alzheimer's. These results show for the first time directly that listening to music activates the brain’s opioid system,” said Vesa Putkinen from the University of Turku. The same neurotransmitter [dopamine] involved in pleasure from food, sex, and social interaction (Salimpoor et al., 2011).

OT-ish: "The Australian Music Therapy Association (AMTA) is the government-recognised peak body for the music therapy profession in Australia. We manage the registration and regulation of registered music therapists, and we promote and advocate for music therapy." :oops:
 
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Great topic! In my youth I always hated music. My brother listened to pop music all the time. Cannot endure it till today; to hell with the summer of '69. But in recent years I came to like music, especially non vocal jazz, fusion and classic. When I was young I had to shrug my shoulders when asked what music I liked. The dislike of music really was and is uncommon and I felt like an outsider. Maybe one needs time to develop a certain taste? Like with dark chocolate, coffee and stuff?
 
I know plenty for whom music isn't of much importance.
I have a few friends that claim to love music but couldn't name a song that was made after 1969. :facepalm:
Their musical interests ended shortly after the got out of schooling.
Life goes on but you couldn't tell from some.
I personally can't remember a time I didn't love music, from the time I was small I listened to the local WLS rock
station and begged my folks for a RCA 45 player and discs. A family friend gave me the player and I got the big hole discs
from any manner I could.
 
Oh My, the grammar police strikes again. LOL
No, no!
I just wanted to read the details/examples of the any manners that were at your disposal. ;)

ADD: The only other manner I knew was the Columbia-House dealio, but that did not start until the LP days.
 
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Define "like"....

Back in the day, you had to buy music (at some relative expense), get off your fat arse and go to a store to buy it.

You had to make some reasonable investment in a music system (even if just an all in one), store the physical discs and expend some energy selecting an album and sticking it on/off a playback device.

So in those days, if you brought vinyl, or latterly CD's then you liked music...cause there was some effort/money involved.

Also in those old days you had people who "liked" music in the sense they would play music on a radio as background noise.

Now I think the people in my first category above are a dying breed (i.e. true music lovers noting I also give a pass to people who curate a music collection from a streaming service) but I think, in my experience, there are very few die hard music lovers left (aside from us oldies) and most people now just stream some playlist (that they didn't curate themselves) from spotify, on the phone they already own with airbuds.

They might, over time, create their own playlist, but the source of any specific track would have come from a pre-generated list they we listening to, so no real effort needed.

That is not liking music, that is "liking" music to fill in their day as they do stuff.

Also potentially, if someone only ever plays a playlist and never a full album, are they a die hard music lover or just a casual listener?

It's like my BIL... says he LOVES Blues (the musical genre) but couldn't name a single Blues artist aside from SRV, and he only hears him occasionally from some spotify play list.

To answer the question, I only know one bloke who I would define as liking music and he is an audiophile (a no nonsense one like myself)... everyone else I know just streams a playlist on a phone or some bluetooth (mono) speaker.

And that, IMHO, is not liking music in the same sense that everyone likes a car (cause it gets us from A->B) but to really LIKE a car means getting your hands dirty.

Yep, I am another grumpy old man yelling at the clouds.

Peter


PS apologies if someone else has stated something similar to the above... don't have time at the moment to read the thread
 
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Define "like"....

Back in the day, you had to buy music (at some relative expense), get off your fat arse and go to a store to buy it.

You had to make some reasonable investment in a music system (even if just an all in one), store the physical discs and expend some energy selecting an album and sticking it on/off a playback device.

So in those days, if you brought vinyl, or latterly CD's then you liked music...cause there was some effort/money involved.

Also in those old days you had people who "liked" music in the sense they would play music on a radio as background noise.

Now I think the people in my first category above are a dying breed (i.e. true music lovers noting I also give a pass to people who curate a music collection from a streaming service) but I think, in my experience, there are very few die hard music lovers left (aside from us oldies) and most people now just stream some playlist (that they didn't curate themselves) from spotify, on the phone they already own with airbuds.

They might, over time, create their own playlist, but the source of any specific track would have come from a pre-generated list they we listening to, so no real effort needed.

That is not liking music, that is "liking" music to fill in their day as they do stuff.

Also potentially, if someone only ever plays a playlist and never a full album, are they a die hard music lover or just a casual listener?

