What makes you buy, melody, rhythm, sound quality, talent, open discussion.

I valued the discovery of new music experience...But once this common place fact is said...

I valued it only to discover something that i will integrate in my lists of repeated listenings each day,  or each week, or each month, or each year...

 Each music content by some genius creation by some musicians and composers cannot be replaced nor forgotten...It can resemble in some case to  a branding iron on the soul and body.

I valued for example Bach music so much, there is not a day without listening to him a bit or more  since the age of 13 or 14 when i bought, with my hard work spared money tips, my first audio system...

The same is true for some Chet Baker gestures or Nikhil Banerjee who impress me for the same reason : pure poetry over showmanship...Two examples among many ...

Going from a new piece or a new musician to another for the sake of change or boredom  had no meaning for me...

Going deeper in a piece of music which i can integrate and become a part of my soul is my journey into meanings...

Music is not mere sounds,sounds are not mere waves... Sounds are gestures from inert or living bodies revealing their "soul" and material content...Music begins when these gesture are integrated in us like spoken words. This is why acoustics is a very deep scientific mystery and  a science investigating not only music but speech the most intimate of our gesture between two silences.

too personal to define 

@bigwave1 

I don’t believe you can fully describe how/why music affects us solely in terms of the parameters you’ve listed. What @mahgister wrote resonates with my experience. There is an element of deep mystery involved.  And, of course, it’s not a static process -- we are active participants -- co-creators of our listening experiences, if you will. What we’re able to take in and appreciate (or not) is also a complex matrix of internal factors, some much more easily identified than others. 

I’ve asked myself what underlies my musical tastes and found it a difficult question to answer.  

@bigwave1 

I meant to say: What we’re able to take in and appreciate (or not) is also dependent upon a complex matrix of internal factors, some much more easily identified than others. 

I tend to only enjoy music with most or all of the following attributes. 

In no particular order: very high levels of musicianship, musical complexity, deep and broad range of emotional content (expressed musically), (usually) long form songs/pieces, music that can "take me on a journey", so to speak. 

Aspects that are unimportant to me: catchy melodies, hooks, verse>chorus>bridge song format.

While not exclusively, I also tend to like music that I may not immediately "get" or appreciate. Music that may require a bit of "work", so to speak.

And it’s not as if I consciously decided to only enjoy music with those criteria listed, but I just noticed over the years, that music that did not have most of all of them, started to bore me, and I found those recordings going unplayed. 

I have been in a constant search for music that does fulfill those criteria, and lucky for me, it is very prevalent 

The genres/subgenres that most often fulfill those criteria are:

Prog - avant-prog, symph-prog, Zeuhl, Canterbury, prog-metal, chamber-prog.

Contemporary classical - atonal, serial, Spectralism, avant-garde, New Complexity.

Jazz - fusion, post bop, avant-garde, chamber-jazz, M-Base, "spiritual" jazz.