There is lots of very good stuff out there, but you have to listen with different ears sometimes.

Of course. I generally prefer a specific style for general listening, but I'm up to try anything.

You are not sitting there listening to music unseated from history or without any personal context. The preferences of your relatives and the music they exposed you too have provided you with something to base your preferences off of, as you stated yourself.

I suppose that's true. Most of the stuff I heard early on I don't really like or listen to anymore (and didn't care for it at the time either). So it hasn't really changed.

Also, there's been plenty of artists that I now adore that I used to not enjoy at all, because something from their catalog finally just struck me at the right place/time and their other work began to make sense.

This has definitely happened to me before. Not often, but it has happened in rare cases. The few times it did, it took me maybe 10-20 listens of the same song (even though it was meh) to begin actually liking it. Sharing those songs with friends/family gets roughly the same reaction I had (didn't like it, then it grew on you).

Also, Meriadoc recommended Sufjan Steven, and I would consider that a very good idea, but his Illinois album would be a better primer, imo.

When Meriadoc mentioned this artist, I gave it a quick listen (the suggested album was age of adz) and I didn't really like it (and responded as such). Giving it a second listen resulted in the same opinion. I have his Illinois album a shot, and actually ended up liking it (although it's a bit simple). It's definitely a completely different style of music than I usually listen to, but it was enjoyable. Which is rare for me to find in slower/simple music. Which is why my preferences have progressed from rock -> punk rock -> metal. It kind of reminded me of "clocks" by coldplay (which I also enjoyed). I also noticed there was a "vs" youtube video in the recommended videos (so my thoughts on the matter weren't far off).

Bjork is also a very good recommendation, she is an extremely varied artist and I think can appeal to your sensibilities you previously mentioned, ie, "fusion" styles or some juxtaposed form.

As I mentioned in my other comment, Bjork sounds like the type of artist I'd listen to, but I haven't been able to find anything by her that I actually like.

Hey Kafke, everyone is kinda asking you "Well, what do you like?" so maybe some more music can be recommended to you.

Yea, once people find out that I tend to not enjoy most music, they kind of jump in on the "find music Kafke likes" game.

I'll have to look further into Sufjan Steven. A "meh" and a "this is pretty good" leads me to believe that there's some other good stuff hidden away.

And yea, for a while I was just kind of genre hopping. Sampling the top hits of every genre until I found some I enjoy. As I mentioned in another post, that kind of landed me somewhere around electroswing, jazz, and some sub genres of metal (along with japanese doujin music).