Do We ‘Age Out’ of Music?

The story's a familiar one...

The 'Leave it to Beaver' Dad insisting his flower child teen turn off his or her "terrible music", or the Mom who grew up in the 70's begging her teenager to turn down Nirvana and "please stop wearing all your Dad's flannel's!"

For some reason it seems as though the majority of parents loathe their kids music and vice versa. But have you ever wondered why?

According to a story from WLBZ Channel 2, Ajay Kalia did more than just wonder, he went in search of proof.  Kalia, a data analyst at Spotify, found that at age 33 "listeners interests plateau" and their musical interests move "farther away from the mainstream".

Through his data analysis, Kalia came up with a few possible reasons that we begin to like music that is less mainstream the older we get:

1.) As we age our interests become more divers so we feel less tied to the 'mainstream' and therefore develop more 'alternative' tastes.

2.) Many tend to "cling to the music from their youth" and even if it was popular when they were younger, it probably isn't today.

3.) Men move away from mainstream music faster than women do.

4.) Young parents move away from mainstream faster then their childless 20 and 30 something peers.

While this is a very interesting bit of information, it's important to note that this evidence points to "most" people.  This doesn't mean that once you hit 33 your music taste will stagnate, so no need to prepare yourself for musical battles with your kids or the neighborhood teens just yet.

At the very least, it is a good reminder for us to remain open to new music, new sounds and maybe even attempt to listen to some new garage band play a few of their songs.

And who knows? You might even like it ;-)