Ask Lemmy

Great question! Music is important to me, but the sound quality isn’t something I fuss over.

I think the right music can entrance any situation, so I like exploring a lot of different genres to see if there’s something I like.

I’m currently trying to build the best Christmas music list (trying to get some of the mainstream stuff mixed in with a bunch of really deep cuts so it’ll keep the list from getting stale through all of December).

Music is art, and some songs can allow the composer to speak directly to your emotions.

Care a lot. I've been playing music since I was 5, 40s now, listening just as long. I admit to being an audio snob and enjoy high-end setups, but I can be happy with a decent pair of ear buds too (my nice setup is in storage, and I'm dying withoPlaylist.

Music is 100% emotional for me. Whether it's playing, writing or listening, it has gotten me through many boughts of depression and brought me down from highs of anxiety. It helps me process a lot of emotions I have trouble expressing.

My tastes tend to skew hardrock/metal but absolutely have a wide range in tastes. I do tend to prefer listening to whole albums vs individual songs when possible, but when streaming I keep it on new release/band recommendation playlists.

Music is art to me, no question at all. I care a great deal about it, and don't listen, and by that I mean really sit and listen, often enough. But yesterday I came across a video by Mary Spender about some emails she got in regard to some Spotify statements she made, and it reminded me of what a real pleasure music is when I actually attend to it, so last night I sat and listened to two full albums start to finish, and it was a joy. I used to do that frequently, that's how my generation did it back in the day, and now I'm reminded so I will likely do that more often. I don't talk with passion about my favorites because nobody knows who the fuck I'm talking about anymore, but I definitely think of them that way.

My headset is decent, and I have good speakers, but I don't do earbuds. I never need the very very best of devices because back in the day, these analog releases had to sound good on the shittiest of car speakers and even transistor radios, so while I absolutely get more nuance from better devices, it's not the be-all end-all.

The only streaming service I have is my own CD library ripped into MP3s, because of course the vast majority of artists I listen to recorded back in the days of analog and full albums, plus I have bought MP3s of various one-hit wonders, so there is literally zero upside to me in a subscription service. As others far more astute than myself have noted, the algorithms don't even really direct you toward new-to-you music, nor to music that will actually "interest" you, nearly as much as it is designed to suggest music that you will not click away from. I used to try suggested music but have never actually liked anything musically I got from a "Suggested for You" source, so I don't bother anymore, and to me I miss nothing.

I have often searched YT for more of the same by a specific artist I am already into, or for something I heard while watching a movie, but other than that, no, I do not search for new music. I've already got so much to enjoy, I don't ever want it to fade into background noise.

I care

I care, a lot. But this wasn't always the case.

Before I was 13, I didn't care much about music at all. Sure, I liked some songs I heard on the radio but I didn't own any albums in any format. I considered music to be a harmless but mostly pretty meaningless.

Then my 7th grade music teacher gave me a really low grade, on the sole basis that I couldn't sing in tune or play an instrument. I got good grades on the written tests, but this apparently meant nothing to her.

So purely out of spite I decided to learn how to play an instrument and sing. Getting music classes wasn't an option due to my parent's economic situation at the time, so I used my savings and bought my friend's old acoustic guitar. I found good intro books from the library and started practicing.

I listened to the radio and recorded a few acoustic guitar songs on tape, so I could practice playing and singing along with them. This must have been a terrible few years for my family, but slowly I started to get the hang of it.

During this time I discovered some bands I really liked and copied their albums from LP's from the library. My dad brought me an old discarded boombox from his work, it was big but had an excellent sound. I also scrounged enough money to buy a secondhand Walkman, so I could carry the music with me.

In high school I formed a few bands with my friends, I played rhythm guitar or bass, depending on the genre. We weren't good, but I loved it. In university I had a chance to minor in music, which opened up whole new worlds for me. I learned to sing properly and had piano lessons.

By this time music had become a big part of my identity. I almost always had something playing on the background, if I wasn't listening actively.

