Odd musical tastes

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I would say that in any occasion in which I hear a random song (from a friend, radio, etc.) ~1% of the time it will be a song that I'll like and possibly listen to in the future, 4% of the time it will be decent to listen to but not something which I would deem worth replaying, and the remaining 95% of the time I can't stand listening to the given song and don't like it at all.
Although there are certain similarities in the music I like, and I particularly like a few genres, for the most part whether or not I like a song will be seemingly (especially to others) extremely random, so nearly any time when someone says "since you like ____ you may also like ___" they are dead wrong.

Thoughts, similar experiences?

Many of the artists that I listen to are people that my friends/family probably haven't heard of, because I like to listen to pop/rock/dance music from other countries, in languages other than English. I come across these types of music online. However, I also enjoy the rap/hip hop and classic rock which can be heard on radio stations here in the US. So if someone suggests a song to me in one of these genres, I am likely to enjoy it.

But I know what you mean about liking seemingly random songs. My playlists tend to be eclectic, to say the least.

I would like to revise my position on radio music somewhat, since generic pop and the like which is generally played on most radio stations is far more appealing than the average song I would hear not of my own accord and not from the radio.

Oh, I have a strange taste in music. Irish and Scottish folk, loyalist marching bands, Greek and eastern European folk music, cheese and sleazy music from horror films (usually either sombre music, cod-Europop style disco numbers or soppy Euro love songs), archive TV related music/advertisement music.

So something like this would be typical:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgVIlaEXAas&feature=related[/youtube]

I really like Internet meme songs. When I'm playing my iPod at a party, I have to be careful and put on the "normal" playlist of regular popular songs!

last.fm has been one of my obsessions for the last month at least, as you can see I like mostly electronic, hip-hop, and a combination of the two, as well as a lot of variety and melody.
http://www.last.fm/user/LibertiORDeth/library

I have pretty unusual tastes in music as well. I listen to a lot of old stuff that most people overlook these days. Stuff from between the 40s and the Mid 80s.

I don't know. It's sad but most people don't care for the music I like. I like pretentious music. lol.

Has anyone else even heard of Godspeed You! Black Emperor or A Silver Mt. Zion? That's the kind of stuff I like.

While there are few things I hate, I have very stringent standards on what music I really love. Frankly, I should get one of those shirts that says "I hate the bands you like."

I like classical and jazz, but my favourite is tango, specifically Astor Piazzolla and the Gotan Project.

Most people on this site seem to be heavy metal fans, but that might just be the teenagers.

I prefer listening to German songs than I do English :3

I have the worst time talking to friends about music. I am very picky about what I listen to, and a lot of it is far off the beaten path. I try to listen to more mainstream music so I have something to talk to them about, but often times I find it uninteresting.

My main musical taste lies primarly in Ska and Punk along with a few obscure folk singers. Not stuff your likely to hear on your local radio station.

Last.fm has helped me try to broaden my musical taste, but I still find it difficult to listen to something I'm not already familiar with.

I like what I like but I can't tell you what I'll like until I run into it. About the only genre I have never liked any examples of is what used to be called Death Metal. Who knows what replaced that. But I have heard music across many genres that I would listen to again. Most music is just average and just background noise. I do have trouble with rap but that's mostly because I can't parse the words very well.

I think I like music that has a great deal of texture and many layers of sound. Just about any genre can do that.

This thread reminds me of this.



However, I think my musical taste is pretty odd too. Either that or outdated. I never know what people are talking about when they talk about popular music.

Musical taste is subjective, highly so. But most people have a casual relationship with music, including musicians.

I mention this because there are some people here with perfect pitch, and some who have an atypical understanding of music and prefer experimental. Most people have relative pitch though. People who have atypical and perfect pitch are the exceptions to the rule, but they often both are much more into music than most people. A person with atypical pitch for example may explore the depths of atonal classical, electronica-glitch, free jazz, atonal blues, post-rock, improv rock, and other things which are more on the experimental fringe. A person with perfect pitch will often delve deeply into classical. Both however will have a much more complicated understanding of music than the average person, and will have very different tastes. Both atypical pitch and perfect pitch have very high rates of synthesia for example. They are also both very very rare.

But thats the thing, these things are not obvious and peoples brains are constantly rewiring themselves if they actively engage in music.

I understand what perfect pitch is, but what do you mean by an "atypical understanding of music"?


Really? The last statistic I heard about perfect pitch was around 1 in 15,000. Not common, but not exactly very, very rare. I've also heard an older statistic that claimed that 1 in 20 autistics had perfect pitch (eyebrow-raisingly high). There is some evidence to suggest that perfect pitch is learned, but it's learned from a really young age when most kids are prioritizing learning how to talk.

As a person with perfect pitch, I fit your guess because I was really into classical music for awhile (I even got a degree in music). I've moved on to folk music. The more obscure, the better.