Growing up, music was never my thing.

I played the guitar and I quit twice. After playing the trumpet for one year, I quit that too.

However, like most people, I enjoy listening to a wide variety of music in my freetime.

Personally, my favorite band for the past three years has been Twenty One Pilots. Not only does the band possess talent to produce music across a variety of genres, but it has  lyrics that can send me into personal introspection for hours.

Back when my sister introduced me to the group, it would barely reach above 100,000 views on YouTube (which these days is not nearly as much as it seems), let alone to get any radio coverage.

Now, it will have up to three songs on a variety of radio stations at any time.

However, this has brought a sort of backlash from the people who  consider themselves the greatest critics of music – hipsters.

As I have started jumping into music culture, I am highly perplexed by what I’m seeing.

It seems to me that the more established a band, the less important or valuable it is.

To me, this is the opposite of what I might expect.

Among this new forming group of “music hipsters,” songs on the radio are said to lack ingenuity and uniqueness.

However, in order to make it to the radio, a song has to find popularity among a wide variety of audiences.

This audience includes the professional music industry that has a strong influence over what “makes it big.”

Because there is such a process to reach the popularity of mainstream media, it seems like playing time on the radio should be the goal of most artists.

I mean it makes sense that people argue there is more music than just radio songs, but to discredit them altogether just doesn’t make sense to me.

Twenty One Pilots, along with many other “radio bands,” have songs where they specifically question the authenticity of writers and the motivations behind their songs.

Whether it be for fame or money, Twenty One Pilots has professed they will never make music that doesn’t come from their hearts.

Now that they are famous, however, people act like they are just trying to be different to gain popularity and they don’t make really good, quality music.

At this point it might seem like a good time to mention bands actually can’t control whether radio stations choose to play them, but I’ll go with the argument.

I completely agree with these critics in the sense that many times writers just make music that will sell, not what they actually believe or love.

In fact, I feel like it has gotten to a point that threatens the entire radio industry from listeners like me who don’t want to hear about sex, drugs or money.

The solution to this is not lashing out at any unfortunate band who makes the radio at the expense of hipster criticism, but to simply not listen to music that lacks any passion or meaning behind it.

Not everyone can produce deep, intense music, but everyone should be able to sing about what is important to them in an authentic way.

These are the guidelines I use to decide what music I listen to, not whether or not a band is on the radio or not.