Elitism and (classical) music

So Tantacrul made a new video:

I think this is an interesting video, and I like that he frames the subject different ways, since it's complicated.

As for my take on it, I really like his closing statements that Andre Rieu is objectively horrible. I agree 100%.

tl; dw

Criticizing elitism via rambling about Confucius, Mozart, Mao and Taylor Swift in an hour-long video essay reaches layers of irony deemed impossible before.

2 hours ago, KStoertebeker said:

tl; dw

If you didn't watch the video, why are you posting in a thread based on the video?

3 hours ago, KStoertebeker said:

tl; dw

Criticizing elitism via rambling about Confucius, Mozart, Mao and Taylor Swift in an hour-long video essay reaches layers of irony deemed impossible before.

It's just the dregs of humanity / Neo-Marxists whining about standards existing and wanting to do away with any sort of hierarchy as means of coping with their own inferiority as usual. Nothing new, nothing really to see here. This guy, right off the bat is talking about "muh class divisions" and using communist imagery toward the middle. I didn't watch this whole snoozefest either, but when you go to the middle of the video, you really see where he gets to the meat of his "point" (that's been rehashed for decades). "The belief that there are naturally superior people..."

There are. This is of course what the author seeks to "dismantle". Nobody and nothing is ever genuinely better than something else; that quality doesn't exist. We need to fix this "inequality" of people understanding the obvious reality in front of their eyes and ears that some people are better than they are at any given thing and not all of us can reach their skill for ourselves.

I will say that, I do think the "elitism" in the sense that the idea that all "Pop" music is automatically inferior because it is "pop" or because it doesn't have guitars is dumb, but that's not what he's on about.

Anyway,

Beethoven or Tchaikovsky aren't better than Schoenberg or Lil' Wayne because of some bourgeoisie oppression or whatever tf. They're better because their music is better, and this becomes immediately apparent upon listening to it.

32 minutes ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

It's just the dregs of humanity / Neo-Marxists whining about standards...

Another guy who didn't watch the video. Man. What's up with this.

Oh, I was just confused that you would expect others to be able to join in the discussion of this sixty-two minutes long video without mentioning what exactly you found compelling. As nobody seems to have the time to comment on a two-minute piece by a fellow user, this seemed rather expectant to me. But really, it was just meant as a snarky comment, nothing more.

On topic, because I made it through the video: I think he is conflating many things.

Why does he mention the social standing of musicians in Mozart's time while completely glossing over how in Liszt's time already, musicians were basically revered celebrities?

How is commercialized pop music elitist? To the contrary, merely academically succesful music(have you heard "The Sandpiper") seems elitist to me(as he acknowledges in the case of Babbitt). Pop music is commercialized entertainment. He really conflates entertainment and art.

How can you mock the West for being snobbish about Classical Music and fail to see that all this vain materialism and performance of the Rieus of this world is what drives China to investment into Classical Music? No, it has to be some Confucian tradition.

What I think: Music has never been more accessible to youths all around the world. Open up Spotify, type in 'Debussy Préludes“ and you are there already. Just as every other craft, music requires (expensive) training and dedication. Go around and ask people: They do not care about music at all. Why would one dedicate so much time to music if it were not for thinking it to be higher art? Why listen to 62 minutes of Tentacrul if not for that?

And this is true for many other things. People also like to flaunt their belongings. Has he ever heard people talk about expensive(not fine) food, sports or anything like that? He really conflates enthusiats(as on this forum) with people who just pretend for status.

To top it off, he himself writes purely academic music and in this very video talks about ancient China for ten minutes which is not even tangentially related to anything else he talks about. It is almost comical how he has his gripes with the correlation of wealth and Classical music while uploading hour long video essays to his YouTube channel. 

43 minutes ago, KStoertebeker said:

Why does he mention the social standing of musicians in Mozart's time while completely glossing over how in Liszt's time already, musicians were basically revered celebrities?

Hm. So Liszt was born in 1811 and Mozart died in 1791, you can sort of understand they're not even part of the same musical generation (by a large margin) and the world was pretty different by the time Liszt was actually getting famous. Additionally, musicians were not revered celebrities during Mozart's time which was the point he was making. Why even bring up Liszt in the first place?? Also, if you wanna name an actual "rock star" of that time, Rossini would do better than Liszt and he was born only a year after Liszt, so again, pretty much outside of Mozart's generation.

