It seems nowadays that most peoples music tastes are influenced by the people around them.
I say this for one particular reason. The first reason is thatwith my friend, his friends music tastes are influenced by him as he listens to rock and metal, so they listen to it as well. I have also seen this around some of my other friends and their friends.The thing wit me is, I like to be the minority amongst the majority of people. I say this because I listen to music that I like, not just all of my music is chosen through what my friends listen to. Sure, a couple of bands that I like might be ones that my friends like. But I didn't choose them just because my friends listen to them, I listen to the bands because I personally like their music style.I would also like to sort of mention in this part of the post about something that relates to all this…sort of.I have recently been reading up on a theory called the 'Circle of Friends' theory. It is know as a 'paradigm'. However, this does not occure in the real world, only on social networking sites such as Myspace and Facebook. You can read about this theory here.I have only just recently thought about this when I stepped back and viewed my friends like this.
I will have to agree with you, the social groups in our society today (although they seem important) are taken too seriously. People should just be themselves.
You have to start somewhere, and that's where friends come in. From there on it completely depends on the person at hand. They may be content to sit there and listen to stuff their friends and the average person listens to, or they're the inquisitive type who will go on to find a more individual and unique taste.
Go download some songs with different genres and figure whaty ou like from there.
Nothing wrong with liking what your friends do, it means you have a lot more to talk about musically.
On the other hand, the internet is a great tool to use to find out about all these different kinds of music out there, stuff you'd never even have imagined if you'd just listened to the things your friends did.And friends and others are always a good source of music and bases for exploring stuff, like melee said.