Music is and has always been the one consistency in my life. Though I'm not much of a musician*, I've been a fan of the art of a tune since I could talk.
I play piano and understand singing though I don't think of myself as an exceptional singer — I used to be in choir because I enjoyed it, but only before college. I have some experience with clarinet and I want to try guitar again, but that ambition's in the far back of my mind.
I like all genres: boy bands and pop girls have been my thing since the Backstreet Boys's "I Want It That Way" (my first pop song — I listened to it repeatedly on a casette tape) and Metamorphosis by Hilary Duff. I got really into rock, R&B, and rap/hip-hop in 2005; then pop-punk/alternative and k-pop in 2009. I've dipped into many other genres* here and there so don't be fooled by my penchance for mainstream music to be definitive of my taste. Pop is just my favorite genre.
A non-exhaustive list of additional musical genres I enjoy: indie (pop/rock/other), folk, Thai pop/rock, ska, country, electronic, musicals/showtunes, video games, classical (the only thing my parents listen to), new wave, comedy, satire, parody, blues, gospel/Christian (I used to go to church and some of those songs still slap), house, trap, swing, someone I dated was really into EDM and dubstep, funk, metal/screamo, mandopop, jrock/jpop... and there's probably more!
I'm also a huge fan of acapellas, covers, mashups, and acapella cover mashups. They're like music "fanfiction" to me — and you know how much I like fanfiction.
Listening to music is the one thing I refuse to feel pretentious about, so everything I've enjoyed is a conglomeration of both my own enjoyment and influences from the people around me throughout my life. Since 2012*, I've kept annual playlists of songs I've been obsessed with, or at least had on repeat for some portion of the year. Occasionally I'm an album listener, though it's not integral to my music enjoyment. I have a methodology to compiling these playlists, and have been maintaining them even as I switched music platforms (from iTunes to Spotify) in 2017.
Before that and since 2005, I used to burn CDs instead. I had a lot of these 20-song playlists with songs that I listened to on repeat: in the car (I usually controlled the music), on my CD player, or on my old purple boombox. I'm pretty sure my mom still has all of those CDs; I never really got rid of them. I really only stopped burning CDs in 2015 when my mom got a car with a Bluetooth connection. The car's mine now.
Though this is technically an archive of music, it's also a peek into my life. These playlists include subtitles and colors to theme the year, which tend to reflect how I felt about the year and might affect my music-listening habits. I'm still navigating my journey along with everyone else — but I used to have those profile buttons that said "music is my life/drug" on my old MySpace profile, so this is really just a continuation of that. Full circle and whatnot.
Anyway, I listen to music the same way I do anything else: by hyperfixating on it regardless of when it came out (though that can have its impacts) and then organizing. This is a result of that.