52 minutes ago, KStoertebeker said:

Just as every other craft, music requires (expensive) training and dedication.

Not really. Anyone can do music, on any kind of budget, with any kind of training. I guess if you wanted to perform Rachmaninov's 3rd piano concerto or something you would be right, but "music" is a lot more than just that.

2 hours ago, SSC said:

Not really. Anyone can do music, on any kind of budget, with any kind of training. I guess if you wanted to perform Rachmaninov's 3rd piano concerto or something you would be right, but "music" is a lot more than just that.

Anyone can also draw, paint or do brain surgery with any kind of budget or training as well, though. I've got a pizza cutter and YouTube tutorials.

That doesn't mean everyone can do it well without the kind of training, dedication, materials and also — genetic predisposition requisite to excelling in these areas and that's where we run into the problem.

One may not necessarily be wrong for enjoying things which don't really live up to these sorts of standards, but to suggest that ACTUALLY, they're totally just as valid because (insert political gibberish here) is where the issue comes up and you start to see that these people actually are just revolutionary ideologues seeking to destroy longstanding crafts/tradition that rose to prominence organically, precisely because they produced great results and actually came to represent entire cultures and ethnic groups of people and which said ideologues find humiliating in their inability to replicate it.

Music may be more than Mozart. Music is also pornodeathgrindcore. 

People who like the latter aren't "wrong" but to suggest that anyone saying Mozart and not "Entombed" is what should be the cultural standard of craftsmanship, aesthetic and musical ability for aspiring composers to aim for and exceed is an "elitist" which really they mean "chauvinist" here, is totally unreasonable and is motivated by subversive, revolutionary worldviews.

Pretty sure that video even has a "cultural revolution" segment...

1 hour ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

One may not necessarily be wrong for enjoying things

Yeah, people that have different tastes than yours aren't wrong for having them, go figure.

1 hour ago, SSC said:

Yeah, people that have different tastes than yours aren't wrong for having them, go figure.

Are you disappointed you're not getting the kind of response you thought (hoped) you would by posting this?

That you got another guy, before me this time, not buying into the Marxism and watching an hour-long video with irrelevant tangents about China?

Sounds like it stings.

6 hours ago, SSC said:

Not really. Anyone can do music, on any kind of budget, with any kind of training. I guess if you wanted to perform Rachmaninov's 3rd piano concerto or something you would be right, but "music" is a lot more than just that.

Yet it is is almost insulting to suggest to the trained musician that anyone can do just as well. Rachmaninov's 3rd ist a masterpiece of craftmanship and very nice to listen to.  Yes, there is a difference in value between minutiously crafted composition, be it classical or jazz, on the one hand and a (pop) song I just made up on the other hand. Orchestration is an entirely separate challenge, something you do not have to care about if it is just you and a guitar. A well-written sonata requires training no songwriter knows about. Nobody in their right mind would call this distinction elitist.

3 hours ago, KStoertebeker said:

Yet it is is almost insulting to suggest to the trained musician that anyone can do just as well. Rachmaninov's 3rd ist a masterpiece of craftmanship and very nice to listen to.  Yes, there is a difference in value between minutiously crafted composition, be it classical or jazz, on the one hand and a (pop) song I just made up on the other hand. Orchestration is an entirely separate challenge, something you do not have to care about if it is just you and a guitar. A well-written sonata requires training no songwriter knows about. Nobody in their right mind would call this distinction elitist.

He means for it to be insulting, that's the thing.

But let us take a moment to appreciate his musical genius for ourselves:

28 minutes ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

But let us take a moment to appreciate his musical genius for ourselves:

First, and last warning. Do not do this, I am not insulting you nor your music and I'm tired you always doing the same thing. Instead of using arguments, you just go for personal attacks.

2 hours ago, KStoertebeker said:

Nobody in their right mind would call this distinction elitist.

They're different things for different people. There's plenty of people out there who think Rach's concerto is dreadfully boring and they'd rather do something else. In fact, I'd say this is the state of classical music in the west in general, it's on the decline. And the video does address this pretty well, specially with the example concerning the sex pistols. The idea that anyone should just accept, without question, that X or Y are just "masterpieces" and Z composer is just a "genius" really rubs me the wrong way. I say let things fall where they may, if these things are so genius and those masterpieces are so great, then why are people like you so afraid of letting people make up their own mind on them?

