How much do you value the social aspect of listening to music??

[MollyJanet]

I feel like everyone around me almost exclusively listens to music so they can exchange what they’ve been listening to others. A lot of friends and even acquaintances are constantly sending me links to songs they like and ask me to reciprocate. I don’t really mind this process but I feel like it ends up leading to rather shallow conversations. Barely anything more than “I like this song, it makes me feel like it’s summer” or “ehh it’s aight”. (Granted, two of my close friends are intense audiophiles and when we talk about music we really get deep into things like the intricacies of the production, hidden meanings of the lyrics etc. these convos are extremely enjoyable and some of my favorite moments, but the point I’m trying to make here is that these are quite rare).

Personally I have always tended to look at music as my personal escape from the world. There are artists, albums and songs that I almost actively try to not let people know I like, not because I’m ashamed of them but because I treat them like my solo retreat caverns. Up until the last couple years https://nox.tips/ when I started university, I thought more people would be like this, but lately I’ve begun to start thinking most people treat music like clothes, they just listen/wear them so others can see them. I’ve even had instances where someone overhears me listening to something and says things like “why would you listen to that? no one listens to that”. I am wondering how many of you guys also do not enjoy sharing music? (Unless it’s for detailed conversations like I mentioned earlier)

[tex]

I have been a huge RUSH fan for over 40 years, in case you never heard of them they are a canadian three piece prog rock band who have recorded 24 studio albums and have been selling out arenas around the world for decades BUT you can almost guarantee that if you tell somebody you are into Rush they will almost certainly reply WHO?....I gave up trying to convince people that Rush are a band worth listening to a long long time ago and despite being a multi platinum selling band they are still kind of a underground outfit that the average person never heard of...and that's fine by me.....Welcome to DYR Mollyjanet.

[Semi42]

Rush!
yeah, I like them but they were never my favourite despite them having been probably the tightest group on the planet. But respect to them. Neil will be missed
as for the social side of my choice of music, being more mature I do frown upon folk that look down at other peoples choices be it music, hobbies , sport or the like.

[George 1978]

Good points made by the OP - especially the comments about making people feel as it is summer. Apart from Christmas songs, (and songs sung by "disgraced" people), do we have a curfew as to when they can be played? - I mostly mean the radio stations in that respect. A few years back, Gold was playing a just song after Christmas (a couple of days after they had stopped playing Christmas songs), and it was a song that I always associated with summer and June and July time.

Radio stations don't just play January by the Pilot in January (I bet that if had "December" in the title - the Four Seasons' "December 63" hit excluded, it would probably be associated with Christmas). The Pilot song actually entered the charts in January 1975, but topped the charts in February - I don't know whether the choice of title was chosen to coincide with its release. And the Small Faces' Lazy Sunday Afternoon isn't just played on Sundays, or in the afternoons either. Songs about snow are played in December when the probability is that isn't snowing outside - when it does snow, the chances are that those songs are out of bounds for obvious reasons. Cue Pick of the Pops doing a January chart, refusing to play half the songs because the Christmas songs had not left the chart yet.

What I am saying is that some songs and some acts feel limited to certain places and times, and I think that adds to the nostalgia. A lot of music in the charts in 1983-1984 remind me of Infant school - nostalgia can be priceless. I bet for example that T'Pau probably makes them think about things that happened in autumn 1987 such as King's Cross, Eamonn Andrews passing away, and the Great Storm.

[tex]

Rush!
yeah, I like them but they were never my favourite despite them having been probably the tightest group on the planet. But respect to them. Neil will be missed
as for the social side of my choice of music, being more mature I do frown upon folk that look down at other peoples choices be it music, hobbies , sport or the like.

Indeed...RIP Neil peart, greatest rock drummer and lyricist ever!

[darren]

HI MOLLY HOPE UR WELL.

DONT BE AFRAID TO SAY WHAT MUSIC OR GRPS ETC U LIKE

I LIKE QUEEN IM SURE U KNOW THEM.
OTHERS ARE A BIT OF TIFFANY CHICAGO BANGLES BANANARAMA MARIAH CAREY CINDI LAUPER LIMAHL THEME TO NEVER ENDING STORY ETC.

NOT JUST THE SONGS I LIKE BUT THE LYRICS THE MEANING OF THE SONGS ETC.
HOW THE SONG WAS MADE ETC

CHECK THIS QUEEN SONG.

https://youtu.be/2ZBtPf7FOoM

I feel like evI LIKE QUEEeryone around me almost exclusively listens to music so they can exchange what they’ve been listening to others. A lot of friends and even acquaintances are constantly sending me links to songs they like and ask me to reciprocate. I don’t really mind this process but I feel like it ends up leading to rather shallow conversations. Barely anything more than “I like this song, it makes me feel like it’s summer” or “ehh it’s aight”. (Granted, two of my close friends are intense audiophiles and when we talk about music we really get deep into things like the intricacies of the production, hidden meanings of the lyrics etc. these convos are extremely enjoyable and some of my favorite moments, but the point I’m trying to make here is that these are quite rare).

Personally I have always tended to look at music as my personal escape from the world. There are artists, albums and songs that I almost actively try to not let people know I like, not because I’m ashamed of them but because I treat them like my solo retreat caverns. Up until the last couple years https://nox.tips/ when I started university, I thought more people would be like this, but lately I’ve begun to start thinking most people treat music like clothes, they just listen/wear them so others can see them. I’ve even had instances where someone overhears me listening to something and says things like “why would you listen to that? no one listens to that”. I am wondering how many of you guys also do not enjoy sharing music? (Unless it’s for detailed conversations like I mentioned earlier)

[George 1978]

The social aspect also stems in the way that we listen such as old That's What I Call Music albums, charts on Pick of the Pops and other ways of listing songs from the same era.

[beccabear67]

I don't know, I spend a lot of time sometimes on music forums, I like learning and reading about music, my BF is a musician (one cassette, one LP and five CDs commercially) who also ran a recording studio for years and we are pretty encyclopedic about past artists, groups and such, my father lead a band for years while I was growing up and later performed solo up to the covid thing, my brother was a mobile DJ where I'd answer the business phone and sometimes be sent off in search of a requested track on an album for a booking. I have a pretty deep library of CDs and vinyl records, books and magazines. I really enjoy when someone says they like Rush, or Sandy Denny, and I can say oh, you should look into Troika (an earlier Canadian trio), or Mashmakhan or Kensington Market (more obscure earlier Canadian progressive rock), or suggest early Barbara Dickson or an early '70s Mary Hopkin album to the Sandy fan, and they do check them out and it's meant something to them!

I don't ever want to push though. I think there are people who think they are music lovers who are almost haters because there is music they seem to love to hate on. It's too much a narrow identity or something with them. I value all sorts of music that is most likely uncool to someone and I could care less. Where will I find someone else to talk about Miriam Makeba, Los Machucambos, Cass Elliot or '70s group Pussycat from Holland, just to name three I haven't ever found many other fans for if any on music forums! Okay, there have been some individual pages for some and emails were exchanged, but those are just four names I have put years of effort into getting everything and learning about, and they each feel like important pieces of who I am.

I really don't try to talk about music much with more casual listeners. I can, it's not a problem, but like I say, I don't want to push something. If someone doesn't know 2-Tone ska ever existed it's fine, sad, but fine. Or if Rosemary Hardman records are not cherished as pure gold, or Joy Division just sounds depressing to some... (choke)... that's not something I feel i need to try to change.

Oh, and you don't have to be a hippie to enjoy hippie music. that applies to all music... it's all there for you to discover!