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What does your music taste say about your personality?

Started by aaaaaaaaaargh!, September 05, 2008, 10:47:42 AM

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Mindbear

Quote from: 23 Daves on September 07, 2008, 11:29:29 PM
Actually, a lot of the metallers and goths I've met have been from fairly strict Catholic backgrounds, which is the stereotype I always look out for.  In particular, I think you have to be from a certain religious background to find a lot of the death metal lyrics in any way shocking or surprising, and from a fairly conservative environment or background to think that anything Marilyn Manson is posturing about this week is anything less than general common sense (apart from perhaps his more extreme outbursts).

Otherwise, though... I don't know.  My friends have really broad tastes, quite honestly.  They're as likely to love Trance as enjoy sixties psych, indie, post rock, etc... so I'm quite sceptical about this survey.

Well, I have a friend that was brought up as a catholic, and she likes an awful lot of music that to me, just sounds slightly childish and silly. It's all a bit 'rarrr blood and depression and misery and other stuff!'. That and the emo, which seems to be 'my pain! oh! my average experiences in life have caused pain!'. I don't get it at all, possible because she also likes quite a bit of stuff that I like and the two don't really sit comfortably next to each other.

I think sceptical is the only thing you can be, it doesn't make any sense at all because my tastes go across many genres, and a lot of people are like that now. I think only in the teenage world it matters more, perhaps, like you have to be particularly defined.

rudi

Quote from: MindbearI would say that most of the indie kids I see about are very high in self esteem, and cash, and trust funds. Indie means nothing, actually, it generally means something that I don't particularly like and people I don't have much in common with.

immediately followed by

QuoteIt's just a bunch of bollocks sweeping generalisations.

Irony in action there, surely...?


As for the study itself: well, obviously it's pointless. How about those who just like good music and don't give a hoot what silly title it's been given this year? "

glitch

Surely a far better way of doing this would be some form of bullshit psychometric profiling (i.e. what they've already got) and then pairing this with something like data from last.fm?

alan nagsworth

My music taste says "I am not content with what I have."

So my life is constantly missing something. Maybe I need a girlfriend who enjoys music of the emo persuasion, then I wouldn't need music or any of you dead-end internet nutters to make me happy! But as it happens I'm lacking quite a lot of confidence so I guess I am destined to yearn.

Hmm, no confidence... what sort of music is that? Oh right, emo! My life is complete!

Not my tag (nor are any of the others before I'm accused of cunty tags), and I know it's a bit of a pisstake, but this kind of sums up the study for me:

QuoteI'm far too eclectic and nuanced, I think you'll find

I'd be interested to see how many people clicked on the second link and did the questionnaire before completely dismissing the whole study.  It's a kind of interesting idea, however, for those who did click on the second link, you would have seen that the whole study is based on an extrapolation from one album which had a formative influence on your life which is an obvious, major flaw.

I, for what it's worth, chose Definitely Maybe as my formative record, although it goes without saying that the 15 year old me was a very different person to the person that I am today.  To extrapolate my entire music taste AND personality from that one record released 14 years ago is obviously going to lead to a skewed result.  That should be plain to see, particularly for *scientists* who will obviously well schooled in sampling, so I'm wondering how representative the BBC article is of the actual study, their science-type reporting isn't usually that great.

As for the arbitrary labelling of music, well again, that's a fair enough point, as I said in my opening post, folk music seems to be completely omitted which seems odd to say the least.  The church of music is a broad one, so it seems a bit silly to label musical genres, unless you don't actually listen to music and like sweeping broad-brush generalisations.

As for the contradictory personality traits, some of the more eagle-eyed would have noticed that I made reference to this in the opening post.  These personality contradictions appear to come about because the study asks you to name one album and one album only, but a person's normal reaction I guess would be to look at the final results and apply your entire music taste to that which I don't think was the purpose of the entire test.

Do love the way the study has been criticised for generalising by some posts which are equally generalising in a Radio 5 phone in style (it's not like that for me and the people I know so it can't possibly be like that for anyone else).

Hopefully the debate will continue, it's simmering nicely at the moment.

Johnny Yesno

The problem I had filling in that survey was that for almost all the musical genres listed I was thinking "Depends what kind of this genre you're on about". Take jazz, for example - are we talking modern or trad jazz? They seem to have made an effort with rock to break it down a bit but not with electronic music. I can say for sure that there are people who listen to armchair techno for wholly different reasons to others who listen to dance music. To group them together is ludicrous.

The thing about genres is that they say very little about what music sounds like. Perhaps a person being into highly structured music says more about them than whether they like classical music. Taking jazz as an example again, perhaps it is significant if a person likes improv more than trad jazz. Does the rest of their taste have a tendency towards unpredictability?

As for my own tastes, I tend to avoid music with lots of soloing. So blues and jazz are not a rich source of musical inspiration for me. But I can't say I don't like blues or jazz per se. I like Captain Beefheart and John Zorn, but only when they do the kinds of things I like. Which goes for all music, I guess.

In short then, I think your music taste does represent the things you hold dear (I'm not sure that's quite the same as your personality type) but in ways far more subtle than mere genres can express.

loom

Quote from: rudi on September 08, 2008, 02:54:26 AM
immediately followed by

Irony in action there, surely...?


As for the study itself: well, obviously it's pointless. How about those who just like good music and don't give a hoot what silly title it's been given this year? "


Well, surely that says something about their personality.