Nowadays I don't have as much time for music as I'd like, but I've got myself a really good vintage Hi-Fi setup. It's amazing to discover small things in songs I never noticed before in songs I have listened for decades. My gear may not look like much, but it's got what counts.

When I was younger, I couldn't afford good gear but now that I have some musical education and have learned to listen", I can't really enjoy the music if the sound system is crappy. If it's in the background it's fine, but I just can't use bad headphones anymore.

I listen to music from a large variety of genres, but hiphop/rap is something I just can't get into. I've tried several times to approach it with an open mind, but there's something in that genre that just rubs me the wrong way.

I don't care if the music is a jokey meme thing or considered a masterpiece of it's genre, if it clicks with you it's good. I love symphonies as much as I love old simple folk tunes.

Music is art and therapy to me. Helps me process and feel emotions when I don't really want to talk about them in real life.

I like all sorts of music and it helps me relax and unwind, commiserate when I'm sad, or get hyped up when I'm doing something active.

I am not sure what u mean by “care” but as someone who grew up isolated music has always been my best friend.. or to be more accurate the best coping mechanism haha, you can coast through your moods and twists and turns of your life much better when you have a song to match your innerstate, idk but its like a way to validate ur internal emotions (which can get intense) in a safe way, nothing better than screaming “so give me reasonnn, to prove me wrong” after feeling betrayed🫣

Had a conversation with someone just today about how we feel like music is our purpose in life. So, an average amount, I guess.

devices: I prefer high-quality audio equipment but if I don't have it to hand I'll listen on what I do have... or just sign out myself

album / playlist: I have favorite albums, I have favorite playlists, but my favorite way to listen is via a nested tree of smart playlists that automatically rotates in music depending on how highly I've rated it, how recently it's been played, and how many times total it's been played.

Do you ever listen to music just to enjoy it and nothing else?

That is the only way I listen to music.

passion: yes, to the point of getting in trouble with my wife

searching: yes, I spend about a twentieth of my listening time on new music hoping to discover favorites

I cared about audio more as an inexperienced listener than I do now that I can play stuff in my head.

Do you care about having decent enough devices to enjoy it or do you just buy the cheapest pair of earbuds to silence the world around you?

I think good quality devices are important for the experience, but I stay in the sub $500 range for portable. Diminishing returns with honest claims at least. Get expensive enough and there's just snake oil scams or bling cringe at the very top. My surround sound speakers I've been re-using most of them on multiple receivers since 2014 and won't replace them unless they break. They were mid range at the time. I've replaced the center speaker and sub woofer with better ones.

Do you have favorite albums or do you just hit play on a random playlist and zone out?

Do you spend time searching for music?

I go through phases where I'll browse Bandcamp for a few hours as an example, buy a few albums and then listen to the same album(s) on repeat almost every day for awhile if I find any worthy of that. That's usually because of the lyrics primarily, and relating to what the artist is singing about strongly. This happens most often with modern/recent Psychedelic Rock. I'll post a song from a local band for a bonus: https://youtu.be/1iyfXDFBgHw

I listen to F.M. radio when commuting, and discover new artists to lisyen to this way pretty often. Usually I screenshot the playlist history on CKUA app and then look them up at home later. Really only that one station: https://ckua.com/ donor sponsored radio. My favourite segment is The Road Home: https://roadhome.fm/ which conveniently is scheduled as I'm getting ready for work and ends when I arrive to work. The host lives alone in the forest in a cabin wood fire heated with his dogs. He mixes spoken word, poetry, music, letters people send him, stories, and more all together. Wild life noises and the fireplace can be heard in the background whenever he's talking. Often birds and squirrels. It's most excellent. This is 50/50 with commuting. I also like total silence with earplugs in while driving half the time.

Or my YouTube playlist on regular YouTube (ReVanced for screen off playback) which I've been adding to ever since 2006. I don't use any other music streaming services and pay for none.