6 hours ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

That you got another guy, before me this time, not buying into the Marxism and watching an hour-long video with irrelevant tangents about China?

None of it has anything to do with Marx, at all. In fact I'd say it's quite the opposite, since the video talks about the importance of people's individual circumstances and their choices, very much something communism doesn't like (the bit about China is about the disaster of Mao's cultural revolution and how it destroyed the western classical music being made, caused people to kill themselves or get tortured, etc.) But since you're so afraid of watching it, I guess you'll never know huh?

I'm 100% for people's freedom to do what they want to do, including criticizing supposed musical "masterpieces," or having different tastes or ideas. I'm both on Johnny Rotten's side AND on Babbitt's side, in that the "mainstream" opinion isn't automatically rule of law, no matter what anyone says. I'm a skeptic, I need to see and judge things for myself and I don't just buy anyone's ideas at first glance, no matter what kind of "authority" says them. I know you're an authoritarian, so obviously you don't like this, but one of the fundamental pillars of our modern western world is the idea of freedom, both of action and of thought.

And, for all the disdain for Marx you both have, you still love using Ricardo's "Labor theory of Value" (LTV) that's so central to his economic analysis, when it comes to music. However, we know that this is false since effort does not equal value. You can spend all your life writing a piece, or practicing Rach's 3rd concerto, but that doesn't automatically mean it has any value. You guys are all about value, specially cultural value, but in reality it depends on what people actually do, what they like and what actually gets any attention. And it turns out that any given pop star or rock band (in other words, the cultural mainstream) is -VASTLY- more successful and popular than any mainstay in the classical repertoire.

3 hours ago, KStoertebeker said:

A well-written sonata requires training no songwriter knows about. Nobody in their right mind would call this distinction elitist.

A songwriter can outclass Mozart, Beethoven AND Rachmaninov in sales and popularity, many many many times over, and we see it all the time. We've seen it for decades now. So they're more valuable to people, despite the music being "less effort" to make. You can then say that the classical warhorses are "timeless," but are they really? I mean as the institutions that prop them up slowly die due to people not engaging with classical music due to many of the points the video makes (one of which being classical music being hard to access with people of low income, as well as the idea that classical music is only for the rich or "the elite."), we may find that just like thousands upon thousands of composers have been lost to time, so will eventually these "geniuses", if people ultimately don't find what they did valuable and rather engage with other things.

Classical music is a tiny niche, that's slowly getting smaller and smaller. That's also one major point of the video, and the point is discussing what can be done so that more people can get into classical music. Saying that their tastes are garbage because they don't appreciate Mozart does NOT motivate people to listen to Mozart, it only causes disdain and apathy.

In the west at the moment we have a huge problem on authority: who and for what reasons does someone get authority? This problem is huge primarely because the democratic system is highlighting it so much (I guess it was always there but in our day and age we struggle with it more). We have also a huge epistemological problem since we can't be sure if the knowledge we think we have is real or not. This is very much the long-term result of nominalism. These two problems are deeply related and play themselves also out in the musical field. When we have discussions like these we have to have these two problems in mind and find solutions in our field. I'm quite sure we can find solutions because there was a time when people weren't as troubled with the problems as we are today.

@SSC

Oh, you misunderstood me there. I meant that in terms of craftmanship, art music is more valuable than a simple pop song. Everybody can produce music, but the Western tradition is a distinguished discipline, built upon a long lecay. I personally do not care about symphonies(especially Beethoven's) at all, since I am more partial towards small-scale works. Still, I can admire the work involved in constructing such a work objectively. A simple song however, as it is easy to construct, can only be evaluated subjectively. I also do not care about popularity at all. I am always searching for apocryphic composers(a few I can recommend: Joseph Ermand-Bonnal, Jean Cras and Joseph Jongen) and seldom listen to the popular works. Not out of elitism, but because I am intrigued by compositions in the vein of Debussy's and Ravel's String Quartets for example.

But, to return to the video, I still have to disagree. Andre Rieu is not elitist: he is the epitome of pop-classical pretentiousness, presenting shallow shows to everyone. At least, everyone can enjoy some Rieu. Elitism, however, I see in the works of Tantacrul himself and academia producing unintelligible music based on foreign (often purely mathematical) ideas. To enjoy these works, you have to be part of the musical elite. These works are vastly unpopular. Again: How can one call Rieu, who at least sells out overplayed classics to the common man, elitist, when he himself composes music most musicians would not even appreciate? This is some marvellous cognitive dissonance at work. If anything, works like "Herostratic" are at fault for classical music being percieved as elitist.

