If you’re 33 or older, you will never listen to new music again—at least, that’s more or less what a new online study says. The study, which is based mainly on data from U.S. Spotify users, concludes that age 33 is when, on average, people stop discovering new music and begin the official march to the grave.
The study’s author reached this conclusion by slicing up tons of Spotify user data, as well as artist popularity data from another site called The Echo Nest. If you’ve ever wondered “what is the end game of using online databases to catalog my every musical, cinematic, culinary, sports, and pornography preference?”, this dizzying chart offers a small preview:
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.”
Perhaps this is why we heard an actual human blasting a circa-2000 Linkin Park song out of their car window the other day. Or perhaps some mysteries are best left unsolved.
A few side notes:
- This study appears on a blog called “Skynet & Ebert”. Unfortunately, a pair of sentient cybernetic film critics haven’t founded a peer-reviewed journal. It’s simply a blog run by a former management consultant who currently works at Spotify and The Echo Nest—the two sources used to gather all the data in the study.
- The study also claims that parents stop listening to new music a little earlier than their unfruitful peers. The author determined “parenthood” by the presence of children’s music and nursery lullabies on user playlists, presenting the possibility that the data set was tainted by creepy adults who lull themselves to sleep every night with Raffi’s “Baby Beluga”.
인간은 33세부턴 듣던 노래만 듣는다
사람들이 평균 33세부터 더 이상 새로운 음악을 듣지 않는다는 온라인 연구 결과가 나왔다. '스카이넷 앤드 에버트(skynetandebert.com)'라는 음악 연구 사이트를 운영하는 아제이 칼리아가 미국 음원 스트리밍 서비스 스포티파이의 데이터를 분석한 결과다.
칼리아는 10대는 대중음악에 심취하며 20대를 지나면서 점차 흥미가 떨어지고 30대에는 음악 취향이 성숙한다고 말한다. 단, 여성은 대중 음악에 대한 관심이 최소 13세부터 최대 49세까지 이어졌다.
반면 남성은 10대를 지나서부터 30대 초반에 이르기까지 흥미가 급속도로 떨어졌다. 기존에 이용하던 서비스나 상품보다 양질의 것이 나와도 투자 비용이나 귀찮음 때문에 원래의 것을 선택하는 '자물쇠 효과' 때문이다.
그는 나이가 들수록 새로운 음악을 덜 듣게 되는 두 가지 이유를 설명한다.
① 사람들은 나이가 들어 생소한 음악을 접하게 되면 이를 10대나 듣는 노래라고 치부하기 쉽기 때문이다.
② 사람들은 본인이 어렸을 적 즐겨 들었던 음악을 다시 찾는 경향이 있기 때문이다.
