So there's a study floating around online that says that once you hit the ripe old age of 33, you're basically done discovering new artists. The study was done by collecting information based on the listening habits of U.S. Spotify users, alongside information from Echo Nest.
The above chart explains it a little better, so sayeth A/V Club.
In this visualization, teens rest at the center of the nebula, listening almost exclusively to top Billboard hits and blissfully unaware that some rando is collecting data on their favorite jams. But age forces an outward spiral, as those teens turn to twentysomethings, begin exploring their options, and start making cool indie playlists for each other. After that, taste levels off and begins a long stasis, right as folks hit their mid-30s. As the study states:
“Two factors drive this transition away from popular music. First, listeners discover less-familiar music genres that they didn’t hear on FM radio as early teens, from artists with a lower popularity rank. Second, listeners are returning to the music that was popular when they were coming of age — but which has since phased out of popularity.”
I guess that's true for the avid Joe Schmo that's jamming on some radio tunes and then decides he wants to dig a little bit deeper, but I definitely feel like there are some genres that people are constantly digging for newer stuff to listen to. I'd love to see a breakdown of genres for this study, just to see what fans are stagnating and listening to the same old same old after a while and which fans are getting to be 40 or 50 and still unearthing some new stuff.
The study also found that whenever people become parents, they're not looking for new stuff to listen to. Which absolutely makes sense, so then what's the split there? If we took out parents from this chart what would it look like? I think this study is really interesting but the generalizations made without presenting everything broken down makes it a little difficult.
A similar study recently concluded that metalheads are the loyalest music fans. We also recently learned metal musicians are twice as likely to die young as country musicians. We learned it only takes 28 seconds to really damage your ears at a show, and also that metal fans and classical music fans have a lot in common.