There's also my NAS and bittorrent, but I've been buying music a lot more often these days. I like vinyl which is why I use Bandcamp so much. Usually you get a digital copy when buying vinyl, though I do buy digital only too.

Do you ever listen to music just to enjoy it and nothing else?

Yeah, usually that's through the Shortwave application on Linux. Both on my desktop and living room PC. That's for internet radio. I pay less attention to it. Background noise for chores, web surfing, or hosting dinner dates.

Do you talk with passion about your favorite songs/albums/artists?

No because nobody I know cares about music I like :(

TL;DR is music art or content to you?

Art! Usually.

I maintain like a dozen playlists with specific vibes. I constantly try to discover new music, whether through algorithms or active searching. When I find a really good album I'll just sit and listen, maybe doing something that doesn't require concentration.

There are bands that I really like that I bring up all the time. When I find a new one, I'm telling everyone who might like them. There are some I'll listen to over and over, and some I ration to try not to burn out.

I like great art, but I'm also down with meme music and other goofy shit.

Music isn't something I take super seriously. It's background noise to listen to at work or while driving to help keep me focused instead of my mind taking over and giving me reasons to have an anxiety attack. I listen with whatever wireless earbuds I can find at a decent price and can last long enough to not die during my work shift. I appreciate it more when used well in films or videogames, but on its own I don't really think much about it.

• Equipment: yeah, I have a decent set of speakers at home and headphones to listen while on the move. Sound quality matters, so a decent set is worth it for me.
• Albums vs random: I got used to listening stuff album-wise (with some albums not doing listening to their entirety takes away from the experience). As for favorites:
  • "Feathers & Flesh" and "Dance Devil Dance" by Avatar,
  • "Dead & Alive" by Parasite Inc.,
  • "Faceless" and "The Oracle" - Godsmack.
  • "Mezmerize" - SOAD
• Listening as the only activity: yeah, though more often than not I listen to music to drown out the world.
• Talk with others about it: too often. Though I'm afraid there's very little ppl in my immediate surroundings that can dig into what I listen to 😅
• Spending time searching for music: not anymore, have a base I enjoy.
• Art or content: art. The feeling of chills going down my spine on a particularily well-constructed chorus / instrumental part is like no other feeling for me.

Do you care about having decent enough devices to enjoy it or do you just buy the cheapest pair of earbuds to silence the world around you?

I have adopted the standard for headphones that it's not good enough unless this album sounds ok

1: MDR 7506 2: I have favorites which change constantly. 3: Sure 4: Yes 5: Yes TLDR: Yes

1. I have the nicest listening devices I can afford to enjoy my music but on the go whatever works is sufficient.
2. I have a plenty of favourites but I mostly listen to internet radio streams. Those are usually defined by genre or are just regular radios that play random stuff you can’t control
3. Doing nothing but listening to the music is the best way to listen to music. Unfortunately real life is usually too busy for that.
4. I don’t really have super favourites to the degree that I passionately talk about them but I do passionately advocate for art generally
5. I keep a note of artists and albums to search and then I will occasionally download their stuff for my archive

I think music is art although there seems to be a lot of “music” being made purely for content purposes these days, especially now that ai music is starting to invade streaming platforms. So I guess perhaps some new music is just content slop

it's complicated. from crappy speakers, hate all music. with a good enough sound system i like music in movies and shows, but i don't like if it's played as just music. and i hate listening to music in a car regardless of quality

I am an enthusiast but not a musician. So somewhere in the middle I guess? I try to go to several live shows every year, I'm aware of when someone I like puts out new music, I seek out unknown artists because I do love live performances more than recordings.

I care enough about sound to buy Klipsch Bluetooth speakers on sale for the portable ones, all wired earbuds sound fine to me, as do the Google speakers we have paired to do stereo in the living room. I don't have the sort of ears that can tell great from good speakers, but can't listen to music on my phone speaker like my kids & husband can, those are so bad it bothers me.

