A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Video creator Jacob Beardsley has a simple goal.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JACOB BEARDSLEY: I don't want to be genre-phobic. That's why I'm listening to every single music genre. Today's genre is...
MARTÍNEZ: That's right. Beardsley is trying to listen to every single music genre. The 25-year-old from Southern California goes by blustre on Instagram and TikTok, and for six months he's been listening to different types of music and posting his reactions online.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
So far, he's listened to at least 64 different types. That's only about 1% of the more than 6,000 genres and subgenres that Spotify lists. Some of the more unusual ones Beardsley has checked out so far - grave wave and breakcore.
(SOUNDBITE OF VENETIAN SNARES' "SZERENCSETLEN")
BEARDSLEY: When it comes to music genres, there's definitely sort of unwilling to leave your musical comfort zone that a lot of people have. I want to break people out of that.
MARTIN: He says he finds music by using a website called everynoise.com. It randomly picks out things to listen to. And he takes fan requests. The music he's listened to so far runs the gamut from different eras to different geographical areas.
BEARDSLEY: There's been, like, a couple really influential genres that I've realized I know nothing about before making a video about it. Like, Motown was one where people understandably were like, how do you not know anything about Motown?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MERCY MERCY ME")
MARVIN GAYE: (Singing) Oh, mercy, mercy, me.
MARTÍNEZ: Beardsley says he's surprised by how much he likes some of the punk subgenres, like dance-punk and egg punk. Other genres? Well, take harsh noise wall, for example.
(SOUNDBITE OF STATIC)
BEARDSLEY: There's some genres like that where it's just walls of static that I'll be there thinking, who's listening to this? And then I post it and see the hundreds of people like, oh, I love this. I use this to meditate and stuff and then - stuff like that's really interesting, where I never would have thought the uses some of these genres have for people.
MARTIN: Beardsley says this experience has helped him break out of his algorithm-built music bubble.
MARTÍNEZ: Here we go, Michel. This would be my song if I were a wrestler walking out to the crowd.
(SOUNDBITE OF HUMAN RESOURCE'S "DOMINATOR") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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