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Comment by Aidevah | Hacker News Reader

>Why would anyone want to listen to it then? what would be the point? The acoustic equivalent of a screensaver?

Isn't that exactly how music is consumed nowadays by most people? They put something when driving, cooking, doing homework, etc. It's used mainly for mood/focus and they're not exactly paying close attention to it the same way one would to a audiobook of, say, an abstract algebra textbook. Especially considering how cheap and easy it is to steam music nowadays. I suspect focused, attentive listening only makes up a small minority of the total streams.

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>I suspect focused, attentive listening only makes up a small minority of the total streams

The inverse is likely true with the classical audience. Just like with jazz, although there will be a portion of users seeking “vibey jazz” sort of playlists to use in the background while working, the majority of jazz fans consume jazz as albums and are still concerned with things like personnel and liner notes, perhaps even who mastered this recording. Classical fans are similar except I would say even more picky IME (worked in a jazz and classical CD store/venue for a number of years)

I wouldn't call myself a classical music fan, but if we're looking at Spotify stream numbers I wouldn't be surprised if a big chunk of classical is background noise too. Whenever I'm trying to get work done in a noisy environment I go for classical playlists - unless I'm doing something mindless like cleaning I find it very hard to focus with most music. Might just be that lyrics (especially in English) distract me, but classical is an easy go to for studying time IMO.

It might be useful, in both cases, to distinguish "fans" and "consumers" of those styles. Yes, the people who most consciously identify as fans of the styles are picky, but I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of classical play counts by volume are consumed for muzakish purposes. Mozart for babies, Vivaldi for malls, etc.

The same may be true for Jazz, though in that genre there may be a bit more of a separation between jazzy background mood music and jazz as consumed by fans. There are some overlaps ("The Girl from Ipanema", "Take Five", etc), but they may not be quite as central to the canon as their classical counterparts.

these are fair points, I suppose I was more addressing this with the "classical fan" user in mind given the context of the discussion, idea of a platform that serves these users. It definitely is true though that a huge portion of music listeners in general would rather throw a random playlist on than select an album and it would be interesting to somehow see how many classical listeners on say Spotify are doing so through playlists vs selected albums.

There is 45k streaming the lofi girl on youtube now. Maybe not jazz but simmilar typ, also mostly background music.

> I suspect focused, attentive listening only makes up a small minority of the total streams.

You haven't justified your assertion of the dichotomy between pure blind consumption and active, focussed listening. You must actually argue that the negation of one implies the other. Your comment is totally meaningless as it stands

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