Over the past few months I actually had several conversations about music that went like this:
A: so do you like listening to music?
B: sure, who doesn’t.
A: ok which genre of music do you prefer?
B. You know - I basically listen to everything
A: (invisible eye roll) everythingl so do you like rock?
B: not really
A: metal?
B: omg wtf no.
A: hip hop?
B: maybe sometimes idk
A: maybe classical?
B: ive heard some songs I guess (yeah „songs“ sure)
A: (almost giving up) [thinking: ok that’s not going anywhere let’s try something different]
A: any artists you currently prefer?
B: yeah but cant really point at them…
A: ok what about band X?
B: never heard of them
A: what about singer y she‘s quite popular
B: idk maybe Heard- a song or two
A: what about artist Z?
B: not really
A. Then what DO you listen to?
B: actually I listen to whatever comes on the radio. Charts and stuff
A: (small facepalm) ok do you like this song? (Name a few random chart songs)
B: never really heard their titles maybe
A: (big facepalm)
it’s not like im gatekeeping or anything. It’s perfectly fine to not listen to music but then say so in the first place. To me however - being a musician myself - I just can’t fathom how someone could not actively listen to music. What theyre doing is not listening. For them music is nothing but a distraction to make whatever they’re doing else less boring. Even when you’re just listening to radio pop it’s not forbidden to actively enjoy it for what it is. I mean I occasionally listen to (selected) modern pop as well and I grew to really like some artists (as you probably derive from my username). No music is void of substance and I’m the last guy to judge anyone based on their taste. however what I judge is their approach to music and the conversation that really happened like this several times is the worst approach to music one can have imo, it’s worse that not listening to any music at all.
I find that versions of that conversation can happen with anything that one person may enjoy more emphatically than another.
-movies, "How can someone not watch movies multiple times and take in all the subtlety and expression from the filmmaker? Just watching a movie for enjoyment is ridiculous. They may as well not watch movies."
-food, "How can someone not go out of their way to experience every form of food, figure out the ingredients, talk to the chef, focus on the experience. Just eating food they like and being happy with it is crazy. They may as well just eat fast food."
-books, "How can someone not read such and such writer and instead only read these other writers? They are missing out on what literature is. They may as well look at pop-up books."
-cars, "How can someone say they like to drive when they haven't done any performance training and don't understand how the car works and the physics of it all. They may as well take a bus."
-travel, "How can someone just visit an area and relax. They are missing out on the entire reason to travel, they may as well stay home."
-volunteering, "How can someone not spend some of their time giving back to the community, it is so fulfilling. They may as well just sit on the couch all the time"
-exercising, "How can someone not have a full exercise regiment? Just going for a walk and doing a few exercises isn't going to make enough of a difference."
-sports, "How can you call yourself a fan if you don't know all the stats? Don't even watch sports if you don't understand all the details."
-diet, "You can't say you watch what you eat if you don't look at the ingredients on everything you eat"
and on and on.
Most people have something that they are much more into compared to some other people; listening to music is just another one of those things. It doesn't mean the other people aren't doing it right, they are just doing it differently; they may not get as much out of it even if they 'actively' did it. We get different amounts of enjoyment from different things. Any one of those things listed above someone could say they enjoy and it could be on a basic level or it could be a very intense experience for them.
I've heard musicians talk in glowing terms about music I didn't like at all and I figured that they understand more of the difficulty and what is going on so they appreciate it in a different way. Similar to the way some chefs get all excited when another chef takes a questionable ingredient and makes it taste good. More than just the final taste, they are appreciating the process that got there.