It's like my BIL... says he LOVES Blues (the musical genre) but couldn't name a single Blues artist aside from SRV, and he only hears him occasionally from some spotify play list.

To answer the question, I only know one bloke who I would define as liking music and he is an audiophile (a no nonsense one like myself)... everyone else I know just streams a playlist on a phone or some bluetooth (mono) speaker.

And that, IMHO, is not liking music in the same sense that everyone likes a car (cause it gets us from A->B) but to really LIKE a car means getting your hands dirty.

Yep, I am another grumpy old man yelling at the clouds.

Peter


PS apologies if someone else has stated something similar to the above... don't have time at the moment to read the thread
I don't believe the two groups are mutually exclusive. For example, I - also an old git now - like to sit and listen intently to CD or streamed albums of my choice for an hour or two every morning while enjoying my coffee. However, music is also playing in my home during most of my waking hours as filler to set my mood, either from my CD jukeboxes or from curated streamed playlists on internet radio (usually 1.FM Bay Jazz or one of the JazzRadio.com channels), Qobuz, Amazon Prime Music Unlimited, etc.
 
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...Also potentially, if someone only ever plays a playlist and never a full album, are they a die hard music lover or just a casual listener?...
...And that, IMHO, is not liking music in the same sense that everyone likes a car (cause it gets us from A->B) but to really LIKE a car means getting your hands dirty...
Aren't these a bit extreme and judgemental for varying music tastes and appetites?

I may not be a fan of "one-song Charlie" bands or I may hate 'copy/tribute' bands, or I may have an affinity to certain genres, or I may have a multi-TB NAS library of CDs.
None of the above examples would disqualify me (or anyone else) from drooling over some delicious
auditory cheesecake
...but my most fave has got to be the 'New York' style genre!;)
 
Define "like"....

Back in the day, you had to buy music (at some relative expense), get off your fat arse and go to a store to buy it.

You had to make some reasonable investment in a music system (even if just an all in one), store the physical discs and expend some energy selecting an album and sticking it on/off a playback device.

So in those days, if you brought vinyl, or latterly CD's then you liked music...cause there was some effort/money involved.

Also in those old days you had people who "liked" music in the sense they would play music on a radio as background noise.

Now I think the people in my first category above are a dying breed (i.e. true music lovers noting I also give a pass to people who curate a music collection from a streaming service) but I think, in my experience, there are very few die hard music lovers left (aside from us oldies) and most people now just stream some playlist (that they didn't curate themselves) from spotify, on the phone they already own with airbuds.

They might, over time, create their own playlist, but the source of any specific track would have come from a pre-generated list they we listening to, so no real effort needed.

That is not liking music, that is "liking" music to fill in their day as they do stuff.

Also potentially, if someone only ever plays a playlist and never a full album, are they a die hard music lover or just a casual listener?

It's like my BIL... says he LOVES Blues (the musical genre) but couldn't name a single Blues artist aside from SRV, and he only hears him occasionally from some spotify play list.

To answer the question, I only know one bloke who I would define as liking music and he is an audiophile (a no nonsense one like myself)... everyone else I know just streams a playlist on a phone or some bluetooth (mono) speaker.

And that, IMHO, is not liking music in the same sense that everyone likes a car (cause it gets us from A->B) but to really LIKE a car means getting your hands dirty.

Yep, I am another grumpy old man yelling at the clouds.

Peter


PS apologies if someone else has stated something similar to the above... don't have time at the moment to read the thread
Go back even further and you will find those who disapprove of "canned music" altogether. In the 1920s one can find articles/diatribes about the corrosive effects of recorded music. Back then, "real music" was performed, live, in real time. And there was a lot more amateur music making as well. Artur Schnabel was the first to record all of Beethoven's piano sonatas in the 1930s, but he had more than a few words of distain for the process, thinking that people would have his performances in the background, not focusing or paying attention.

I can't make a claim to have developed my musical skills all that much, mostly strumming along on a guitar with a very amateur band. Most of the time that I'm listening to music it's either streaming specific tracks (don't care for playlists or having the music service choosing tracks for me) or playing CDs. I can say I love classical music - have four different sets of the complete Beethoven piano sonatas (including the aforementioned Schnabel recordings), five of the symphonies, twelve recordings of Beethoven's seventh symphony, about 1,000 CDs of classical music altogether. As someone who spent many years working in shops that sold recorded music, I think it's safe to say that I got my hands dirty.

