Why We Like Sad Music

Sadness  is an emotion we usually try to avoid. So why do we choose to listen to sad music?

.. If this is true, what we experience when we listen to sad music might be thought of as “vicarious emotions.”

.. We need to study vicarious emotions further. In doing so, we may be able to improve our understanding of a neglected feature of our emotional system — namely, its sensitivity to something other than palpable needs or threats. When we weep at the beauty of sad music, we experience a profound aspect of our emotional selves that may contain insights about the meaning and significance of artistic experience — and also about ourselves as human beings.

Music Mediums: LP & CD Share the Type of Music

Take an average record. A piece of vinyl 12 inches in diameter, a groove cut into the surface contains music. For a standard LP, the groove is 1,500 feet long.

.. But pop musicians playing with the limits of 45s began to longer art during the 1960s, exploiting the 50 minutes or so of music that the 1,500 feet of groove allowed. This, in turn, precipitated change in music discovery medium of the day — radio — and on it went.

..

Every physical medium had its little quirks. Recall: most tape players couldn’t skip tracks. But it was easy to record on tapes. Meanwhile, it was a revelation when CD players could loop individual tracks or the whole disc at the touch of a button. But man, did they skip with the early portable players. And the read-write capability was lost for most systems. You could burn CDs from your computer, but no one recorded the radio onto CDs like they did with tapes.

We expect this kind of thing to influence the way we experience, maybe evenhear, music. But what about the digital interfaces that now dominate the market? Shouldn’t they exert just as much of an influence over how we listen and how artists create?