Listening With Context

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Following up from the poll (poor old Incubus)

Do you carry in your head an idea of the "average listener" as any kind of reference point? Did you ever? (whether you defined yrself for or against her/him)

aka - who ARE these "masses", anyway?

Comments

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I'm very much interested in something more like an "ideal listener," like the mythical/hypothetical passive pre-pubescent girl listening to the music that I (allegedly inappropriately or lacking "real" context) like. I mentioned this in a Stylus comment (dunno why I bothered) that I was an "average listener" (a teenybopper by default) at some point, and I was never "marketed" passively into liking a song. I think this is patently ridiculous, but it's an insanely prevalent line of reasoning that extends to "the average listener" or "the masses," an easy way of pretending that you don't have to deal with the fact that lots of (different) people actually like poor old Incubus, for many reasons. There's a lack of choice involved sometimes (what comes on the radio, etc.) but no one's being "fooled" into liking anything. Hell, I used to like Incubus, shoulda ticked it (their first album before they got all amorphous whiny crap was pretty good! And "Drive" is still an OK song).

Er...to actually answer yer question, yes, I think I am now and have ever been the average listener. I still can be on occasion, driving with my sister in the car and asking her what that song on the radio is, listening more casually. (For a guy who tries to keep up with chart pop, I sure do miss a buncha songs they actually play on radios occasionally, because I never actually listen to it.)

Marketing

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

One problem is that when a lot of people use the word "marketing", they make it mean "making you buy something you didn't really want", whereas really it means "bringing something to your attention" or "making you feel that something is suited to you".

Marketing, like criticism, is about providing someone with a context in which they might act. But the acting or not is up to them.

So yes, nobody is marketed into liking a song in the way people who assume they're immune to marketing imagine we are - but that doesn't mean marketing has no effect.

Tashbed/Feeling mashup

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

They are me! I am the target Mum demographic and proud! except for all the bosh

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i have a handful of close friends who are entirely not part of "our mob" -- viz don't read the internet, don't read "music-writing", and generally respond to music for their "own" reasons: by which i mean reasons not immediately connected to reader-shaped tribalism

one of them is herself actually a really excellent singer -- x-factor quality singer, who only missed out on a real-actual professional jazzsinger career as a teen for family reasons -- but just not a reader, beyond (non-broadsheet) newspapers... so i'm always interested in their perspective, not cz i think it's "more real" (or "more average" or "more ideal"), but bcz i'm deeply interested in what the relationship between music and writing is, culturally, and the differences between her tastes and mine are instructive

[poptasticuk.livejournal.com]

Do you mean the average Last FM listener or just the average music listener? The latter is surely impossible to define because almost everyone listens to music of some kind (even if it's classical, folk etc.) so it's like asking who is the average person - the answer is probably a 30 year old transexual (well, you can't say they are male or female).

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

To me the average listener is

- the non-obsessive about popular music - "12 CD man/woman" as we used to simplify them to on ILM. My sister and her family would be representatives of said majority. They exist as an important reality check, but I don't worry particularly about not being like them or them not being like me.

- people who phone in to Radio 1, requesting records or entering competitions (and going apeshit when they win). This is a much more puzzling community to me. I wish I understood them better.

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

I can't even imagine what an average listener would be - would they like Girls Aloud or the Red Hot Chilli Peppers or Pavarotti or Dido or what? I'm aware that the average listener cares less about music than I do, spends less time and effort and thought and conversation and money on it, owns fewer CDs and so on, but I can't pin any particular tastes to the 'average' at all.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Yeah I basically agree w/ Martin.

I'm not sure if the "average listener" actually likes music v much - I don't mean that they don't like what they buy, but they don't like music as a pursuit or hobby, just as I will watch and pay vague attention to major golf tournaments but wouldn't call myself a fan, only know the famous names, don't know anything about it in a technical sense.

It's basically indefensible but I am v v snobby and disapproving of "casual fans" of the things I love - I think they do immense harm to (coverage of) (and thus marketing of) tennis, and, y'know, I think they're pretty awful for music as well!

Haven't really thought about this enough to back it up but a conception of the "average music fan" as a typical straight-white-middle-class-man is what I do automatically think of, ie a demographic with not only the consuming power but the (gah, what is the WORD HERE)...structural power, to actually affect lists like this at the top end. ie not only do they have enough money to buy CDs of terrible straight white man bands, but they're also more likely to be in positions of power and influence within the music industry, and in all the other positions of power and influence which affect the decisions the music industry makes.

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

Why are men more average than women? Statistically, the latter are in the majority.

I can't see how the casual or average fans harm music - without them, not much music would get made, distributed and shown. Don't you see Beyonce as being as much an 'average' taste as the guitar bands you dislike?