Reading this post from FLaMEd Fury and this passage caught my eye:
Music is so personal now, as is the access, the range, and the personalisation of your listening experience. (Being forced to hear the same twenty songs that the DSPs push on you aside). When I was growing up and at school, a handful of radio stations played a handful of songs (similar to those same twenty songs the DSPs push down your throats now). Everyone you knew was listening to the same music (obviously with exception) most of the time.
Every weekend at parties, you’d all be listening to the popular songs, hearing them in every car that drove past, pumping on the stereo as you got ready. Music is so varied these days, right?
Might be that I am one of the exceptions here: music has always been considered a very personal thing to me all my life. I have never felt the songs I listen to being part of the zeitgeist. And yeah, this is definitely because of the type of music I prefer to listen too: long, instrumental pieces, usually written 50 years ago. Definitely not what you’d call mainstream.
But it’s also the feeling I have about music in general, which is one that is quite private and personal, to the point where it feels like I need to protect it from others. For example, I tend to be very resistant in sharing with others the type of music I prefer, even if not doing so came at the cost of expanding my musical horizons. I remember that brief period when I was in a band and we were sharing the types of songs we liked to listen to, trying to get ideas. I never offered any of the songs I listened to. I did talk about it with the other band members so they knew of them, but it was never played during these listening sessions. And I made no apologies for this: they were “my” songs, and I prefer to listen to them on my terms.
I suppose I should feel bad for this, but I think I prefer it this way. I am trying to get better at this, at least when it comes to sharing things online. It is interesting to think that it’s easier for me to share links to albums than it is to share albums with others in person. A fear of judgement perhaps? 🤷