Favorite Tunes

I am not a fan of much of the music written, recorded and released in recent years. Like American film, American pop music seems to me to be increasingly dumbed down and aimed at the pre teen and teen market. Having said that, I admit that music is a subjective field. What one person likes is not the same as what others may want to hear. And to assign quality to an art form is not easy.
Yet, I always like the "oldie songs" much better, and find most modern pop childlike in form, composition and performance. I am scratching my head to wonder why the music I regard as "junk" is so dear to others. Well, I just read an article on this very subject, and according to it the reason many people like a song is simple. They are influenced by other who like it.
A Columbia University team decided to assess this phenomenon of "I better like that song because everyone else likes it", so they set up an "artificial music market" recruiting more than 14,000 people from the web. The recruits were encouraged to browse through a music site that featured a selection of 48 unknown songs of varying quality from unknown bands. Each recruit rated the songs on a 1 to 5 scale.
But the recruits were divided into one of two groups. In the first group, the only information they had was the name of the song, the artist's tittle and the song itself. In the second group, the recruits had all of that plus one other piece of information- how many times the song had been downloaded by other people.
You guessed it. The songs that were most downloaded in the second group were rated best in the second group, while those same songs got not such high rating in the first group. So the influence of others determined which songs were "best' to those who heard them in that second group. This might explain why songs many regard as awful become hits. It's the "follow the herd" mentality that makes them popular.
Well, that's one explanation of why we listen to bad music, read terrible novels (Harry Potter, for instance?), see those dull witted Hollywood movies or are obsessed with the latest technology (the cell phone of the week?). Hehe having said that, the fact that you read my blog reflects on your own ability to know good taste from bad....
Ever call the Department of Motor Vehicles seeking help about licenses or other auto related matters? Well if you lived in New Jersey the call might be more entertaining than one would imagine. You see, New Jersey motorists calling a toll-free number seeking handicapped or animal friendly license plates are getting a little more "action" than they expected to get when making the call. Instead of getting the state Motor Vehicle Commission the callers are reaching a phone sex operation.
The mix-up resulted because the DMV number prefix for toll free calls is prefixed with 888, while the phone sex site has the same number with the traditional 800 prefix. Too 65,000 cards from he Associated Humane Society were sent last month with the sex site number instead of the DMV listing. State officials are trying to correct the mistake, but...you guessed it..the DMV office is said to be receiving a record number of calls these days..