Music People Like

People don’t know what they like:  they like what they know.  Contemporary American culture from television aimed at very small children to advertising aimed at children of all ages to MTV, which is nothing but a 24-hour commercial, to every talk and variety show on television, etc. etc. etc. is saturated with the routines of pop music.  You cannot acquire a taste for that with which you are unfamiliar.

This answer begs the following question:  why is pop music more susceptible to this form of commercialization than classical music?  The short answer is that classical music makes greater demands on the listener . . . just as it does on the composer and performer.  Parents no longer routinely require their children to take violin or piano lessons, the idea that rewards follow upon some degree of effort as the compensation for some degree of discipline and learning has been thrown overboard in the wake of the youth culture of the 1960’s.  We see the lasting legacy of “the 60’s” on Madison Avenue, which has co-opted this attitude to sell products to kids.