Public music should be celebrated. This is someone sharing a cultural touchstone and y'all just want to be antisocial robots.
I don’t drive, I take public transit daily, and am old enough to remember when you would never experience anything like this (even in the heyday of boom boxes in the 80s). So yeah I’m not convinced it’s a “me” problem.
And returning to the point, if you asked someone 30 years ago to turn their music down they would either comply or say something nasty - not physically assault you.
The music he was playing was ridiculously bad. Obviously subjective but this was such terrible low effort stuff that I am not sure it would even make it to SoundCloud. Think “your stoner friend’s demo tape you try to listen to but can’t get more than three minutes in”
We were in a long tunnel and he turned the volume up, which I don’t think anyone wanted. I yell over the speaker and say he should that shit off. He said people here want it, to which I say “no they actually don’t. See how everyone here has headphones on? If your music was any good you wouldn’t have to force people to listen to it as hostages. If you want to actually test this then go to Washington Square Park, not the fucking train”.
He called me an asshole, turned the music even louder, and kept it going until I left the train. I don’t think he agreed with my reasoning.