I'm curious how much listening to recorded music as a single-focus activity was ever really the case outside of concerts or those dedicated to it. I certainly d

I'm curious how much listening to recorded music as a single-focus activity was ever really the case outside of concerts or those dedicated to it. I certainly don't remember growing up and having my parents putting on records, cassettes, or CDs for us to sit around and just listen to them. We'd put something on while cooking, or cleaning, or otherwise, but it wasn't the sole activity. If anything, listening to music on the radio, either while around the house or in a car, feels like it was the primary mode that most people listened to music in until fairly recently. Albums were expensive! These days, you can buy a set of nice headphones for not all that much money, but a solid receiver and speakers and your record or CD player of choice used to be a serious investment only for the dedicated. Even with all of that, I question your implication that people just want "background music" and have no care or taste in the matter. Most people I know have vastly different choices of what we listen to while working or driving or exercising. I know I specifically keep different music loaded on my phone for walks or drives vs. when I'm at home and working or relaxing. Just because they're not trying to pick up on the finer points of a quality recording doesn't mean they're only "listening" to music with dismissive quotes any more than my parents who used to listen to the radio for hours for that new song they liked to come back around to record it on a cassette were just "listening".