I dig this chestnut up often, but it's a good one:
Nothing ages you faster than when you stop embracing new music.
Listen to country, listen to rap, listen to whatever, but keep listening and especially keep listening to new artists and songs.
Keep yourself alive.
I'm thankful it actually hasn't gotten harder for me. Then again, it's probably because even when I was young, I was exposed to a vast variety of different genres of music. Though I will say I'm still a big avid collector of Vinyl.
I tend to find a lot of music through osmosis in other mediums like movies or TV first, so cutting back on that makes it a conscious effort I have to keep up with lol.
I find it’s a lot easier these days with streaming services like Spotify and YouTube Music, since you can easily check out new artists or albums without a lot of effort, and their recommendations are spot-on for me most of the time.
Or don't. It's okay to just enjoy your thing and not worry about what anyone else is doing. So long as you don't concern yourself about what other people are listening to in ignorance and yuck their yum.
I use spotify and I have multiple playlists on there for my WoW characters and some other mixes.
Some advice if people use it, there's an option called "Smart Shuffle" where it mixes in songs it thinks you'll like into your playlists. I found some of my favorites that way. :D
Honest question: does new in this case mean "new to me" or "contemporary?"
Because I've got a list of 10-12 artists I wanna hunt down CDs for that are all from the 1980s, but I only recently looked into them after discovering them on a "Lost 80s" streaming channel.
It's true ... I've been so thankful to KCSN 88.5 -- The SoCal Sound -- for introducing me to a bunch of bands I wouldn't have otherwise heard. I call their format "new music for grownups." The weekday morning show is essential.
www.thesocalsound.org
So, speaking as an Old, I do TRY to listen to new music, but I'm not sure where to FIND it.
I'm don't know of a local radio station that PLAYS current music, and the online services all seem to be "play me songs similar to stuff I already like," which doesn't get me NEW and DIFFERENT music.
You could start with chart-based playlist, like Spotify’s “Today’s Top Hits”:
open.spotify.com/playlist/37i...
When you Like a song on Spotify, it gets saved to your Liked Songs playlist and over time your auto-generated Discover Weekly playlist will contain new artists tailored to your tastes.
I was a nu-metal/rap metal kid and when that basically vanished I was forced out of my comfort zone back in the late 2000's. So glad it did because it's led me down a rabbit hole of embracing new music ever since. I still love metal (although so many nazi's at times) but I dig top 40/Kpop/synth.
Admittedly I don't really do this with new music so much (I was never a music person) but with media like shows I absolutely love embracing the new. Especially in children's media where there's a beautiful cascade of new generations building on the stuff they grew up with.
I find people who do nostalgia-bait or are stuck in an era for music or other media and don't go past a certain era ALWAYS have a grievance with any sort of progressive policies, human rights, or marginalised groups existing or being prominent in media - and THAT'S when their media tastes stagnate.