Music to me is art and entertainment, I don't think I'd call it content.

I view music as both art and content, considering I'm basically always listening to it in my free time if I'm not watching or listening to a video. I absolutely LOVE it!

Normally, before a couple Christmases ago, I would just buy some wired Sony headphones and call it a day because they just worked. Exception being a pair of Skull Candy headphones I bought because I've been unable to get the headphone jack working on my laptop after installing Linux, but that's off topic.

A couple Christmases ago I got a pair of over the ear Beats ( usually prefer in ear, but whatever, it was a gift ). They have basically been exclusively what I use to listen to everything on my devices that have Bluetooth capabilities. They are the absolute best headphones I have ever owned.

My tastes aren't as varied as others, but I still have a wide variety of over 500 unique songs on the SD on my phone from over the years. Everything from various Chinese and Japanese songs using things like Vocaloid, UTAU, DeepVocal, etcetera, to 90s music from For Squirrels to R.E.M. to Soul Coughing, to anime music to a little bit of Sonic music.

I know this will kinda dox ( doxx? ) where I was for Thanksgiving, but I went for the 2nd time to a Thanksgiving Throwdown while visiting family and saw a group local to that city live for a second time. I bought a couple of their albums last year and highly recommend the album Convalescence from The Nixon Rodeo, especially their song Deafening ( available on yt ). I would describe it as emotionally hard rock.

I was also a music kid when I was in public school. Besides the mandatory music classes I had in elementary school, I joined that school's drama/choir for maybe a year or two, and went from 5th-12th in orchestra. Don't have my viola anymore because I lost it in a rush move, but I now have an acoustic guitar that I've had for about a half a year now. Haven't done much with it since I don't have the money for lessons or any books to help me learn, but I'm hoping to get at least one book this Christmas. I'd go online, but with the rise of AI slop and low effort things that don't teach you a damn thing, I'd rather get some books to start.

So, given my background, I can't not think of music as an art.

I like many different, amazing types of music.

I care about Creative Commons music.

Professor Kliq, Aydio, DML grunfeld, Dusted Wax, Xera Lliendes, NIN, Grace Valhalla, ChillOhm, Toucan Music.

I care about these tunes, because I feel that these artists have shared a little more with me.

I've always loved music (especially rock n roll) and engaged with it on physical media. Grew up riding the back seat of my dad's car while he was blasting rock classics, and we had a basic hi-fi system that we'd play cassettes and CDs with, that my grandpa left us when he died.

I remember the first album I chose to play by myself, which was my older brother's Offspring's Ixnay On the Hombre (I was a kid and kids loved it) and the first album I bought with my allowance was Rage Against The Machine's Battle of LA, when I was a pre-teen.

Music was always a huge part of my life, for me and my brother, and I guess when the world was falling to pieces around our family life, those were the two things we could turn to, at the time.

When mp3 files became widespread in my teen years, we jumped on that bandwagon on it was a huge drive to discover even more music through Kazaa and the likes and, around that time, I started to fall in love with prog rock, and sites like progarchives had an embedded player that let you listen to some of the more well known tracks, which made me find a ton of bands, that would honestly be too obscure for anyone to know. I started going to live shows more, especially from some of those lesser known bands, because tickets were cheaper. Nowadays, everyone knows who Porcupine Tree are/were, so tickets are pricier, most likely.

When I got to college, we were on a family Summer vacation on a beach town and me and my brother stumbled upon a quaint little music store, that had some bootleg live albums from more of these geeky bands, and in an unassuming shelf in the back, they had some used LPs. They were 50cent to 1€ a piece, so we thought 'why not?' and bought them for the novelty of the vintage media. One of them was an early French press from ELP's first album, and the other was rock n roll Mecca for us and our dad: Van Halen's debut album. When we got back home, we set up the turn table from grandpa's hi-fi system, which had always been disconnected up to then, and our jaw dropped when we played Van Halen. We couldn't believe how much better it sounded than a digitally remastered CD version he owned, it was like experiencing the album for the first time, the way it was meant for it to sound, much more open with a wide soundstage and that analogue organic sound. I remember ELP blew MY socks off, because it was also my first time listening to that album itself and it sounded amazing both musically and sonically (if that makes any sense).