Weird about your BIL - I can name something like twenty blues artists off the top of my head. But some of us are wired differently.

At the same time, it seems as though there are a lot more performers, though their numbers suggest a dilution of their impact - we no longer have the hegemony of top 40 radio. And who knows how many amateur performers there are these days anyway?
 
Perhaps I'm naive in musicology but as I understand it, without Blues music there would have been no transatlantic musical revolution in the 60's/70's, so no Rolling Stones, no Jimi Hendrix, nor any of the bands they inspired.
But that's just about Blues, a genre which can be understood to not be to everyone's taste.
The idea of a person that doesn't like music per se is as hard for me to understand as a person that doesn't like eating or breathing.
 
Perhaps I'm naive in musicology but as I understand it, without Blues music there would have been no transatlantic musical revolution in the 60's/70's, so no Rolling Stones, no Jimi Hendrix, nor any of the bands they inspired.
But that's just about Blues, a genre which can be understood to not be to everyone's taste.
The idea of a person that doesn't like music per se is as hard for me to understand as a person that doesn't like eating or breathing.
Big Joe Turner was performing the same kind of music in the 1930s as he was performing in the 1950s, when he was considered a "Rock 'n' Roll" performer. One of Nick Tosches' best (and most coherent) books is "Unsung Heros of Rock 'n' Roll", where we find the blues-based birth of what became Rock and Roll:

 
erhaps I'm naive in musicology but as I understand it, without Blues music there would have been no transatlantic musical revolution in the 60's/70's, so no Rolling Stones, no Jimi Hendrix, nor any of the bands they inspired.
True that but no one ever wants to give credit to Country, the majority of early rock artists all came out from country music roots.
 
True that but no one ever wants to give credit to Country, the majority of early rock artists all came out from country music roots.
Here in England some of the bands I liked started on the folk music circuit I enjoyed as solo acoustic performers. Pentangle stayed fairly folky but Fairport Convention branched out and spawned lots of the music I like. Blues, imported from the US, was played by quite a few on the folk circuit in London back in the late 60s and early 70s when I frequented it. The Troubadour had a blues night once a week iirc (it is over 50 years since I was there every week...)
Country wasn't and never has been a "thing" in the UK music scene despite it also having folk music roots
 
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Here in England some of the bands I liked started on the folk music circuit I enjoyed as solo acoustic performers. Pentangle stayed fairly folky but Fairport Convention branched out and spawned lots of the music I like. Blues, imported from the US, was played by quite a few on the folk circuit in London back in the late 60s and early 70s when I frequented it. The Troubadour had a blues night once a week iirc (it is over 50 years since I was there every week...)
Country wasn't and never has been a "thing" in the UK music scene despite it also having folk music roots
I was going to reply along similar lines..that much of the popular music we listen to now, in the UK at least, has its roots in what we call Folk music, and largely due to the revival that occurred in the late 60's/70's.
I believe a great debt for that is owed to Martin Carthy, who I never (yet) saw play.
But I did get to see the Fairports at Knebworth in '78, and (big Pentangle fan here) had the great privilege of seeing Bert Jansch a couple of times in the 'cosy' 12 Bar Club, off Charing Cross, back in the day.
 
I was going to reply along similar lines..that much of the popular music we listen to now, in the UK at least, has its roots in what we call Folk music, and largely due to the revival that occurred in the late 60's/70's.
I believe a great debt for that is owed to Martin Carthy, who I never (yet) saw play.
But I did get to see the Fairports at Knebworth in '78, and (big Pentangle fan here) had the great privilege of seeing Bert Jansch a couple of times in the 'cosy' 12 Bar Club, off Charing Cross, back in the day.
As a student in London with a mate who was an exceptional guitar picker I spent a lot of time at the Troubadour. There were a lot of subsequently famous people who started out playing to small audiences in the cellar there back then. The stage was the cutout under the coal shute in the pavement!
The highlight was Paul Simon just turning up one evening when Simon and Garfunkel were doing big gigs in London and just doing 3 songs for free coffee like his old days. Completely unexpected and unannounced!
I am a massive Pentagle and Fairport fan too.
I noticed on my phone my most played song is Fairport's "Farewell, farewell", not that I use my phone for music that often but it is a favourite of mine. Kate Rusby too nowadays.
 
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