Don't Like Rap or Opera, You're Not Alone..

In yesterday's Deceptive Cadence from NPR Music, the question of "why do people hate rap and opera?" was put to the test. From their survey of listeners, the same two responses came up very often, "rap is not my music" or "very little opera is worth bothering with."  From this it became pretty obvious that more than any other genre, these two strike a certain dislike among people. Why is that the case though? Rap and opera are both unique and can be very enjoyable in their own right. I don't particularly like either, its just not my taste of music.

Taste is a very complicated beast to try to figure out. Economists are just one of the many groups of researchers constantly trying to unravel what people desire. Tastes are connected to self-esteem, personal branding, and creating social divisions based on things like class and education says the article. 

Bethany Bryson a researcher who produced this 1996 article in the American Sociology Review says that people use their musical tastes to erect "symbolic boundaries" between themselves and others. 

Both genres have their unique markets in a sense. Opera has typically been for rich, white, and the elderly snobs, while rap has been made for poor, young, black thugs says the article. Both creating their own forms of prejudicial classifications. 

In a sense both of these genres are on the fringes of the musical universe, and from that they marginalize just who might be the most devoted of fans. Its really an interesting examination of tastes and how society views their decision making. It goes to show, that using price models are not always effective in products of heterogenous nature. For economists, we try to consider rational consumer choice, and when factoring in the variable of tastes, it is practically impossible to account for everyone and what they will do. The possibilities are endless. 

So too are the possibilities for what humans will do. Music tastes are just one example of the many things people have very specific demands for. 

If you would like to read more, visit the link below to the original article on NPR.