This Is The Age When Your Taste In Music Officially Gets Old, According To Research
Here's the age when your taste in music changes.
Vika Glitter | Pexels When it comes to the generational wars, nothing is off the table, and that includes music. At some point in the aging process, the pop charts literally stop becoming relevant, and for lack of a better word, your music taste gets old. Research has found that this isn't exactly about fading into irrelevance, but rather about just being content with what you like.
For younger generations, it might feel like a weird thing to gripe about. In fact, when you're in the years of gobbling up all the hottest new artists and music to hit the scene, you will undoubtedly say to yourself, you will NEVER be like your parents and grandparents, who probably can't name half of the artists on the top 40 charts.
According to research, when you hit 33, your taste in music officially starts to get old.
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The truth is, eventually we all start to look at younger trends as not as good as what we had in our own youth. Music is no exception. It's partly why generational wars are so silly.
A study that crunched info from American Spotify users and Echo Nest artist popularity data found that people start considering new music a "racket" at age 33.
There are two reasons for this: 1) The older crowd starts to find music they weren’t listening to in their early teens, and that was less popular, and 2) They tend to go back to the music that was popular and relatable during their "coming of age" years.
The aging of your music taste starts as early as your 20s.
The study found that although we're heavily into popular music during our teen years, it steadily declines throughout our 20s. Our musical tastes then "mature" in our 30s. Interestingly, men revolt against mainstream music sooner than women, right after their teen years end.
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Men and women also listen to similar music in their teens, but after that, men’s mainstream music listening decreases much faster than it does for women. At any age, people with children (inferred from listening habits) age out of popular music faster.
Parents tend to listen to less currently popular music than non-parents, and having kids speeds up your music-aging process by four years. It's probably because when kids are young, parents are too busy and don't really get the opportunity to listen to new music like they once could. They are also more exposed to the "Wheels on the Bus" rather than whatever the hottest new artist has put out.
Teens almost exclusively listen to pop music.
The average U.S. teen is almost exclusively listening to and streaming very popular music. Even in the age of media fragmentation, most young listeners start their musical journey by listening to music on the Billboard 200 before branching out to other genres.
According to psychology professor Frank T. McAndrew, Ph.D., this is why our musical preferences from adolescence and young adulthood seem to carry with us. He explained, "One of the most reliable laws of social psychology is something called the mere exposure effect. In a nutshell, this means that within certain limits, the more familiar we are with something and the more often we are exposed to it, the more we tend to like it." He went on to say that the music we are exposed to in those early years becomes comforting in the same way that rewatching your favorite movies and sitcoms can.
As people age out of their teens and into their 20s, their musical tastes shift away from the most popular songs and toward what they like more than what everyone likes. Until their early 30s, mainstream music accounted for a smaller and smaller share of their streaming. And for the average listener, by their mid-30s, their tastes have matured, and they are who they’re going to be.
What we don't know is if this process is inevitable, but when you find yourself enjoying the music in the supermarket, you might be music old, and if you hear yourself at a bar or restaurant saying, "What the heck is this they're playing," you'll know it's definitely begun.
Nicole Weaver is a senior writer for Showbiz Cheat Sheet whose work has been featured in New York Magazine, Teen Vogue, and more.
