Do youngsters care about music anymore?

I started buying records when I was 7.
Was a huge Gary Glitter fan, my brother was into Sweet and Mud. Pictures all over our walls, that thrill when “our” group got to number one.
A friends 9 year old said he wanted an iPod for Christmas. I got all excited but then realised he only wanted it for games.
I’m not expecting them to be into King Crimson but just to show some interest in a particular band would be good.
Parents….over to you.

Yes, yes they do. Going out and buying music isn’t something that too many youngsters seem to do nowadays ime (I’m a guitar teacher in a number of schools) but it’s still a huge part of lots of kids lifes. Age nine is a bit young ime though.

Was a huge Gary Glitter fan

I have a feeling this thread isn’t going to end well.

From what I have seen, if the parents are into music, then the children will be too. I do know loads of families where the children are into music.

My kids love music. My 14 year old lad is into The Beatles, Stones, Hendrix and Pink Floyd, and more recently, Gary Clark Jr.
I took him to see the Black Keys last year – he loved it and it was a huge pleasure to be with him at his first big gig.
He properly loves his music, and plays piano, a bit of guitar and got a sax for Christmas.
He also does the video gaming and skateboarding that his friends do, but music would be the very last thing he would give up.

Do we have music any more? 😉

Ma boy (late 20’s) saw Black Sabbath the other week. I saw them twice in the 70’s.

Music is almost disposable these days. I used to buy albums on sight and persevere with them, often finding the ones I didn’t like a lot at first where by far the best in the long run. Kids today just preview, download, delete.

For me, I also loved my Hi-Fi which added to my love of music, loved upgrading it, and seeing how different a new amp or speakers would make my music sound. Listening in a quiet room with the speakers properly spread out to produce an addictive stereo image. Nowadays, it’s all mp3’s and cheap (often mono) media players.

Edit: While I’m thinking about this, the album (as a complete work) is also dead. With the ability to download individual tracks from an album, I’d wager that very few albums are now listened to from start to finish as a complete work. I used to get sucked in, and would spend hours listening to complete albums. Don’t think many kids do that any more. 🙁

I work with young people and lots of them are into music but most of them have never bought any in their lives.

Quite a few of them just have random tracks on their phone and they don’t even know who they’re by and what they’re called. I definitely think the convenience of MP3 and file-sharing has devalued music to some extent.

Mind you among some slightly older kids it’s cool to collect vinyl again.

In a word .. No.

I don’t want to sound like an old git, but is music the same as it was? Will there ever be a band as big as, eg, U2, Pink Floyd, Beatles etc. I’m sure many of you will say ‘I hope not’ but bands don’t seem as big as they used to be, even from 10 years ago. Will there ever be someone like Bowie, or even Elton John?

Well my god son(16)is very into his music apart from being singer & lead guitarist in a band he has a real depth of tastes from classical to thrash metal and pretty much everything in-between.

He even beats his parents on music from their youth, I guess he’s probably a rarity though?

They’ve just generation gapped us, they listen to music same as any other generation, and just like any other generation, it doesn’t sound like music to us. A young friend of mine spent a bit of time pointing out that actually, these 2 indistinguishable noises weren’t just different songs- they were DIFFERENT BANDS! Imagine that.

Some kids don’t like music at all though. Others… I gave a mate’s son a copy of every bad religion album after he’d foolishly decided that Rise Against were great (they are, I will admit, the best Bad Religion covers band out there). Now he drives his folks mad trying to play Generator.

As cbmotorsport said, music has become disposable. There just isn’t the excitement in buying music anymore. ‘Back in the day’ I remember hearing a record in a club, hassling the DJ to find out what it was, then going to the record shop and getting them to put me one aside when it finally gets released. When I finally got that shrink-wrapped 12″ import, I’d study the artwork, producer details, remixer etc. It was kind of a multi-sense experience.

Yours,

Stereotypical whining old git.

Edit: While I’m thinking about this, the album (as a complete work) is also dead. With the ability to download individual tracks from an album, I’d wager that very few albums are now listened to from start to finish as a complete work. I used to get sucked in, and would spend hours listening to complete albums. Don’t think many kids do that any more.

I find it very hard to listen to odd tracks, but then I grew up primarily around concept albums, courtesy of band like Pink Floyd, Enigma. Even for band who don’t really produce concept albums I’ll still sit and listen to an album start to finish quite happily. I’m just not a singles person at all. (Incidentally, the Division Bell is on as I’m writing this).

Will there ever be someone like Bowie

I hope so.

Yes they do care about music….just all the crap manufactured stuff. Cant wait for my young girls to ditch that One Direction rubbish and listen to some proper musicians. I’ve tried reasoning with them…but get the usual “wow you’re old” and ” Dad that music is plain embarrassing”.

Yes they care about music but for yoof it is everywhere all the time, when I was a teen you had TOTP and Whistle test, no portable devices, now you have it on your phone, umpteen channels and as the soundtrack to games.

