Why do people like music?

Pure enjoyment, pleasure. Does everything have to have a payoff?

@smudges But why do we get enjoyment and pleasure from music? I used to think that the hairs in middle ear where massaged? Or with the flute It mimics birds chirping?

Most music is very patterned, we are a species that finds comfort in patterns and order.

@canidmajor Oh! Good explanation.

Music is my LIFE!! It moves me.

^^ But why does it move you is what RDG wants to know. Like…I dunno! I just know what I like!

@RedDeerGuy1 Why do people like the foods they like and others don’t like the same food? Preferences! We don’t have to know the why of everything. I’m guessing not all people like music.

I just always love the sound that makes me feel good and waves through my body and soul. I just float and I can’t even workout without music playing on my phones, headphones. It makes me move I think my heat beats to the rhythm and my feet move faster with a faster beat. I can’t describe it all properly but I know I just LOVE it so freaking much! ♡

Another guess is that people tend to like food and music etc that they experienced with family and friends, and it is from nostalgia wherein the preference comes from.

Humans also have a long history of relying on music as a way to remember stuff. The melody and lyrics combination was used for teaching and remembering (the basis for oral histories). Again, it speaks to patterns.
The need for this is probably rooted in genetic memory by now.

Here is a great article from Pyschology Today on Why we listen to music.

Because it has charm to sooth the savage breast.

I think of music as a way to express emotion. We all know what a happy song is, and we’ve all heard music that made us feel very sad, nervous, calm, energetic or even nostalgic.

Now, I have no idea how we first came to enjoy music from instruments. But it doesn’t seem farfetched to asume that we started out chanting or otherwise vocalizing our feelings, then began singing very simple songs, and went from there. In that sense, it’s not really that music is the source of emotions. Rather, music is a translation of our feelings that we understand instinctively. We might even share this language with some other animals. For example, studies by Patricia McConnell reveal that people all over the world use rapid, short repetitions of sounds to speed animals up, and a long, drawn-out note to slow them down (“woooooah”). Music that makes us happy tends to be faster, with distinct beats. Sad music is often slow. And the Kalimba music that relaxes my dogs makes me feel calm, too.

It does of course matter what you personally associate with the music you’re listening to. For example, if you grew up much earlier or much later than I did, the tune I linked as “nostalgic” above will not be very special to you. There are a couple of songs that sound “happy”, but that make me sad because they were played at my great uncle’s funeral. And while my husband likes gothic chants because he grew up hearing them, they sound threatening to me. Music has a strong cultural element, but certain elements are universal.

You might like to read this article: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/11/new-harvard-study-establishes-music-is-universal/.

This may not be answering what you asked, but for me, music speaks to me on a level like nothing else does. It touches my emotions more strongly than any spoken word can. More than a year, since my mom passed away, I still get choked up when I sing one of her favorite hymns in church, or if a line from a song makes me think of her.

And when I’m happy, every song on the radio seems to be happy. And when I’m sad about something, every song seems to speak to me about that too. So who can say?

Music can elicit a lot of different emotions in people including pride, or a sense of belonging. An old Irish tune, Gary Owen, became the official song of the 7th Cavalry as well as Britain’s 17th Lancers. It was the last tune they heard before charging into “The Valley of Death”. And the last tune Custers men heard when they left for Little Big Horn. https://youtu.be/jM48Qzn1eGQ

Music is good to listen to and can communicate simple strong emotions as well as deep and subtle feelings that no other medium can. Certain created sounds remind me of how I felt when I heard them 60 years ago when I first felt a bond with the composer who created them.

Music is sound and rhythm and a pattern in time that the deepest parts of our mind can identify with and respond to. There is a connection between sounds and the way our minds operate. We can jump at a noise before we realise we have heard it and similarly we are moved by music at a deep level. I think there are patterns in our minds that are analogous with patterns in music and these are recognised at a subconscious level.