At what point do you quit listening to current music?

I hope I never stop listening to current music. That doesn’t mean that I don’t still enjoy bands that I liked when I was a teen (and ages in-between). But it seems to me that those of my friends who have “given up” on new music are sort of yearning for the past. I prefer to live in the present.

Current and old school. Mostly I listen to current stuff, but when I’m with my own playlist, I add in a lot of oldies that I heard growing up in the 70’s. In the car I blast me some old-skool rap or metal just like I did when I was 16. Who says you have to grow up? I’m only 40 geesh?!

I have always been fairly eclectic. I love the oldies from the 40s 50s, 60s, 70, etc. (with the exception of disco), but I keep my ears open where the new stuff is concerned. There is some interesting new music out there.

Of course you have to weed it out of the grinding, monotone, head hammering hip hop, and the plethora of singers and bands that all sound exactly alike.

There’s more music now than in earlier times, but it is less unique, distinguishable, or memorable. Bands are a dime a dozen. How do kids keep track of them all?

Then, with YouTube, the door is opened for an unending influx of singers. You have
all of the television shows looking for that next big ‘star’. Sadly, they too, all sound the same.

More and more I am reverting to the good old sounds that got me going in the good old days.

I am in my late fifties, I listen to current music of a style that fits my taste:

Keb Mo’
Railroad Earth
Guster
Imagine Dragons
Fall Out Boy
The Novelists
Megan Slankard

And I like older music too. But I won’t ever give up on anything new, that’s like closing the door on life.

I listen to whatever catches my ear. Some may be new, some may be classic. I don’t really think about it that way.

I might hear something cool on Pandora or iTunes Radio or from a film or commercial or through my daughter. There’s so many ways to discover music that is new to you — who cares when it was created. I’m more interested in quality as my ears define it, not timeliness.

Sometime around 1986.

Since my teenage years, I’ve always listened to all kinds of music without the slightest regard for what’s “current” or “popular.” I love everything from Big Band of the ‘40s to early R&B to rock to jazz to classical, and lots in-between including my vocal hero, Sinatra.

Never. I’m almost 40 and still love contemporary rock, alt-rock and Indie music. Some of the best music ever came out of the 00’s.

I like new music only if it comes from the bands and artists I listened to in the 90’s. All these “artists” and “rock bands” to come out in the last ten or twelve years have nothing to offer. 99.99% of them are pure shit.

I’m nearly 50% older than you are, and I listen to (select) new music all the time. I like The Shins, Arcade Fire, Outasight, Rammstein, and a bunch of others that I can’t list without my iPod right in front of me.

This weekend, in fact, I was listening to some fairly recent Russian pop music – even some Russian rap! – that I like very much, and will have to put onto the iPod soon. I also listen to some Bollywood music. (Sometimes I suppose it helps not to know the words; but I like the tunes, the rhymes and the beat.)

I don’t listen to everything, I didn’t even do that with the oldies, but I like what I like.

I like both. Music from the 80s is something I learned to love as a teenager. Music from the 90s really takes me back. And I keep up with current music as well.

You mentioned hair metal – My step-father and uncle have a band and they do 70s and 80s hair metal and hard rock. They just had their second real gig. They’re actually really good, even though I can’t stand that type of music.

I like all music : C&W, current rock, the “oldies” from the forties and fifties,sixties to nineties, big band music but not rap. I like the beat of rap but I want lyrics I can understand and a melody. At any rate, I rarely listen to music at all anymore. I think it’s related to my tinnitus but not sure.

When you have young kids and no more time.

@janbb Does this mean you’re about to dive back into the current music scene? :)

@glacial Yes! Yes! Yes! What are we up to now? Disco? Technorock? Punk?

Actually, I have gone to more live music in the last two years than in the previous thirty; most of it local bar bands though.

@janbb I had a feeling you would say that – I love going to live shows.

There are a lot of free concerts here at the shore in the summer and a number of surprisingly good bands.

