Who’s More Open-Minded About Music: Indie Fans or Pop Fans? Who are the Bigger Snobs?
Fans of indie music are often portrayed as snobbish hipsters, people who believe that their tastes in music are more sophisticated, nuanced and refined. The idea is that the can somehow listen better to music than anyone else and therefore are much, much more picky when it comes to identifying “good” music.
Or are they?
New research from McMaster University in Hamilton says reality is quite the opposite. Indie fans are the most open-minded of all music fans. Researchers came to this conclusion after scouring more than a billion song downloads in order to determine which self-identified fan groups had the most ecumenical tastes in music. Here’s the list.
- Indie
- Jazz
- Folk
- Country
- Classical
- Rock
- Metal
- Rap
- Dance
- Pop
So pop music is more exclusive than indie music? Pop music snobs? Apparently so. Read the details of these findings at the CBC.
I have to admit “Indie” doesn’t really mean anything to me. Or rather it means “whatever’s next” and that’s something that’s constantly changing. In the early 80s it meant a bunch of “new romantic” artists that sounded different than anything else we were listening to. In the early 90s it was “grunge” which merged metal and punk. More recently it’s meant fiddles, banjos and mandolins as part of the “americana” movement.
So yes, my long winded way of agreeing that “indie” people are the most open-minded because”indie” isn’t a genre it’s a philosophy about discovering new and different types of music.
Never heard of opinions? Looks like the word is non existent on the internet.