True to his namesake, music_4321 has always pushed us to talk more about music, and in that spirit I wanted to ask a random question:
Do any of you ever make any judgements about people based on their musical preferences? Not necessarily just simple positive or negative judgements - do you draw any broader inferences about their personalities or values from scrolling through someone's playlist?
It seems silly to me when I think about it, but often one of the first questions I will ask when I meet people is what music they listen to, and then I make inferences based on genres and artists. I feel like if they listen to similar music to me, they might be more likely to have had similar experiences and similar outlooks, or have similar friends or pursue similar kinds of media. They might come off as more or less adventurous, more or less sentimental, more or less troubled, etc.
I definitely do, especially when it comes to being interested in a relationship with someone. I once gave up on a woman I thought was rather hot because of two things: 1. She gave away tickets to The Guess Who (and not to me). 2. She posted Bon Jovi as her favorite band on her MySpace page.... The Guess Who is absolutely awesome live (their lead guitarist is Randy Bachman of BTO). I say that as someone who has literally seen hundreds of shows. And I think as "OK" as Bon Jovi is, I could never have a serious relationship with someone who has them as "favorite band".
Conversely, if someone has great taste in music (or at least similar taste to mine), I'm more likely to be interested in them. Though if they have some overlap but widen my horizons by introducing me to additional great music, that's even better.
