I'd like to know how many people out there listen to live music, and if you think this affects how you judge recorded music?

I apologize for the short list of genres, but the poll only has 10 choices. And "world" is kind of a catch all for African, Rai, Fado, Flamenco, Gamelon, etc,

I listen to live music 1-3 times a week, mostly Rock though some R&B, Jazz and Folk. I'm not a musician or a singer, but I do frequently record live music.

How about you?

Moderation: Moved to "Polls".

The bigger problem with your genre list is that it's mutually exclusive - you used radio buttons instead of checkboxes. You need to let people make multiple selections.

I listen to live music at least once a week and there is NO genre that dominates! I listen to classical, folk, jazz, blues, bluegrass, etc, etc., with the emphasis on the etc!

And on top of that "genre's" are stupid anyway!

Last Friday I attended a Bela Fleck concert in Lowell, Massachusetts. What genre is Bela Fleck? Classical? "Best Classical Crossover Album" Grammy for his 2001 Sony Classical album Perpetual Motion with works by Scarlatti, Bach, Debussy, Chopin. Also, Best Instrumental Arrangement - Claude Debussy's "Doctor Gradus Ad Parnassum" in 2001. Or maybe you think he's pop, because he won a Grammy for best Pop instrumental for Sinister Minister. Would you prefer Country? - He won a Grammy for Best Country Instrumental Performance (with Asleep at the Wheel) in 1995. He also won Grammy's in best Contemporary Jazz Album in 2001 and again this year!

Music is music and genre's don't mean squat. I'm in the process of writing a review of Rhapsody for my music blog, and while I really like their service in general the fact that you have to guess what genre they've put a particular artist in, to narrow your search down from a huge universe, is a pain.

IIRC, IPB 2.1.x series does not support checkboxes in polls. I might be wrong, though.

Then some other method has to be used to take account of the fact that for many music lovers there is no "mostly", if we take "mostly" to imply some sort of a majority of music listening. If person A listens to 80% classical orchestral and 20% opera and person B listens to 15% classical chamber music, 10% blues, 10% folk, 10% rock, 10% dance/house mix, 10% jazz, 10% bluegrass, 10% latin and 10% classical orchestral music, and 5% show music - this might be close to my listening habits - they're both going to score the "same" on the above poll.

I realize this isn't a scientific poll and we're all just a self-selected bunch of music geeks so it's all meaningless anyway, but I still like to see things done right. It's like if you had a political poll and you had radio buttons for just Gordon Brown or David Cameron - even in the UK you'd get people pointing out that the political universe is bigger than that, and outside the UK people would be going, "whozzat?".

Actually I attend a live concert at least once a month. During the summer festivals it's more that once a week.

But it seems that the question was aimed at a music captured live - the live CD's for example. I don't know how often I listen to a live albums. I'd rather go to a concert.

I'm a musician - bass player and singer occasionally.

I'm a bit confused. Are you referring to "listening to live recordings at home" or "visiting live venues"?

I didn't get that impression at all - it did say "live music performance".

It helps that my wife, and many of our friends, are musicians. If you count me listening to her and her friends jamming or practicing then I'd have to up my count from every week to every day, or several times a day. I couldn't live without music, live and canned.

My wife plays beautifully even when she's just practicing and I like hearing her. But I used to have a model whose boyfriend was a classical pianist (like my wife). And we used to chit-chat while she was up there, nude, on her stand, and I once said, "it must be nice to live with a classical musician." And she said, no, she goes into another room and wears headphones! I can see why they broke up.

I dont think that the poll-options were choosen wisely. The genre-issue was already mentioned (i just picked "other" because i tend to visit underground gigs, where "genres" are considered to be for stupid people, since that kind of music doesnt care about genres and stuff. Among the "artistic elite" we think in "influences", not in "classifications" ;).

I also had problems specifying how often i visit gigs - which is about 2 months on average - since there was no option for that, i just picked 1 month.

Other data would have been more interesting, like for example how far one is willing to travel for a gig, or why one visits gigs (atmosphere, sound, meeting people, etc). Or a question asking what one is annoyed most off at gigs :)

- Lyx

i have a huge bootleg (mostly live) collection (burned to CD and encoded to musepack for at-the-pc listening).

i go to probably 2 live shows a month (punk, rock, experimental jazz or indie).

i play the guitar

The reason I don't attend many live performances is that I simply prefer studio recordings. Similarly, I don't really enjoy listening to recordings of live performances, though DVDs are the exception. It just isn't possible to get the kind of precision and control I prefer when listening to music with a live, non-studio performance.

I don't see any issues with the poll, by the way. It's an informal poll, and it might have some minor flaws, but it's an informal poll. People are getting the idea. Besides which, the second question asks "What type of live music performances do you attend most often?" Checkboxes may have been totally inappropriate.

A bit of clarification/further apology/excuse making:

I did mean listening to a musician, band, orchestra or vocalist performing live, not listening to a recording of their performance. Taking time to hear friends or spouses playing and even subway/metro musicians count too. Perhaps I should have said "How often do you attend live music performances" for the first question.

Sorry about the genres, but check boxes was not an option. Neither is a fill in box. And even though there are literally of hundred of genres, I could only ask about a few here, so it tried to use a broad brush.

I agree with the posters that genres are often meaningless pigeon holes, and I do listen to quite a bit of live music that crossed boundaries. I mean how do you classify a very hard, sometimes mosh pitted, punk rocker who recently performed her original music with a 7 piece all acoustic chamber orchestra and 5 member choral harmony at 3/4 speed. I guess, rock sort of. But what if in between hard driving "Ruint", "Bottom Feeder" and "Necromancer" she does a Nina Simone cover? Is it then jazz?

Anyway, point taken about genres, but it *can* give us some common points of reference. We know the difference between La Scala, Beyonce, a White Stripes concert.

I had thought about asking what was the genre last concert/performance, but that might be even less representative.

As for frequency, I thought about something in between at least monthly and at least yearly, but I didn't know how to do it without the time periods becoming too confusing. Oh well.

Live recordings: Organ performances.
Composers: mostly Bach, Dupre, Widor, Vierne, Franck
Performers: Helmut Walcha, Dupre, Ben van Oosten, Raul Prieto Ramirez, Virgil Fox, Durufle.

My biggest regret is that these recording are usually of very low quality.