Reflections on 'What Music Means To Me'

It was really interesting to hear about what tracks/videos people had chosen and why, it showed me that the type of music people listen to and how they consume it says a lot about the person. I thought it was interesting how everybody’s choices were completely different but the reasons behind them were very similar and there were very clear patterns between all of us.

1. When do you listen to music? When? Where? Who with? How?
Personally I don’t have a specific time of day or place where I’d listen to music, also I never really listen to music or different types of music depending on my mood although different genres of music does bring out different emotions. I just listen to music I like at that time when I feel like it. I listen to the radio in the car every morning, either Kiss or Choice, in the morning I listen more to the lyrics of the song rather than the beat. While I’m on the computer at home, sometimes I listen to music on my iPod speakers and I always go on iTunes and YouTube and listen to the latest releases to see whether I like them or not. I listen to music a lot through the TV as I have music channels on in the background a lot because I can actually watch a performance or a narrative for the song as well as listen to it and this keeps me captivated for longer. I like listening to music with my friends either when we’re getting ready to go out as it gets me in the mood to go out or when we’re just relaxing as we can talk about the music etc. When I really enjoy music is when I’m out at a club or a party with my friends, when the music is really loud and it surrounds the whole room. The music then is more about the beat and the feeling it gives you as it really gets you in the mood to dance. I love the club atmosphere as it really lets you escape reality and that whole atmosphere is created by music. I also love seeing music live at festivals and concerts, you hear music from a whole different perspective as its live and the atmosphere is amazing. I could never listen to music while doing homework as it would distract me completely. In our presentations, there were some patterns I noticed about everyone’s daily music routines eg. Listening to the radio in the morning, listening to iPods on long journeys and listening to music with friends at clubs or festivals.

2. What are the pleasures of listening to music?
Although this was different for everyone, there were some very obvious trends between us about the pleasures of listening to music. One pleasure of listen to music that came up a lot was that it lifts peoples mood, if they’re in a bad mood they would listen to music and it would make them feel good. The main one though was about memories, a specific time, place or feeling in your life that a certain song reminds you of. This could be childhood experiences eg. last day at primary school, first concerts, holidays, good time with friends etc. generally times with emotional connections. Another pleasure of listening to music was for socialising, it gets you in the mood to go out and if you’re out at a club or party, music creates the whole atmosphere. Another one was listening to music to get away from their surroundings and ignore everything so music really allows escapism for people. Also, people mentioned part of the pleasure of listening to music is being active in your choices and influencing friends with your taste of music, when we’re younger we didn’t have the accessibility to music that we do now.

3. Where there any patterns in our music choices?
I think there were many patterns in our music choices. In our childhood choices, noone seemed to have any particular taste of their own, they were based on whatever people around us eg. older siblings, parents, friends were listening to. Music wasn’t accessible to us when we were younger so we were easily influenced and we just listened to what everyone was listening to and what was ‘cool’ at the time. I think the music industry strongly influenced kids through CDs like ‘NOW that’s what I call music’, a compilation of all the songs in the charts at that time and the TV show Top of the Pops as a lot of people mentioned both these things. Popular groups were Steps, S Club 7, Spice Girls etc. children would instantly like these bands because they like their image and the bright colours rather than the lyrics behind the song, this was almost irrelevant when we were younger. In our Early Teens choices, it was clear people had grown up and started developing their own music taste as they now had more accessibility and could explore themselves. By now, I could see just how music everyone’s music taste has changed and grown over the years and I also saw that things like lyrics and the actual artists themselves became much more important as you grow up. This made me see that age is so relevant to music taste.

4. How was this task relevant to our coursework?
This task made me see about the audience involved in music consumption and how important it is to target your audience. It allowed me to see how different audiences are targeted so differently eg. when you’re a kid you’d be targeted through Top of the Pops etc. but when you’re older you can be targeted through the internet, festivals etc. I’ve realised how much music actually means to people and a we’d have to do more than produce a good technical visual music video, we’d have to relate the audience and try to bring out different emotions and feelings.