1 hour ago, Jan-Peter said:

I'm quite sure we can find solutions because there was a time when people weren't as troubled with the problems as we are today.

Well, I don't think a lot of people have a problem to begin with. To them, they just consume the music that they like and that's that. Same with most people who make music, they do what they like and that's that. It's when you look at trying to expand the demographic of something that you run into issues.

1 hour ago, Jan-Peter said:

We have also a huge epistemological problem since we can't be sure if the knowledge we think we have is real or not.

Well, I'm an empiricist for the most part, so I do think that the best way to get real knowledge is by experimentation (the scientific method.) Other methods, such as the post-modern "a priori" theories and claims, are all rather trashy and they don't withstand so much as a brush with reality, let alone actual experimentation (not to say that EVERYTHING from postmodernism is trash, there's some good stuff there too.)

It's easy to fall for that trap, as a lot of things that seem "logical" or "reasonable," may end up being nothing but in reality, but the only way to find out is to test things out.

This is also the main failing of LTV, which seemed reasonable and logical to a lot of people, but in the end it's a total failure since it cannot come up with a working theory of pricing. We ended up with "marginal utility" as a much better method for determining value and indeed it can actually result in a working theory of pricing. This applies to our discussion since we are discussing value.

1 hour ago, KStoertebeker said:

I meant that in terms of craftmanship, art music is more valuable than a simple pop song.

Value is also a function of demand, tho. If nobody cares about (and/or wants) your craftmanship, then it doesn't have a lot of value. It does to you probably, who made it (which can be a sunken cost fallacy too, btw), but to everyone else? Again this is LTV at work.

1 hour ago, KStoertebeker said:

A simple song however, as it is easy to construct, can only be evaluated subjectively. I also do not care about popularity at all.

A simple song can be easy or hard to make and it can take years to make, or a few minutes, that's up to the person writing. Also, anything can also be just evaluated subjectively (again, are you talking about LTV?), and as much as you don't care about popularity, the rest of the world quite does. Orchestras play warhorses' music the entire time because that's what sells. Rieu is exactly the epitome of that.

1 hour ago, KStoertebeker said:

Andre Rieu is not elitist: he is the epitome of pop-classical pretentiousness, presenting shallow shows to everyone.

--
Elitism, however, I see in the works of Tantacrul himself and academia producing unintelligible music based on foreign (often purely mathematical) ideas. To enjoy these works, you have to be part of the musical elite. These works are vastly unpopular.

Well that's the entire point. It's not that he himself is an elitist or not, he's basically presenting his music as something "for the elite." I mean the video says it pretty well, he's doing 18th century aristocratic cosplay the entire time, which is rather elitist in concept.

As for the "unintelligible music" you don't seem to like, it's not the case that those works can't be enjoyed by people outside of the "musical elite." lol. It may be less likely, but that's entirely dependent on the music itself and the audience. Hard to just declare this by fiat, as you like to do.

@SSC

Nobody cares about the LTV. Why would you determine the value of art empirically? How hard is it to accept that judging a composition based on rules emerging from hundreds of years of music practice is as objective as it gets? This discussion has been a rollercoaster of amusement and absurdity, you might as well tell us that a woman is anybody who identifies as one.

2 minutes ago, KStoertebeker said:

How hard is it to accept that judging a composition based on rules emerging from hundreds of years of music practice is as objective as it gets?

Because it's not objective at all.

Let me get you a dictionary definition (Cambridge):

Quote

objective

based on real facts and not influenced by personal beliefs or feelings:

-an objective and impartial report

-I can't really be objective when I'm judging my daughter's work.

That you think that music needs to be judged based on preceding history is VERY MUCH a personal belief. I can judge music based on any number of arbitrary parameters, as can anyone else. And this is done constantly, in fact, since I don't think anyone give a damn about the "hundreds of years of music" when they like a pop song on the radio.

Second, your "hundreds of years of music" includes everything from Leonin to Ligeti. What the hell are those "rules" you mentioned? Or are you just not aware that aesthetic paradigms kept changing for those hundreds of years? Or you're totally OK with putting Frescobaldi and Schumann in the same sack and calling it a day? Or how about Orlando di Lasso and CPE Bach? All the same to you?

