It’s hard to answer a question when there are a lot of aspects regarding the topic, so I’ll try to make it clear as much as possible:
There are few facets to this topic of course, “What Society are we referring to, Changed how, or Where? When? And To What?”
Something that is so vague is, of course, difficult to answer, and no specifics. However, this is comprehensible, and some aspects can be explored.
So let’s start with societies first, and let’s talk about them in a general manner. Societies have become much less uniform, unvaried, and insular over the years be it half a century or a 100 years. Each society has created their own unique music elements for their own culture. This spurs innovation that will, of course, lead to changes, and it’s not a coincidence. It just happens.
Every new musical style revolves every 20 years for the past 150 years or so — Jazz, Blues, Rock, Rap, Cumbia, Ska, Reggae, Salsa, Bossa Nova, Tropicalia, Bluegrass, Country, etc. Everything has its roots.
So how does it change? — Well, the answers are TECHNOLOGY and SOCIAL ISSUES. The past five decades all forms of music were almost alive. Music was accessible especially for those people who were willing to play it. And when people started listening, they’ve become an audience and made it all happened. And these same people started picking up instruments and played for themselves as well.
Musical taste revolves around and changes because of social use. Example, Piano came along, then you can play music on your own, vocals-piano accompaniment and some songwriting skills. In the 20th century, we got recording technology as well, that made it possible to listen to any performer wherever you were. We could study it, the notes, or how particular musicians were made. (I’m telling you this because we’re trying to answer the many facets of this topic).
There’s even one major factor why musical taste revolves around every 20 years, “MONEY.” Why? Music Corporates look for these type of categories: “Large Paying Audience” and “Rich Sponsor.” Evidence of these is when listeners started paying attention to details music corporates soon start putting more into developing them, that’s why a lot of genres were born. Jazz (1895), Delta Blues (1920), Rhythm & Blues (1940), Rock N’ Roll (1950), Classic Rock or Hard Rock (primarily focusing on commercially successful hard rock popularized in the 1970s), Heavy Metal (1980), Alternative Rock (2000), and so on and so forth… — So there is the truth about society’s musical taste revolves around every 20 years.
Everything changes because of technologies, corporates, and money. Today we can even listen to music anywhere we go, be it at the supermarket, or in the car.
With the help of technologies, of course, the production, and places where we can now have access to anything when we want to, we can listen to music when we want to, and that’s not hard to understand why so many new genres of music are being born every decade.
For me, my musical tastes haven’t changed, it just expanded and got me exposed to a lot of new things and the only difference is that I can tell people what I like and not be ashamed of it, but by and large, the same sounds I was born and raised with, are still the best ones, and that is “Classic Rock.
But like I said, the topic is rather vague, so I’m pretty sure that there are others out there who knows more about these things and if you are one of them you can share it with us. I’m only digging the surface here, so you can chime in with interesting interpretations and help a ramblin’ man such as myself.