I’ll let you know when I get to that point.

I love both. It depends on my mood which I will listen to.

There’s a lot of interesting, thoughtful music being made now, but you have to look around a bit to find it.

The day I quit being open minded and willing to listen to something new is the day they stuff me into the box for the big dirt nap.

I’m 45; I listen to old and new. I can’t believe there are people who only listen to music of their era so to speak. I am pretty consistent regarding liking the style of music I always liked. I haven’t grown much in that way I guess.

I’m often called “closed minded” because I am still basically target-audience for popular music, and I can’t stand the majority of it. I admit to the catchiness of about 60% of Lady Gaga’s songs, and I enjoy exactly two Katy Perry songs and one Jessie J. And I have a fondness for novelty songs, like Gangnam Style.

Newsflash: The local top-40 station is not the be-all and end-all of current music. It’s a well-funded marketing gimmick intended to get single moms and teenaged girls to buy t-shirts and concert tickets. Because, where the single moms and teen girls go, men and boys follow.

Nah. Not my crowd. I gave up the pop scene in 1999. That’s when every single band was tripping over themselves to put out a mediocre “End of the Millennium” album. It was also when my once-favorite boy band (I was 14, shut up) became widely popular in my school. As people were actually apologising for making fun of me for liking that group, I shrugged and said “Eh, I’ve grown out of it.”

I’ve tried a few times since then to give the popular stuff a try, but really, I’ll just stick with the stuff I like – instruments and vocals performed without Auto-Tune.

I quit when Disco came along and started ravaging the airwaves in the late ‘70’s and started listening to Country. That was alright until this most recent trend in Country came along about 20 years ago and I went strictly to oldies. Then the oldies stations around here all switched over to Jack, and Bob, and Ed and all that other crap. Fortunately, by then I had a car which had a CD player in it and I started burning my own CDs to play in the car. At home, that’s all I listen to as well. Radio is dead for me. I was in my 40’s when I turned the radio off completely and it hasn’t been turned back on. And I’d be hard-pressed to name more than 2 current, contemporary artists other than Justin Bieber and Super-Slut Cyrus. Just don’t care for the current stuff any more and I really don’t give a shit what people say!!!

@Seek_Kolinahr I agree with you to a point, unfortunately I caught myself singing Miley’s new song (Wrecking Ball) so yeah, I suck. I like some Top 40, but I’m 40 so I’m not target anymore (25–35) and prefer my heavier stuff anyday, but there has to be an audience who loves it or stations wouldn’t play it. Some of these artists today wouldn’t even be on-air without auto tune, look at Kanye and all those guys, too, it’s sad.

I can always throw in some Pearl Jam, Nirvana and like @TheRealOldHippie some Zepp, CCR, Simon & Garfunkie, etc…

@KNOWITALL “there has to be an audience who loves it or stations wouldn’t play it”

That’s not necessarily true. ;)

@glacial Yes, but who would pay those massive fines willingly? No one I know..lol

Radio stations tout brand new songs as “smash hits” before they’ve had a second of airtime.

Who is deciding which songs are “hits”, if the public hasn’t even heard them yet?

Anyway, most of my new music these days is New Age from Canada, and prog metal from Sweden. Neither of which has ever seenf radio time where I live.

@Seek_Kolinahr Just last week I told my husband how great it is to have decent radio stations here. LOL. Memphis was lacking for me, which is ironic since it is supposed to be such a music city. It was better than Raleigh, NC though. Oh, and when I used to travel to Naples that was the worst! I don’t know about now. Coming across Alligator Alley once I lost Miami stations there were about 5 Christian stations and maybe a top forty song once in a blue moon.

@JLeslie Please check out Iheartradio.com and you can listen to any station anywhere on your phone or computer. It’s pretty cool.

@KNOWITALL I was just talking about short drives in the car. But, thanks, I’ll check it out.

When I no longer find any melody or interesting harmonics.