The same for me. This is what drew me into the world of hi-fi, or rather home audio, at an early age, as I realised that expensive equipment existed that made music sound much more real.
My first proper separates system was a BSR McDoanald MP60 turntable with ADC K8 cartridge, Amstrad 8000 Mk.III amp and a pair of Sony bookshelf speakers from a music centre. Not a bad little set-up for a 14yr old! None of my friends at school had anything other than a cheap portable cassette player/recorder or a cheap record player.
I still have one of those friends 50 years later. His interest in music is marginal. He doesn’t own any kind of dedicated music system. He mostly listens to music in his car or on his 'phone.
It’s surprising how many people seem to have little or absolutely no interest in music these days. I can’t help wondering if this has been caused, at least partly, by the type of technology around these days compared to say the 70’s.
In those days it was the ‘thing’ to have a music centre, like it was to have radiogram in earlier days. It was almost like a status symbol to have a nice looking music centre sitting on a table or sideboard in the lounge. They weren’t hi-fi but they did at least sound half-decent, and people obviously bought records and tapes to listen to, as well as radio. These days most people, like my friend, seem to just listen in the car or on a 'phone.
There will be an element of that. In the Edwardian era, most middle-class families would have had a piano and at least one person in the house would be able to play it. Gathering around it to sing was a common way to pass an evening at home.
To a large extent, the coming of the radio and, later, TV killed this off and the number of domestic pianos went steadily down. A family might have had one, and it might have got played, but gathering around it as a form of entertainment was no longer the thing.
I would suggest the coming of the internet and the smart phone has done the equivalent to hifi and dedicated music listening in general.
How do you know that your friend doesn’t get as much, or more, enjoyment from their music as you do? It’s the same air of snobbery - or maybe superiority is a better description - as shown in the OP’s post. Having an expensive stereo doesn’t make people more of a music lover.
That’s absolutely true. Many musicians or composers, from what I’ve read, listen to music on cr*p equipment.
I wasn’t being snobbish though. I’m not suggesting that being a music lover means you need to buy expensive equipment. Or that buying expensive equipment makes you more of a music lover than someone who doesn’t. That clearly and demonstrably would be nonsense.
I know my friend has little interest in music. I was just attempting to illustrate my thought that perhaps people in the past, by virtue of the sort of equipment commonly available and sold then, had easier access to better sounding music at home and so perhaps might have appreciated it more. Not that this makes them better lovers of music than someone who listens via their 'phone and cheap earbuds in modern times.
The world has certainly changed and with it people’s habits in all sorts of things. Shopping is another example.
Maybe I’m completely wrong but I just have the notion that music centres and the like were purchased by many ‘ordinary’ people back then, as opposed to hi-fi enthusiasts. Because they were a nice piece of ‘furniture’, a nice addition to the room and a status symbol of sorts (snobbery again). So many more people could potentially get better sound and more enjoyment out of music in the home back then.
re. the decline of the ‘domestic’ piano:
Folks of my age, and in the UK, might recall the TV show ‘’It’s a knock out!’’ - late 60s, early 70s - the final game of each episode was the Piano Smash, in which two teams competed, armed only with sledgehammers, to demolish a couple of pianos and pass all of the debris through a one foot (?) square hole**. Piano ownership was clearly on the decline then…
(** obviously, these were wooden-framed uprights, not iron-framed concert grands, but even so…)
When I built my first system, at 15 yrs old, none of my friends had anything other than a radio and often use of their parents’ “radiogram/stereogram” (for those unfamiliar, a low sideboard-like structure incorporating a speaker at each end, turntable and radio), and some a “Dansette” type record player or use of an older brother’s. Over the following decade, as my hifi system advanced significantly, all my friends got themselves “a stereo”, a few as separates, roughly on the level of my first system but bought not made, others as “music centres”. However, none seemed to have any interest in advancing, though all loved coming to my house to listen to music, and I was in demand to take my system to other people’s houses for parties!
Over all the intervening years I’ve only known a handful of other people into hifi and serious listening.
But as for listening to music generally, when out and about every young person - and these days not just young - seems to be wearing earbud or, becoming more common, headphones, so they do appear to be listening to music at least when out.
I do suspect that it’s more likely that people’s musical tastes may expand if they have a decent system, as it does enable you to hear deeper into the music and know what’s going on. That said, my now 40 year love of jazz was triggered by watching a documentary about Art Pepper on a 12” portable TV. It had terrible sound quality but despite that the brilliance of the music was able to shine through.
I suspect that many younger people don’t buy decent hifi not because they care less about music but because housing has got so much more expensive. If you are spending 40% of your take home pay on a mortgage, or living in a room in a shared house and moving every year because the landlord tries to screw you with a massive rent increase, hifi is hardly going to be a top priority. It’s far cheaper and easier just to listen to Spotify. My younger son loves music, he plays guitar, bass and piano, has been in a band and goes to live shows, has Spotify on his phone, which he sends to a Qb that I gave him. It’s just not practical to have a hifi, even if he wanted one.
Actually, Graham, she was a graduate of your old college and became director of music at mine. The youngest ever director of music at an Oxbridge college, I understand.
And she has over half a million Tik Tok followers I believe, so who says young people aren’t interested in music?
That is news to me, if you mean that she was at Merton. (I was there in the ‘bad old days’, before the college was mixed entry. If you wanted female company, you had to smuggle them in as contraband!)
Indeed - Anna’s a Magdalen woman, not Merton. Still the right shade of blue, though. I think of her as a musical missionary to the Fens.
Anyone who hasn’t seen her guest performance playing the Royal Albert Hall’s organ during a gig by Bonobo (a popular disc jockey, m’lud) should look it up on YouTube immediately! Watching her count the bars between entries makes me smile.
I guess I’m largely out of touch with young people now. My memories of being in my teens are routed in the 70’s and that world is unrecognisable when I look around me now.
I agree that one’s love of music is independant of equipment owned. Some of my most cherished memories of music at home date back to my early teenage years - systems a far cry from what I have now.
I developed a love of film music from watching my parent’s rented TV despite it’s pretty awful sound.
Music is still a visceral thing.
Something that is felt physically aswell as heard and reappropriated by the ears/brain.
Trousers flapping is the short of it.
Seeing and feeling flying basslines providing the foundations for rhythms as concrete slabs cut and strewn from the earth is different to just hearing them.
Architecturally composed arrangements needs some capabilities from the hifi to render the images appropriately.
Still remember my clubbing days with a great dj and a great soundsystem.
Really opened my ears and head in being moved by music.
Similarly seeing live acts that take care on how their music is created in a mass audience environment is very enlightening.
This really does show our age doesn’t it? Relics of a bygone era!