Me, I tend to go for the bold, epic stuff. I general prefer not to listen to music detailing generic adolescent or romantic angst, and I tend to prefer music dealing with social, political or philosophical themes. An anti-establishment stance is certainly a plus in my book; in fact, very little I listen to even qualifies as mainstream anymore. I tend to prefer complexity in songwriting and structure, and I often prefer music that develops over a large number of minutes rather than the three-minute pop song. Finally, I tend to prefer heavier stuff. I'm especially fond of the contrast that can be achieved in the context of metal between shrill, dissonant passages and airy melodicism; plus, loud guitars and double bass pedal just sound damn awesome to my ears.

But, I can take some variation from any or all of those characteristics if the execution is flawless enough, the innovations are bold enough or the songwriting strong enough. I love music enough for its own sake that I'm willing to try pretty much anything. As long as it's not schmaltzy overproduced commercial crap. I hate that stuff.

Good guitars is one of the big things I look but it can differ from the hard metal of Pantera to the jovial playing of Paul Gilbert (for the japoholics out there. It would be in your best interest to take after Paul Gilbert, he got popular in japan, taught himself japanese, married, etc.) One thing I look out for is if the band is credible in the song they are playing somewhat. It's why I don't listen to MCR, Evanesence, Linkin Park, etc. Rich as hell bands singing about teen angst and sorrow about breaking up with a girlfriend/boyfriend is a no-no in my book.

Also another big thing I look for is the sort of perfectionism that TSO is well known for. You can usually tell if the band is a perfectionist band when you hear the band's CD is going to be delayed and when you get the CD, how well the quality of it is.

Oh yeah, sincerity is another thing I forgot to mention. Although there are exceptions, such as Devo, who were quite blatantly taking the piss with every song they wrote. xD

I don't look in specific things in music particularly, if it hits me it hits me. I love pure brutal music, but I like laidback atmospheric music aswell. I love music to be disgusting, but I also dig music that's beautiful. I like angry music, and I also like depressing music. I'd say I can appreciate most honest music with obviously real dedicated and skilled musicians. I don't know, there are so many sides of music that I like, there's no specific thing I look for in general, it all depends on my mood.

I normally look for good guitar and drums, then I just listen for if the vocalist sounds good. I usually like listening to rock from the 70s and 80s, more than the new stuff that's out. I really do limit myself on music genres, I listen to mostly, if not only rock and metal (besides some video game music on my PSP). Overall, it's the music that will decide for me whether or not I like the song.

A sense of humor

There are a number of factors that play into my music taste. I love a lot of things: alternative rock, some classic rock, big band, catchy stuff, orchestrated, hardcore, experimental, progressive. If something hits me the right way, I can become obsessed with it. It can be the way the vocalist sings part of a song, a guitar riff, a melody, the way it makes me feel, well written lyrics, etc. I do not go for rap, hip hop, r&b, country or much pop, though. Only for special cases such as Gnarles Barkley.

Above anything else, Invention. For really really creative musical invention, you of course need a lot of skill, but without invention, the skill of the musicians is pretty superfluous to my ears.

I like stuff like, oh, Les Claypool, who is an excellent Bassist, but there are better, and there are certainly better singers, but his music is nothing like you could hear from anyone else, and every time he changes his band, his songs change with the musicians playing it, so every time you hear it, its different.

I can't really think of too many more examples without going into Jazz which typically causes people's eyes to glaze over, so I'll say invention is what I look for in bands.

I don't look for anything, if I like what I hear I can call them a good band.

It usually has to involve either something really catchy, or a good vocalist, good, solid catchy chorus and a rocking solo, which is the usual reason I love power metal bands so much.

music and lyrics, that's it.

if i like a band it's not because of their image, the way they dress or anything like that. the songs have to mean something to me on a personal level and i have to be able to identify with what they're singing about.

I used to listen to a lot of different stuff, but their songs were so phony. I got sick of the stupid political ramblings from some high school drop-outs trying to represent the poor from their LA mansions, bizarre/artsy bands with weird lyrics (Sacred knife sky fluent in Magdalena Motion juxtaposed inwards of yearning Ra apart by dimension's rapture [and you can imagine fans reading the lyrics and thinking it's so great, fooling themselves into thinking they know what it means {actually nothing}]), and just any band with a reputation to keep up.

Now, I seem to favour bands with songs about life and the way it goes. Comedy stuff is good, too. Rediscovered mah boi, Weird Al. Now I'm starting to like Johnny Cash more.

Nothing in paticular, tbh a lot of people would probably just say I listen to anything Japanese, whic his complete bollocks; there's just as much **** in Japanese music as there is everywhere else. I think I kinda got froced into listening to foreign music though because as a kid the rest of my family tried to force their own musical tastes on me and I ended up resenting those bands ebcause I couldn't get away from them. I wanted to go for something that I'd heard nothing about and something that didn't have other peoplesjudegments clouding my own.

I listen to a wide variety of stuff, anyone who knows the bands UnSraw, Minimoni and Every Little Thing probably wouldn't class someone as listening to all of that stuff. So yeah, I don't look for anything inpaticular, though to be honest I have lost a lot of faith in western music in the past couple of years, I'm sure plenty of people will disagree with me but I just feel that it becomes a bit too much effort to actually listen to in the end, for me. It's also annoying that after listening to so much foeign music for a long time that most of English spoken lyrics seem ultra corny, obviously there areexceptions but for the most part, yeah...

I've just had a marvellous search of some new power metal bands, I didn't find too many brilliant bands, but there were a few. I'm a power metal whore, so I just looked for;

Happy Chord Progressions
Double Bass
High Pitched Vocals
Fast Solos
Cheesy, Entertaining Lyrics

If a power metal band has those, 9/10 they'll be an awesome band. I think I have too much power metal on my computer now, I can't seem to find anymore awesome bands worthy enough of making my power metal folder.

I've started downloading more black and death metal now. It's good though, because my folders consist of so many different bands of different genres and nationalities. It's just brilliant when I come to picking something I feel like listening to.