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

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. 

Thank you all for your openness and meaningful adjectives, verbs, nouns, and  thought provoking responses describing why we choose the music we do that makes us applaud. To summarize a few, the moods, textures, uniqueness, discovery, sometimes the attraction is even contrary to reason, and ultimately could be the mystery of it all. The reasons sampled are as varied as our systems. Keep up the fun work.