I’ve mentioned that I like to just sit back in my easy chair, put headphones on and just listen to music without doing anything else. People say this is weird and say they would fall asleep or go crazy from not doing anything. Am I weird for doing this?
I do it sometimes, but mainly for music I really enjoy or have a keen interest in. Technically I also did it for a music competition a few months ago but that probably doesn’t count…
There is research on this btw! I had to dig a bit, but this is a 2011 research article (might be paywalled, I can try & help if anyone is really interested in) on why people (psych undergrads, but still) listen to music. They identified 6 mostly independent factors, one of which (“personal identity”) may be more linked to ppl listening just for enjoyment; one of their experiments showed that 75.66% of participants listen to music as “background noise”. So music as primary activity is probably relatively uncommon (but not non-existent). Funnily enough I rarely use music as background distraction these days