I definitely do. I mean, I recgonize 95% of the artists I hear, but it's exciting to me when I have no idea who it is and it's a great song. I try to listen to some of the more obscure radio stations, but I don't have satellite, and there's not a great variety these days on the regular radio.

Less than 1% are unable to enjoy music, in my opinion. However, maybe there is a higher proportion, like 5%, who are always somewhat bothered when they don't know who made the music, and this could somewhat annoy them by their enjoyment of the music. 1) I assumed the following two questions here: a) Which proportion of Americans are able to enjoy some kind of music once in a while? b) Which proportion of Americans are able, once in a while, to enjoy some music where they don't know the names of the artists or singers? 2) Who are those persons who would *never* be able to enjoy any kind of music? I think that everyone who can listen (and even deaf persons have some possibilities of "listening", with vibration) should be able to enjoy an appropriate, enjoyable music, in a specific situation, without knowing the names of the artists or singers. The French word "musicophobe" means music hater. But does such a person really exist? Most people could in a specific situation hate music, if they *have* to hear it against their will. Or they would hear some music and not enjoy it, because they don't like it, or because it reminds them of some traumatic experience, or because they would just not be in the mood to hear music. But this does not mean that in an appropriate situation, they would be able to enjoy music. So in my opinion, this could only happen in a very rare, specific situation, such as a strong phobia, or constant suffering, or a desperate seeking of silence. 3) Some people are certainly annoyed to hear some music when they don't know who made it, and try to find this out: it could lessen their enjoyment of the music until they don't find out. But we will be able to discover much more new artists and singers if we just open our ears and listen to what we can hear, even if we don't know them. I personally don't think that there are more than 5% of people who always just listen to the music and enjoy it when they know who made it. And it is probably even less. 4) I guess that if all enjoy listening to the sound of poetry or music without understanding the meaning, they won't care about the name of the artists or singers either. "Every one, almost, finds pleasure in music ; yet delight in poetry is an enjoyment revealed but to a happy few ; so that I have known a professed lover of music whose knowledge of poetry was limited to a line or two of Shakespeare's description of ' the man that hath no music in himself, with which he used to taunt people who had not learned to play the piano. The first and most fatal mistake we can make in regard to poetry is to forget that poetry was born of music and is a form of music. Its first appeal is through the ear direct to the emotions. It is to this extent a univer- sal language, like all the fine arts. The sonorous flow of Greek verse, the stately rhythm of Latin, the subtle grace of French, have power to communicate the emotion of the poet quite apart from the literal meaning of his words. Repeated experiments have shown that children not only enjoy listening to the music of poetry in an unknown tongue, but that they are keenly respon- sive to its emotional appeal. ' Aux armes, citoyens! Formez vos bataillons ' will stir them as a trumpet-call ; the hiss of * qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons ! * needs no translation to be recognized as a curse; nor the lingering pathos of ' miserere Domine ' as a prayer. Those who have not made such experiments will be astonished by children's intuitive insight into the meaning of mere sound unless they happen to have really loved a dog. I lately heard a ' Greats ' man read a passage of Homer to some boys of twelve, who knew no language but their own ; they listened breathlessly and then told him that there had been a challenge, a fight, and a song of triumph which was really the ' substance ' of the passage. He then read some lines of Vergil, and they said 'it was a cavalry charge.'; 'passer mortuus est ' of Catullus, and they suggested that ' some one was speak- ing of a dead child'. Ages before articulate speech existed emotion was expressed and communicated in sound, and in poetry it still is so communicated, apart from the mere dictionary meaning of the words used." Source and further information: http://www.archive.org/stream/rudimentsofcriti00lambrich/rudimentsofcriti00lambrich_djvu.txt 5) "Listening to Music through a Cochlear Implant: My first exposure to music while using my cochlear implant (CI) occurred when I left the NYU Center, right after the implant was activated. It was a cold day in January and I was lucky to find a cab right outside the Center to take me across town. The cabbie might have been the only one in NY whose radio was tuned to a classical music station. A familiar piano piece was being played; it sounded great, and I was thrilled. This, I felt, was another good omen for successful implant use (in addition to being able to somewhat understand the implant audiologist’s speech at that initial stage). But since at the time I was mainly focused on understanding the cabbie’s speech, I stored the music experience in the back of my mind. This is not to say that I considered the ability to listen to and enjoy music to be unimportant. It is, as a matter of fact, the second most frequently expressed desire among CI recipients. Much of our cultural and social life is bound up in exposure to music." Source and further information: http://www.hearingresearch.org/Dr.Ross/CI-Music1.htm http://www.hearingresearch.org/Dr.Ross/CI-Music2.htm 6) "Scientists claim that chimpanzees have a penchant for easy listening music like The Carpenters. Boffins from Kyushu University in Japan (who presumably had nothing better to do) tested their idea on infant chimps who had never heard music before. They played the chimps a variety of styles of music which they could request a repeat by pulling a cord. While the chimps could take or leave most tunes, they consistently wanted to hear a repeat of consonant music with a harmony. The researchers say the result suggests the preference for consonance is not unique to humans ... and that if they could the chimps would be downloading Barry Manilow albums." Source and further information: http://newslite.tv/2009/07/31/chimps-enjoy-easy-listening-mu.html