Why is it so hard now to name a favorite musician?
Compared to 10 years ago, this question has grown a lot harder to answer. In the old days, songs were indexed by song-writers. Prior to the digital age, the most popular media was physical cassettes, and it’s natural to group the cassettes by artists. Moreover, artists used to be the primary mechanism to discover new music. The cost of listening to new songs was usually high, since there were few ways to try new music, so fans tended to buy music from the same artists for quality (and taste) assurance.

With the evolution of music streaming and the decline of the recording industry, the granularity of “listening to music” has refined significantly. Listeners no longer need to buy whole cassettes, but can pick songs individually. Moreover, recommendation algorithms allow fans to discover music by popularity, genre or even mood.  As a result, music fans now sample from such a wide range of artists that it’s hard to name a single favorite. And due to the insane number of accessible songs, Even if you listen to a specific artist most frequently among your collection, you may still only like a small percentage of all the songs he/she wrote, which leads to the shaky conviction that you actually have a “favorite musician”.

On the other hand, I believe the palette for music depends a lot on “environment”. It could be a physical environment (eg. beach or gym), an action (eg. working or cooking), or a mood (eg. chill or psyched). The like or dislike towards a certain piece of music changes drastically when these variables change. To some extent, I view music more as a tool than as an art form, in that I seek certain utility from music at different times. However, music judgment for me is also not 100% a rational or utilitarian process. It still very much comes from intuition, though that intuition is heavily biased by environmental factors.
Porque é tão difícil agora nomear um músico favorito?
Em comparação com 10 anos atrás, essa pergunta tornou-se muito mais difícil de responder. Com a evolução da música e o declínio da indústria de gravação, as músicas eram indexadas por compositores. Antes da era digital, a mídia mais popular eram cassetes físicas, e é natural agrupar os cassetes por artistas. Além disso, os artistas costumavam ser o principal mecanismo para descobrir novas músicas. O custo de ouvir novas músicas era geralmente alto, já que havia poucas maneiras de experimentar novas músicas, então os fãs tendiam a comprar músicas dos mesmos artistas para garantir a qualidade (e o gosto). Com a evolução da música e o declínio da indústria de gravação, a granularidade da audição de música  foi drasticamente refinada. Os ouvintes não precisam mais comprar cassetes inteiras, mas podem escolher músicas individualmente. Além disso, os algoritmos de recomendação permitem que os fãs descubram músicas por fatores específicos, como popularidade, humor ou humor.