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Comment by ng12 | Hacker News Reader

> Is music as a kind of social glue and lubricant also being eliminated?

I definitely grew up in a different decade than David Byrne but for me music has always been a digital experience. I know very, very few people in real life who have the same tastes as I do and where tastes do overlap it's often very surface-level (who doesn't like Radiohead?). However I've consistently found little communities online which have had a huge influence on the music I listen to -- from BBSs to Soulseek to 4chan -- which has allowed me to craft my tastes in a way that wouldn't scale to a local social network. It's not bad, just different.

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who doesn't like Radiohead?

We exist, and in greater numbers than you might realise.

Haha, fair. But the point is digitally you can explore the long tail in a way that's very hard in real life. Most of my immediate peers would have some opinion on Radiohead but it's relatively unlikely we could deliver meaningful recommendations based on eachother's specific tastes.

Before there was digital there were specialist record stores. a taste for the obscure isn't a new thing, although it's easier than ever to indulge.

I think there is less need to tolerate the mainstream than ever (which equally you could frame the other way around). These days if a given internet radio station is playing too much black metal and not enough death metal it's trivial to switch to one that only plays blackened death metal.

This is such a strange position to me.

The friends I grew up with have very compatible music tastes as me. My wife and I have a lot of genre incompatibility, but there is a trove of music that we enjoy together. I've managed to find common ground with coworkers across many different jobs and countries.

All of these relationships have resulted in a growth of interest in some genre or sub-genre for me.

Not even Pablo Honey / The Bends? I mean if you're talking OK Computer and beyond then I get you.

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