17 minutes ago, KStoertebeker said:

Nobody cares about the LTV.

You guys kept bringing up how:

6 hours ago, KStoertebeker said:

Yes, there is a difference in value between minutiously crafted composition, be it classical or jazz, on the one hand and a (pop) song I just made up on the other hand.

And this is basically LTV. You are positing that because something is "meticulously crafted" it's therefore better (or more valuable) than something that is not. It's a lot of "labor," so you think it's got inherent value. The catch here is, obviously, if the result is the "unintelligible music" you mentioned earlier, even if it required the same level of labor or more to make, you'd probably consider it of less value, right? Like comparing Xenakis' Metastasis to Mozart's Jupiter symphony. This is very much the nature of subjectivity and why your position is entirely subjective.

23 minutes ago, KStoertebeker said:

Why would you determine the value of art empirically?

This is what you're trying to do by saying that your judgement is "as objective as it gets." Objectivity being based on empiricism being the optimal way to argue this position. So, instead of just declaring it like you do, I'd rather use well known theories and models for this. Another theory of value that is helpful is the "Subjective theory of value," which is attributed to Carl Menger. You can then apply this to see how people prefer certain kinds of music over others, and what they're willing to pay for them, based on a number of different factors.

So, for example, let's say that writing and performing a symphony is a pretty poor value proposition. Why? You need to account for paying an orchestra (rehearsals and performance fees), renting the studio/gear, and this is just to get the thing performed. If we take into account it can take up to a year to write the score, edit and correct each of the orchestral parts and then have everything delivered, that's also an additional cost (in time and effort, if not purely monetary.) So would you then need to receive to make this a worthwhile business venture? You need to at least break even, but you probably also need to profit if you want to make this sustainable.

I may have a horrible opinion about Mr Rieu's business, but I have to admit that it's a great business and he did a fantastic job with the enterprise as a whole. He found a product to sell to justify all these costs and then streamlined the production (no new music, only famous bits of preexisting (often in the public domain) works.) This is all based on empirical, objective value propositions which then manifest in the real world in the form of monetary profits.

So take this to contemporary music. You can put together a concert with your "unpopular" compositions, but for that to be a viable thing you need to get a hold of an audience that would want to attend that. And it's a small niche, even smaller than typical classical concerts. However, people do this all the same. The fact that the music is less valuable to the majority of people doesn't stop them from writing it, because artistic freedom is more important to them. Everyone has their own motivations for doing things, in this manner, and they have to then deal with the reality of those motivations. We'll probably never have an "Rieu" that specializes in Legeti and Stockhausen, but there are ensembles that established themselves by playing those "unpopular works" all the same.

For example:

https://www.ensemble-modern.com/en

https://www.ensembleintercontemporain.com/en/

And so on.

50 minutes ago, KStoertebeker said:

This discussion has been a rollercoaster of amusement and absurdity,

The only absurdity here is that you apparently operate under the assumption that your personal beliefs are universal and, somehow, "as objective as it gets."

Yeah, but the question was why (untrained) people flock to classical music and why it is seen as artistically (not economically) valuable in comparison to other music. Well, because hundreds of years of music tradition have produced a loose canon of rules which allows us to write comprehensible, pleasant music. Mozart's music follows an intrinsic logic, just as Strauss' pompous waltzes, Desprez' motets and many more do. Of course, Ligeti, Stockhausen and even early modernists like Hindemith cannot fairly be judged by these standards, but they deliberately break with this tradition and, as you yourself noticed, are far less popular. 

51 minutes ago, KStoertebeker said:

Yeah, but the question was why (untrained) people flock to classical music and why it is seen as artistically (not economically) valuable in comparison to other music.

People don't flock to classical music tho, that's the entire point. It's on a decline and we can see that in the size of the "classical music" industry vs other music industries. And, this being the case, it also stands to reason that people then don't really value it as being "more artistically valuable," it's either something they don't care about and/or it simply doesn't fit the aesthetic paradigms that are prevalent now.

So let's source these statements:

https://static.billboard.com/files/pdfs/NIELSEN_2019_YEARENDreportUS.pdf

(page 35)

and a more recent one

https://static.billboard.com/files/2021/07/MRCData_MIDYEAR_2021_US_FINAL-1626122960.pdf

(page 36)

which show you that classical music is consistently around 1% of the market.

So, how's this "people flock to classical music"? They don't. They really don't. There is a little increase recently due to streaming, but it's still peanuts.

