This is one of the first results when you google “Everything Music”

This is part of the Everything Music Survey series

Six years ago, I was a freshman in college and I did all of my writing on LiveJournal. This was just when I was really starting to get into music, movies, and other arts, so along with my angsty journal entries (I had a pretty crappy freshman year), I started writing reviews and opinions of all of the art and media I was consuming.

I had a lot of fun finding different web sites and resources to give me some background knowledge on these media and introduce me to “canon” works: great movies, bands, albums, shows, etc. One such site was AllMusic.com, and it’s remained one of my favorite sites on the net.

One AllMusic Guide article I stumbled upon was a survey of music favorites (and least favorites) completed by editor and contributor Stephen Thomas Erlewine. You can read it here. I don’t know when he wrote it, or if any other writers for the site completed the survey, but I thought it was a really great way to give an overview of your musical taste.

Inspired, I filled out the survey and put it on my LiveJournal. Obviously, my tastes were fairly undeveloped, but it was still a fun and thought-provoking exercise. It remains a little reminder of what I was like six years ago.

Six years later, I was again poking around AllMusic.com and I found the survey. Immediately, I had the idea to fill it out again and publish it on Earn This. And I had an even better idea – what if all three writers for Earn This filled out the survey, then commented on each other’s selections? That would be a lot of fun, right?

Fortunately, Colton and Grant were both on board with this idea. We spent a few weeks filling out surveys, providing comments, and responding to comments. Now, we’re going to publish the surveys.

We’ve decided to call this our “Everything Music” survey because of its breadth of topics (and as an homage to “AllMusic,” the site we stole it from). We even added some of our own topics not on the original survey.

It’s unlikely you’ll have as much fun reading this as we’ve had putting it together, but maybe it will inspire you to check out some new artists or reconsider some music you’d previously dismissed. Regardless, it should provide some insight into the three people who have been writing on this web site over the past four years.

Here’s a complete list of the prompts on the survey in case you want to fill it out yourself:

Original questions:

• The Usual Suspects — Boring Desert Island Discs I Still Love:
• The Real Desert Island List — Albums I Listen to More Than the Previous List:
• Greatest Single Ever Made:
• Runners Up:
• Other Desert Island Singles:
• Favorite Box Sets:
• First Record Bought:
• First Concert:
• Favorite Concerts:
• Concert You Wish You’d Seen:
• Favorite Music Movies:
• Best Use of Music in a TV Series:
• Favorite Music Books:
• Favorite Songwriters:
• Favorite Record Label:
• Favorite Album Covers:
• Least Favorite Album Cover:
• Favorite Music DVDs:
• Artist You Will Always Believe In:
• Artist You Will Always Defend:
• Albums That You Will Always Defend:
• Album You Own That No One Else Does:
• Singers Who Make Your Skin Crawl:
• Singers Who Make You Swoon:
• Artists You’re Supposed to Like but Don’t:
• Song You Can’t Stand by an Artist You Like:
• Favorite Teen Idol:
• Artist Who Broke Your Heart:
• Band That Should Break Up:
• Band That Should Re-form:
• Guilty Pleasure:

Our topics:

• Song You Like by an Artist You Don’t:
• Favorite Live Albums:
• Genre You Will Always Defend:
• Best Live Discovery:
• Favorite Compilation Album:
• Favorite Winter Albums:
• Favorite Summer Albums:
• Favorite Album Names:
• Favorite Song Names:
• Favorite Lyrics