This kickstarted a whole new collector's road for us and we started to discover music again by the way certain albums sounded on certain masters. Around this time, vinyl was also starting to make a comeback in mainstream stores, but at this point we thought the 1st pressings were the one true way to listen to those 70s records, and on one of our runs around music stores, we come across our white whale, shaped in Black Sabbath. An early Vertigo (label company from around the time) press of Vol.4. But it was pricey. Way too pricey for our limited college survival funds (probably around 50€).

We'd always stop by the store to see if it was still there and if it was discounted if it was, but alas, early Sabbath pressings never go down in price. So come Christmas time, I decide to go with a grand gesture and buy my brother the fabled Vol.4 on display, but someone had already taken it. And after all this time scoping it too. So I guess the next best thing is to find another version of it and I get a more recent press from around the 00's. Got back home to wrap it before anyone gets in the house, but that doesn't go well either, because of all people, my brother comes home with a friend and catches me wrapping his present, so there goes the surprise. I show what I got him and he and his buddy start laughing hard. "Hey man, I know it's a repress, but goddamn, it's probably not that bad to laugh about, they were out of the Vertigo press". His buddy chimes in: "No, dude, we're not laughing at that." So my brother goes to the other room and gets out that very same Vol.4 on display that we were stalking for weeks. It was HIS Christmas gift to ME.

Fast forward to present day, we're both older, have pretty upgraded audio gear considering how we started, a bigger collection of media, branched off to some different musical styles, but last night my brother was showing off an audiophile remaster (the latest Mo-Fi) of ELP's first, and my newborn niece is falling asleep in his arms, while the piano is seemingly raining down on Take a Pebble. He looks up from his daughter to ask "Hey, do you remember that summer vacation by the beach town?" and we both smile.

Music hits different throughout the years, the formats, the styles, the gear, etc., and sometimes I'm sad I just don't have as much time to sit down and listen to those records. But it's always been there, weathering me through the ages like a brother.

I think I care more than I should. But then most people didn't have their childhood shaped mostly by rhythm games so...

I have a very specific taste for music, and on top of that I basically don't listen to anything lower than a subjective 8 out of 10 in my books. Also some meme songs are timeless masterpieces (no I'm not giving examples)

• Not really. I care much more about the melody than the sound effects, and unfortunately my ears aren't sensitive enough to tell much of the difference
• I have very specific music that I listen to. At the very least it has to be a well-curated playlist, random playlist is a hard no for me
• Actually I mostly listen to music just to enjoy it... I used to listen to music on long roadtrips but I don't do those anymore
• No, but it's because there's no one to talk to. One of the downsides of only liking "alternative music" I suppose
• Sometimes; there aren't that many artists making things I enjoy in the first place

Music is leaning much more towards art for me

I care a fair bit about music, but in a way that's likely very unpopular around these parts.

I'm a fan of AI-generated music. I've got about 600 songs I've generated over the years and almost all of them are about things and are in styles that I personally find relevant to my interests and life.

Some of your other questions are rendered moot by this. There's no albums or artists for these songs. I've loosely grouped them into a few giant playlists based on the sort of mood they fit. I listen to them while doing things like walking my dog. I don't use particularly fancy earbuds or other hardware, though I made sure to get decent speakers for my computer for while I work on them to make sure they're high quality at their source.

Since most of the songs are personally meaningful to me, if only because they scratched a very particular itch I was having the day I generated them, I care about them. I don't expect most of them would be of interest to other folk. I mostly don't share them since they're for me and anyone else can easily generate their own custom stuff, though I've made some public when they've struck me as particularly amusing or interesting.