If anything there is far more music to listen to than ever before.

cinnamon_girl – Member
Do we have music any more?

Ma boy (late 20’s) saw Black Sabbath the other week. I saw them twice in the 70’s.
me to, before they were famous. Friend of mine was his girlfriend before Sharon.

My 8yr old grand daughter is into 1D and others, listens to loads of music. 8yr old grand son also listens to loads of music and is learning guitar at school. His mum can play piano and sax but has not done so for yrs. his dad can play guitar and they all play music on the Wii thing having air guitars and drum kit.

Personally I was never “got into” music. Mum played the piano by ear, never used music. We never had a record player only a Bush radio and it only ever played Scottish country music. Used to listen to more radio whilst milking the cows or cleaning the byre after milking more than at any other time. Tractors did not have radios in the late 60s / 70s never mind being covered 😆

What I find depressing is that so many adults seem to instantly take the view once they hit 30 onwards that all music now is rubbish and all youngsters are somehow being deprived of the amazing experience the adult had when they were younger.

The landscape may have changed but there is loads of great, new, original music out there, more so than ever before imo. If you don’t know what it is, or where to find it than maybe it’s not meant for you*.

Somebody was asking if there’ll ever be a band as big as Pink Floyd, U2 or The Beatles? Who knows but there’s loads of acts and artists who are just as talented, innovative, original and exciting now as they were then. Not that I rate U2, mind.

*I don’t mean this in an elitist, snobbish way. But if you’re worried that your son/daughter/nephew never got to see Black Sabbath or watch Pink Floyd then seriously, don’t lose any sleep over it.

Agree with that… To be fair, it just gets harder to get into new sounds- it doesn’t match what you’re used to, and you don’t tend to have the mates getting you into it, and the media that’s aimed at you tends not to cover it.

Like, maybe not the best example, but My Chemical Romance- an emo band for kids, apparently, most of my rock mates wouldn’t touch it. But if those albums had come out in the 90s we’d all have been loving them, I mentally filed them right in with Therapy? and the Wildhearts. And was therefore the oldest person at all their gigs who wasn’t there with their kids

Apparently it’s also hilarious that I like chase and status.

Yes they do care about music….just all the crap manufactured stuff.

Some do, not all. My kid, who is 11, without my influence ( 😀 ) can’t stand manufactured pop! He loves bass heavy grime stuff, nearest he gets to pop is Tiny Tempah (I have to take the sweary ones off before they go on his phone).
He once asked me if it was ok to like an Ellie Goulding song 😆 I gave him the ok on that one. But be careful, boy, be careful.
I’ve got massively varied taste, so hope he continues to have the same.

With things like youtube, soundcloud etc music is more accessible now, even for me who grew up and started buying music just as cassettes were being replaced by CDs. The problem is that this means theres even more crap to wade through to find the good stuff!

Northwind – Member
Agree with that… To be fair, it just gets harder to get into new sounds- it doesn’t match what you’re used to, and you don’t tend to have the mates getting you into it, and the media that’s aimed at you tends not to cover it.

Is it?
There are more radio stations available and YouTube. I am now watching and listening to the stuff I ” should ” have been listening to in my yoof 😆 courtesy of YouTube, R6, Tunein radio app etc. it was darts, dominoes, indoor bowling and fishing when I was not working pre apprenticeship/teens. Even in my teens being a country boy with no transport other than bike there were no discos, plenty of live music in village halls which tended towards Scottish country or folk.
My own daughter was into the Boyzone/west life stuff followed by the ’90s electronic stuff till she got hold of my Stoes/Hendrix and Dire Straits CDs 😉
Son was more like me in that he preferred the outdoors but is now into the electronic stuff @ 33…finds it more relaxing whilst studying/working not having to listen to words.

Back in the day there was probably only about four different shit bands available to listen to. One of them was the beatles. So I guess you just took your pick and went mad for them.

Nowadays music is everywhere and there’s so much of it. So people probably don’t feel such a strong affiliation for musicians since they can just turn them off very easily and listen to something completely different.

It’s likely they do care but it’s so much easier to obtain therefore it’s easier to discard. My boy who’s 11 has loads of albums on his iPod mostly downloaded from iTunes or Amazon. I can remember my excitement getting ” Permanent Waves” by Rush on its day of release. I can also remember buying gig tickets for the Odeon in Edinburgh and guarding them with our lives. At Xmas we got our daughter tickets for a gig and there was barely a glimmer of happiness. That excitement isn’t there these days sadly. Spoilt brats the lot o them!

Trekster – Member

Is it?
There are more radio stations available and YouTube. I am now watching and listening to the stuff I ” should ” have been listening to in my yoof courtesy of YouTube, R6, Tunein radio app etc.

Sure, but knowing where to start is not easy, without recommendations and starting points you can drown in the chaff. And once you’ve got a ton of music that you love, why do that?

Hell yes.

