on music as a modern social distinction marker

[acroyear]

There's a bit of research going on about how much the type of music "says" something about the person who actively listens to it.  Most of their assumptions on the importance of music as a social filter seemed to be supported by the evidence, but they acknowledge that their survey was limited to the easiest subjects to find for college grad students: college undergrads.  :)

Chris @ Mixing Memory, after summarizing the report, notes that their are likely expansions of research into other age demographics to see how well it extends beyond school ages.

I took some time to think about it, in reflection with my observations of myself and my communities as an adult (and contrasting how I approach or discuss music today with how I would have 20, 15, 10 years ago), and have basically concluded no - they won't find music as nearly the important factor, or more importantly, filter, for social interactions that it was for people still in school.

Mixing Memory : What Does Your Music Say About You?: (comment by me - )

Looking at the bigger picture, my "back of a napkin" guess would be that you would find music's importance decreasing as people get older.

Consider that when dealing with a large, diverse population, people tend to look for common ground with which to to strike up a conversation, and from there a friendship (or more). Hobbies are obviously high as means for association because most people who associate by the hobby do so likely because they met through the hobby. Certainly true for gamers, SCA, amature athletes.

But when that's not immediately available, when you're dealing with a ton of total strangers in your dorm, your classroom, your orientation session, then you need other filters to guide you to people you might agree with on enough topics to hold a friendship together.

The thing that puts music at an advantage over movies or tv is the choice factor. Yeah you have some choices over the tv to watch or the movies to see, but those movies and tv shows are time-limited. Often, obsessing over TV is usually treated as a sign of weirdness or "geek", especially if its sci-fi or a soap opera - certainly useful for geeks to unite around, but they usually can already recognize each other without actually having to broach the subject, by the merchandise attached to their clothes or their stuff.

Movies are extremely tied to time - their range of being a topic of conversation that someone might feel comfortable knowing anything of is rather small, and to make matters worse, talking about movies is actively discouraged because of the infamous "spoiler" problem: you can't talk about a movie with enough detail to appear knowledgeable to someone who hasn't seen it if you're trying to encourage them to see it. If they've seen it, you're preaching to the choir and look bad. If they haven't, you're spoiling it. If they have, but your analysis goes too deep, you're seen as a geek just like TV (Kevin Smith's various Star Wars references play out this stereotype rather nicely for the laughs - but of course, I now read like a total geek for having been able to refer to Kevin Smith, supporting my own argument).

So music, the one thing people all have generally some opinion on, the one thing that can't be spoiled just by talking about it, the one thing where the choices one has to what they are fans of aren't temporally implanted on them by the media companies except for the absolute latest-and-greatest, and even then there's a longevity about it that's not seen in movies. Back in the 80s, following a song up and down the American Top 40 charts could take months, and long after that it might still make MTV rotation. That still exists today, though yes the time period has gotten shorter.

But to adults, such things are less important in how we relate to each other. They're things we share still, but not nearly as often or with such emphasis. The reason is because we aren't introduced to such extreme diversity nearly so often. Usually our biggest change of surrounding people is when we change jobs. If we change towns as a result of having to change jobs, the hobbies will become the primary means of finding new people to associate with FAR more than anything as (now recognizably) arbitrary as music.

In short we're no longer just looking for people to talk to, we're looking for people to do stuff with because "doing stuff" is no longer provided by the environment we're in. In school, we're required to play sports, be in band, participate in class activities. None of those requirements are forced upon adults (and woe to the HR department of the company that tries to force it).

So we look for people to do stuff with, and music (unless you're a heavy concert goer or an amature or semi-pro performer) simply isn't something people just "do" once they're adults.

Disclaimer: I'm 36 (and married). I wouldn't have said anything like this when I was 25 - music was still the most important topic of discussion and filter for finding friends in my life at the time.