Generally, people having eclectic or niche taste label themselves as ‘people not to pass the aux to’ (sometimes for a good reason), but is there an objective measure of how ‘good’ a person’s taste is?
The answer is a resounding no, as music taste (or any opinion on art really) is subjective by definition. People listen to what they like - in the end, how they found the music, who (if any) recommended it to them, how and why could they relate to the album, and how mainstream, ‘indie’ or obscure it is should never matter. How or why you like a particular record is your reason alone, and if you’re expecting people not to judge your music taste, isn’t it good if we listen to what we like and just shut up judging music tastes already?
But of course, you can judge your music taste - whether it’s changed for the better or worse. Of course, what looks like an improvement to you might not appear that way to someone else, but that shouldn’t matter.
I like to think that I listened to a ton of genres in high school and college, and I listen to a ton now - I tend to not stick with one artist for long and prefer spicing up my playlists with many genres and languages. While that might appear chaotic to many, I have found that my entire gamut of emotions runs from slightly sad to exuberant - in the end, I don’t feel the need for ‘this world is shit’ and ‘soundtracks for walking’ playlists. Since I never feel constrained by genre or eras, the need for those kinds of playlists is also out.
The result is a humongous playlist consisting of ~7100 songs. Just shuffling this makes me cycle through happiness, sadness, melancholy, freneticism and contemplation - what more could you need from a music playlist?
Let’s come to the tiresome debate of mainstream vs niche. There’s nothing lamentable, per se, in listening to a mainstream group (BTS, The Beatles, Drake or Madonna, for instance) - as there is so much music to listen to, which you’ll never complete even if you were reborn a thousand times over. Of course, this leads to the inevitable question - if there’s so much music and so little time - why not listen to your favourite 50 songs for the rest of your life, plus whatever songs people recommend you and you find on the radio? What is the point of it all?
I want to say the answer is discovery. Finding an obscure record and realising it is one of the best things you’ll ever hear, is an experience that I cannot describe in words alone. Life-changing would be stretching it, but some records have the potential to do the same.
I would also like to talk about how the advent of streaming has fundamentally changed music consumption. Years ago, the only way to find new music was word-of-mouth, concerts, and magazines - and since people listened to music on vinyl or a cassette, there was no way to ascertain how long a track was or skip it. Thus, you had to experience music the way the creator intended. Whether you found that vision good or bad was something different, but I like to think that listeners were, at the very least, more engaged with the people who were making music. Tracks of 20, 30 or even 40-minute lengths were not uncommon in progressive rock or metal genres.
Then came the streaming era - the age of singles, as I like to call it. Since the market is now that much more crowded, the notion of industry plants, short and catchy singles, gaming the algorithm - these have all entered the aspiring musician’s lexicon. Exaggerated arguments of ‘old music is better than new music’ and ‘nothing was ever good after The Beatles’ do seem to have some merit - do they not?
Again, the above argument is flawed. There are older artists like The Velvet Underground, Frank Zappa/The Mothers of Invention, Joy Division, Outkast, King Crimson and Animal Collective that were pioneers of their era, sometimes even for decades. Some newer artists that have taken up the vanguard include My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Black Midi, Sweet Trip and Black Country, New Road - and this is just for English! Innovation has never stopped in music, and the invention of new subgenres or microgenres such as hyperpop means that music will remain culturally relevant as a medium for a long, long time to come.
Our attention span is decreasing - and the track lengths have consequently reduced in mainstream music (tracks as long as Bohemian Rhapsody will not be topping the charts anytime soon). At the same time, there is still a metric ton of great and inventive music that has not sounded like anything else before it. Although those will not enter the charts anytime soon (not everyone can appreciate genres such as folk, jazz or country, let alone ones like plunderphonics or chiptune), this does not mean musicians have stopped innovating entirely.
Popularity does not decide the worth of art. I preferred to listen to underground artists such as Nirvana or Pink Floyd and dismissed artists such as Taylor Swift and The Weeknd. It took the better part of six years to accept that there was nothing fundamentally wrong in the top 50 charts, and my taste is all the broader for that.
I first started cataloguing my music taste in 2014-15. My most-listened-to artists were a mixed bag - they were whatever I found on Youtube recommendations - be it one-hit-wonders like Era Istrefi, Desiigner, Lukas Graham or Hoobastank, or more mainstream names in India and abroad (Martin Garrix, A.R. Rahman, The Script, Avicii, KSHMR, Kygo, Imagine Dragons). I haven’t once returned to these artists in years, which goes volumes in saying how much my music taste has changed.
I currently listen to many artists regularly - some of them being Lifafa, Charli XCX, Björk, Radiohead, Osho Jain, Swans, black midi, The Strokes, Ram Sampath and Kaam Bhaari. Presently, I tend to stick longer with artists with extensive discographies (or just a wider variety of output in general) since there is so much to explore. I’d instead do a deep dive of discographies rather than listening to the same track again and again and yet again - the song gets very dull for me in that case, which is the last thing I’d want.
Genre-wise, I used to indulge in solely pop-rock and pop - along with some rap-metal, hip-hop and EDM/dubstep. There’s no box I could confide myself in - I just used to listen to some channels like MrSuicideSheep, Trap Nation, Chill Nation or used to rely on playlists (genre/mood based) to discover new songs. Back then, the Youtube recommendation algorithms were good due to a (relative) lack of saturation, so it was much easier to find music from the recommended section.
Presently, I try to focus on as many genres as I can. Still, my favourite genres at the moment are hyperpop, indie rock, dream pop/shoegaze, progressive rock, free jazz and psychedelic folk. All of them have diverse artists in them, and although there are mediocre and great artists in each genre (as is the case with every other genre, too), the greats in the genre tower over all the genres I’ve ever heard.
At present, Youtube will recommend you is popular stuff from the same genre - for example, if you’re listening to an indie song having 5M views, you’ll be recommended an indie song having, say, 100M views. Now, I’m not saying that popularity is a lousy metric - it’s just that popularity shouldn’t be the only metric for discovery. Discovery is where I think Spotify shines amazingly - I don’t mind data collection of my music habits if Spotify can serve excellent recommendations and niche ones at that. The release radar, discover weekly, daily mixes, and genre playlists make Spotify a one-stop-shop for most listeners.
The variety of playlists on Spotify (including by music reviewers such as Anthony Fantano, Pitchfork, NPR and Consequence of Sound) mean that there is no shortage of content - if you begin to deep-dive, there is so much content that you’ll start to feel overwhelmed. This magnitude is not a bad thing, per se - primarily if you aim to broaden your tastes. So my shifting from Youtube to Spotify has some rationale behind it, too - I have increased the variety of my taste a lot by branching out beyond what Youtube’s algorithms dished me.
One thing I’ve noticed is that I have gained the ability to multi-task while listening to music. Whether it be working on tasks that require my full attention or ones that don’t - I can keep on listening to music without my concentration getting affected. This habit is in direct contrast to 2014-15 (when I was ~19 and a college fresher), where I couldn’t concentrate on anything else, even my thoughts if some music was playing around me - I needed to lower it down before I could focus on the task at hand.
Fast forward to the present day, and here I am - writing a blog post while noise rock is playing in the background - I would not take it as a reflection of my increased focus on things; instead, it means I have grown to accept music as a part of my life - and I will always be grateful for it!
Whew. That encompasses most of my thoughts on music - now out there for you all to see! Now I understand why writing feels like baring your soul - both for yourself and for others. Although it feels slightly scary at first, the metaphorical plunge I’ve taken feels very satisfying. I hope you all have something to take away from this article, and thanks for reading till the end!