I am rapidly approaching my 43rd birthday, and still have what I like to describe as "broad" tastes in music (or what BillD describes as "no taste...") I like opera, some new alternative rock (for ex: Mighty, Mighty Bosstones, Cowboy Junkies, Crash Test Dummies), Brazilian forro, the late 60's and early 70's rock of my teenage years, Child ballads sung by English and Irish tinkers, Child ballads sung by English folk-rockers with electric guitars and drum kits, South African mbaqanga, Calypsonians of the 30's and 40's - to name a few of the kinds of music I've actually spent money on in the past few months.

I used to say I detested country music - then was forced to listen to top-40 country radio for awhile because of a housemate's tastes. I found that I still disliked most of what were "hits", but that there were always a few well-crafted, interesting songs blended in with the other stuff. I never "voted" for the stuff I liked by buying it, though, so I didn't enhance the survival of the "good" music ("good" = the stuff I liked) over the dreck.

Theo Sturgeon coined Sturgeon's Law: "99% of everything is crap" (or some similar percentage). In today's marketplace-driven Darwinian selection of music, the only way to enhance the survival of the kind of music you like is to buy it. Support the artists doing your kind of music, so that they can continue to be that small, but important 1% of what's available.

As for hoi-polloi and the lowest-common-denominator taste of "the general public" (which we tend to think we don't belong to), remember that the Roman civilization spawned both gladiator contests and the poetry of Virgil - and both forms of entertainment survive today, despite centuries of moaning about the decline of that 1% of "good" arts...