My 2 lads are 14 & 16, play the bass and lead guitar respectively, both play trumpet, bot love music from all eras. Bizarrely I dropped the eldest off in Sheffield at the old Top Rank Suite (not the O2 Academy) to see the Stranglers almost 25 years to the day when I saw them. The youngest is into the Manics, Slipknot (de rigour at that age I’m told) and the latest is ‘cool jazz’ – nice!

They don’t follow the charts but they do follow genres of music and specific bands and artists. As I type this the eldest is blasting out Bowie, Queen, The Drifters, PiL and the Kinks.

It’s all about giving them very subtle tasters of varied stuff and letting them follow it through to draw their own conclusions.
😀

I don’t want to sound like an old git, but is music the same as it was? Will there ever be a band as big as, eg, U2, Pink Floyd, Beatles etc. I’m sure many of you will say ‘I hope not’ but bands don’t seem as big as they used to be, even from 10 years ago. Will there ever be someone like Bowie, or even Elton John?

Psy’s Gangnam style is now up to 1.8 billion views.

Do they care about music? Yes, they love it as much as we did. But. They consume it in very different ways to how it was consumed even as recently as 10 years ago.

Albums are the main thing that has changed, kids just don’t listen to them and persevere like we did. Yes, there is plenty of manufactured crap but there always has been, certainly the 80’s had lots of record company made bands. There is also plenty of good music out there, you just have to find it, much like we did,

I don’t want to sound like an old git, but is music the same as it was? Will there ever be a band as big as, eg, U2, Pink Floyd, Beatles etc. I’m sure many of you will say ‘I hope not’ but bands don’t seem as big as they used to be, even from 10 years ago. Will there ever be someone like Bowie, or even Elton John?

No, no you are not old. You just have bad taste in music because those music/bands you listed are not cool. I repeat Not Cool.

The cool ones are:

Carpenter
ABBA
Bee Gees
Carly Simon
Dusty Springfield
Beastie Boys … they are funny but I think one of them is dead.
The Cult … hmmm … blame the Goth I went out with many moons ago.

… or ya … and James Last – imagine them playing Hawaii Five-O full blast in the park. 😆

It’s just shouting nowadays, not proper music, like we had when it was all fields around here.

There has never been a better time to listen to music. And my kids love it.

They play different instruments, their music lessons are more interesting than mine. They play in bands and ensembles of different kinds. They are much more eclectic in their tastes too.

Of course you don’t get the screaming hoards of girls obsessing about one band, or blokes for that matter, like the Beatles/Stones, or Oasis/Blur ‘wars’, (for want of a better term), but youngsters still get music, and still buy it. I buy a lot of single downloads, in much the same way that I used to buy vinyl 45’s, or CD singles, but it’s much easier to do now, thanks to Shazam, and 6Music. I buy fewer albums, but I’ll get a bunch of tagged songs and buy them in one go, so that’s maybe £10-20 on a variety of artists, instead of just one or two. I guess that’s how lots of others do it, too, or through Bandcamp/Soundcloud.
Of course, lots of people, including some on here, seem to think that streaming is all you need; fine, until you have no network.
I bought two albums yesterday, Public Service Broadcasting, and Little Green Cars, both superb, and I listen to them all the way through, just like I do with all the music in iTunes.
There is so much more music around now, and so many ways to discover it, that it’s not surprising people get a bit confused and say there’s no decent music about.
My problem is finding enough spare cash for gig tickets, let alone music; I need a lottery win to keep up.

lunge – Member

Do they care about music? Yes, they love it as much as we did. But. They consume it in very different ways to how it was consumed even as recently as 10 years ago.

What are you on about? You listen to music, you don’t eat it.

My eldest has a love of anything noisy and guitary. He is, of course, influenced by what we as parents listen to and what he hears on the radio (BBC6 is usually on), but he’s more than happy to decide what he likes and dislikes. His party-cd for his birthday this year was an eclectic mix of Nirvana, Pearl jam, The Foos, Lady gaga, Gotye and Psy and One Direction.

He’s currently on GarageBand piecing loops together – seems to have created some oddball country-rock-gospel mash up.

Can’t wait to take him to his first gig but as he’s only 6 it’s a few yeas off.

They are much more eclectic in their tastes too.

This is true IME and a very good thing. When I was young I was a nob about deciding one style of music was the best and refusing to listen to or even respect anything else.

I think we’re finding out far more about old people than young people here 🙂

I was complaining to my 17 year old daughter that the Samsung Allshare software I use to stream media to the TV/Sound system insists on playing album tracks in alphabetic order. She just couldn’t see what the problem was 🙄

Having said that, she is very much into her own selection of music, only some of which I appreciate.

I’ve decided to stop comparing what people a quarter of my age like to do with what I think I would like to do if I was 11 again. I’m happier now.

Duggan is right

It’s amazing how you can very easily influence your kids musical tastes. My kids both love music but I do wonder if my rock/metal roots may railroad them a bit sometimes.

Little Miss CFH loves music. Regularly dances around the kitchen to Iron Maiden, GNR and some good old blues based RAWK.

She’s just over a year old. I have high hopes.