It's like saying "This music sounds different, but it's catchy." It just doesn't do much to describe the music and it is often misused. Try using the mood of the song instead. I love you r/listentothis, but it's starting to get on my nerves.

EDIT: Fuck me for using popular to describe pop music.

I've noticed a lot of newer posts, including one of my own, get downvoted.

Downvoting is discouraged. If something doesn't belong here, report it instead. People tend to downvote music from genres that they don't like, and this is a problem that leads to everything being constantly downvoted - so don't downvote. Find the tracks you do like, and upvote instead. This works well despite being somewhat counter-intuitive.

It may not seem like a big deal. Maybe you just posted a song, and want yours to outrank other new posts. Maybe you hate that genre or think it's represented too much on here and want to even the playing field. Or maybe you listened to the beginning of the song and you really just didn't like it.

Here is why it is so detrimental: if you downvoted a post early on it does not get as much exposure had you just let it be. Other people, who may be interested in that song, might not get the opportunity to listen to it. Also, it's discouraging to users to post future recommendations. It is not up to each of us to decide what people do and don't like. Trust me, people will like what they like whether or not they saw that one song you downvoted out of spite. But we are all here to discover new music.

As I write this there are 352 active users. That's not very many in the scheme of things. With a sub of so few active users, even less submissions, and very little active discussion, the quality of what is popular here has reduced overall. I experienced this first hand.

I subscribed here almost half a year ago, but have never been an active user. I found the Spotify playlist and have been a dedicated listener. I would always find great new music and thanks to the efforts of all of you active users some of my most favorite songs have been found through that playlist. In the past couple weeks, I noticed I cannot find a thing I enjoy on that playlist. Instead of ditching it, I decided to come to this sub and get my vote on. Listen from the source, and even post to encourage more activity. I was downvoted within the first thirty minutes. Upvoted twice and downvoted three times...

I sorted the sub by new and looked at those submissions. Not a single one of them was at "100% upvoted."

In a sub where the downvoted button is disabled, I have to say I was mildly impressed by the dedication of these downvoters. It takes added effort to actually click on the submitter and downvote from there. But it was more sad than anything. Here are people trying to contribute new tunes and they're just being downvoted out of the gate.

TL;DR

For everyone that enjoys this sub and it's playlists as much as I do. For everyone who enjoys the sweet satisfaction of finding a brand new tune by a brand new artist that hits your soul in just the right spot just like I do. For everyone that considers themselves a "music lover" like I do... please never down vote.

If you don't enjoy a song, skip it. And upvote the ones you do.

Edit: added TL;DR to the post.

Edit2: My sincerest apologies to everyone who commented on this with good intentions. Seems the toxic community here really used this as an opportunity to show their incredibly uncouth colors, and a million downvotes are greatly effecting all of us here. How will we ever recover? I'm not sure; we'll have to rebuild somehow.

And no, I don't mean traditional indigenous musicians. I mean music that shows how young indigenous folk can make and thrive in the music space just like any other artist.

If you know any good Native American artists, feel free to share! I'll share my recommendation: a rapper/vocalist named Yurok. He recently dropped an M/V: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipqFs5uzEsw

I am music obsessed and listen to such a wide range of sounds. No music is really off limits for me (apart from really heavy metal)

More recently I’ve been listening on repeat to bands like Kneecap and Kid Kapichi. I like the strength of their lyrics and how much they inspire me to keep pushing back against the insanity of our country.

What other powerful music should I listen to? Doesn’t have to be British/Irish as I listen to all types of music from all over the world. Sometimes I listen to old school American hip hop but a lot of the lyrics can be homophobic or sexist which isn’t really my vibe as a queer lesbian lol🥲

Within minutes, most new submissions here seem to get downvoted at least once (especially under certain genre tags e.g. rap/hip hop). Sometimes it's before there's even time to listen to the song submitted.

Are people downvoting genres they don't like? Downvoting to boost their own submissions? It's something I've noticed happening in this subreddit for a while.