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Comment by bachmeier | Hacker News Reader

> That’s why the organizers of the Super Bowl — with a median viewer age of 44 — were smart to balance their Katy Perry-headlined halftime show with a showing by Missy Elliott.

I'm 41. I listen to Katy Perry all the time. I've never heard of Missy Elliott. I can dismiss that by saying maybe I'm not average.

> people with children (inferred from listening habits) listen to a smaller amounts of currently-popular music than the average listener of that age

This is one that I have a hard time believing. Now that my son is starting to listen to music on his own, I get exposed to currently-popular music all the time. For a long time I only listened to the old stuff. I don't know anyone for whom that is not true. I don't even understand how that can be true in principle - is it really the case that being exposed to currently-popular music causes you to listen to it less?

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Missy Elliott was big your college years. Katy Perry was for the younger ones I believe.

> Missy Elliott was big your college years.

Not really visibly so for someone who was 41 and had the normal timetable getting through college; she didn't start to become a big name until the late 1990s, first as a songwriter/producer and later as a solo artist. Someone who is 41 and graduated from college at 22 would have graduated before her solo debut, and in the same year as the Aaliyah album for which here work as a songwriter/producer/feature artist was credited with first bringing her into the public awareness.

> she didn't start to become a big name until the late 1990s

That would explain it. I was in grad school at that time. Taking time to do the laundry was a luxury, to say nothing about listening to music.

being exposed to currently-popular music causes you to listen to it less?

Wouldn't surprise me if that were true. I learned to avoid the pop music radio stations because while lots of it is good, even more of it is crap and annoys me.

I find lots of new music I like, but most of it isn't popular. It's generally something I track down from a commercial, or I hear a few times on the local public radio alternative station, or heard in a movie. Heck, I discovered I love Concrete Blonde from a TV show 25 years ago.

I find that having Xbox Music & YouTube available makes me listen to a lot of stuff I otherwise wouldn't find.

OTOH people who don't have kids might not drift away from their single life habits the way people with kids have to once the little ones are there. They have a lot more time/freedom to continue going to concerts, bars, parties, etc., all of which have the potential to expose them to newer music. Even if children expose their parents to new music, it takes awhile for kids to start discovering their own music, so there's a ~13 year gap where parents are spending a significant amount of time raising kids that can't show them anything new.

I interpret the article to be referring to parents of young children (e.g. identifying parent listeners via kid/nursery music). These parents may well be curating their non-kid music listening for their children.

That's what I did. When our kids were born, I wanted them to hear historically-significant popular music, not just the currently popular dreck. Think Motown or 80's Michael Jackson, not {fill in the blank with anything popular this minute}.

I don't much listen to either... but I do listen to a radio station(stations) that tend to play a lot of old and new music. I don't do a lot of discovery on my own these days... but given the likes of Pandora and those radio stations that do have decent, human DJs it's entirely possible to not have a freeze in music tastes.

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