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.