Are young people falling out of love with music?

For many adults, memories of adolescence are inextricably bound up in the music that helped them define their teenage identities and form almost tribal allegiances with others who shared their tastes. But for children and young adults today, exploring music is a very different experience.

In previous generations, the prevalence of physical media like cassette tapes, vinyl records and CDs meant that children could independently develop a relationship with music from an early age. But with most music now consumed via streaming and parents increasingly cautious about untrammelled access to the internet, today’s pre-teens have “virtually no musical autonomy”, said Oliver Keens in The Guardian

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