Why do you listen to music?

I only recently started buying a lot of new albums but mainly bought instrumentals. That made me wonder: How many of you listen to music for the lyrics and how many of you listen to music for the "music"?

I've never really been all that into music when I was younger until now, but then I only listened to music for the instruments. That's why I mostly listen to instrumental bands now.

So, why do you listen to music?

Personally, I listen to music for both the instruments and the vocals. If the music is good, then fair enough, but if they completely ruin it by having bad vocals (like Bigelf), then I won't like it. However, I love songs with great instrumental sections (my favourite bands include Dream Theater, Pain of Salvation, Porcupine Tree etc.) I don't like many instrumental songs though, I don't know why, I just find them kinda boring.

I avoid vocals whenever I can. Just personal preference, I feel like the pace and mood of the music is dictated by someone else when there's lyrics*

*unless I'm just listening to have something to "tap my foot to." If I want to zone out and have my eyes glaze over, that's when I don't like lyrics so much.

Music is much more important to me than lyrics.  When I first listen to a tune I listen to the melody and textures.  Then I'm listening to the structure of the tune, drum parts, counterpoints and harmonies, instrumentation, etc.  There are songs I've listened to a hundred times that I don't know the lyrics to.  Bad lyrics that catch my ear (esp. cliche rhymes like "feel" and "real," "life" and "knife," etc.) can turn me off a tune pretty quickly, and likewise if I'm impressed skimming a lyric sheet I'll pay more attention to the song, but they're incidental to the overall experience of music for me.

The tune is more important than lyrics. If the lyrics are too dark and saying things like, "Go out and kill yourself," or something like that I avoid it. That's probably why I don't like rap that much. It doesn't have much tune but is very lyric heavy.

Of course this counts nothing for silly songs. With silly songs lyrics are all that matter.

you have to see beyond the music, to appreciate the music.
like, buckethead, most people would dismiss him as sucking, but when you see beyond the sounds and understand the technicalitys and the fact that it actually is pretty good music, you can enjoy it

Vocals are important. It's why I don't listen to trance.

The most significant part of a song, to me, is the particular 'sound' it has. It's not something I know how to define. It may be a combination of the various ratios of harshness to melody, catchy-ness to depth, and other variables.

Typically when I'm really listening to something and it stuns me, it's hit the sweet spot. In before sandman joke.

I appreciate songs with good vocals and songs without vocals but with good beats.

Ratatat son.

Quote:
Ratatat FTW!

Examples of 'sweet spot' [the refrain at ~3:20, the recurring wave starting at 0:14, all of this song]

Example of fail. [1,]