51 minutes ago, KStoertebeker said:

Well, because hundreds of years of music tradition have produced a loose canon of rules which allows us to write comprehensible, pleasant music.

People seem to not really care. Bottom 1% of the music market gives you a pretty good idea about the appreciation people have for classical music as a whole. So much for that argument, huh? When the numbers are this tiny, it really doesn't matter if it's Boulez or Mozart, it's still a stupendously tiny minority of people who even listen to it, let alone play it. It could be seen, also, as somewhat elitist! Wow look at that, looping right back around to the subject of the thread.

So when talking about "unpopular" music, remember to include the entire classical genre too.

It is almost as if classical music, despite all the progress in accessibility, still inherently is higher art which you need to invest time and dedication into where most people just want to have something to blare over them sitting on the shitter and this discussion has been about the former, not the entire music market. But surely, if it were not for Rieu cosplaying as an 18th century aristocrat, people in the back of the bus would be terrorizing passengers with Beethoven's "Große Fuge", maybe even some spicy "Gesang der Jünglinge".

3 minutes ago, KStoertebeker said:

It is almost as if classical music, despite all the progress in accessibility, still inherently is higher art which you need to invest time and dedication into

What's the "time and dedication" investment in listening to Mozart, really? Like, on spotify, or whatever?

I'm not even talking about playing or composing classical music, just merely listening to it. There is literally no barrier to entry, anyone can type "classical music" on youtube and have enough for a whole year of constant listening. And yet, bottom 1%, so how do you square that circle?

One gets the most out of classical music by attentively listening to it exactly because of its qualities. It is a pleasure, but also a mental exercise, given the right circumstances. Taking one's time, listening closely, familiarizing oneself with the music are timeconsuming entry barriers. As most people do not care that much about music, they could never really enjoy it. Same goes for theater and literature. But by this standard, "The Big Bang Theory" and mac 'n' cheese would be most valuable because the majority does not care about better crafted alternatives. The entry barrier for Shakespeare is even lower since all of his texts are in the public domain, yet you need time and dedication to actually read one of his works.

I think the main reason classical music isn't  appreciated as much as pop music is because classical music is perceived as 'boring' by the youth and that is the worst you can be on a young age because everything needs to be super fast, super sexy and super cool. Since people musically don't grow much of wider taste after adolescence... Most people are, concerning the arts, tried and done after 16 or so. For the most part. Little changes occur afterwards but not so much. Classical music is way out of the box for most people. I'm not saying classical music is objectively better than popmusic because to prove such thing is hard. But I do think to widen your taste can be a good thing. For instance you can listen to Shakuhachi music. Thank me later.

1 hour ago, KStoertebeker said:

As most people do not care that much about music, they could never really enjoy it. Same goes for theater and literature.

I think this is vastly underestimating people, in general. People care a whole deal about music, just mostly not music you happen to enjoy (as the statistics I've posted demonstrate.) Additionally, there's no "right way" to listen to music either, and everyone has their preferences when it comes to how and why they listen to things.

1 hour ago, KStoertebeker said:

The entry barrier for Shakespeare is even lower since all of his texts are in the public domain, yet you need time and dedication to actually read one of his works.

I'd say you need time and dedication to read at all. Which is why reading is not nearly as popular as, say, watching random garbage on youtube or binging some random series on netflix (or whatever.)

1 hour ago, Jan-Peter said:

I think the main reason classical music isn't  appreciated as much as pop music is because classical music is perceived as 'boring' by the youth and that is the worst you can be on a young age because everything needs to be super fast, super sexy and super cool. Since people musically don't grow much of wider taste after adolescence... Most people are, concerning the arts, tried and done after 16 or so.

Probably, but this doesn't necessarily have to be the case, but I think you're mostly correct. People tend to stick with whatever they liked during their formative years and tend to not venture out much beyond that. This is a huge challenge to anyone trying to spark interest in classical music, of course.

1 hour ago, Jan-Peter said:

Classical music is way out of the box for most people. I'm not saying classical music is objectively better than popmusic because to prove such thing is hard. But I do think to widen your taste can be a good thing.

Yeah, from that perspective it's true that listening to classical music is almost the hipster thing to do from a rarity perspective. But yeah, I think we can all agree that listening to a lot of different music is a great way to get new ideas and just in general broaden your view of the world, specially if you venture out of the mainstream altogether.