Here's a weird idea: is music a supernormal stimulus? I mean, I listen to music constantly, every day, and I become irritable if I must go without music for long periods. It would not be a stretch to label this an addiction. Furthermore, music does not exist in our natural environment. You might protest that birdsong qualifies as music, but even granting that, birdsong bears no relation to the highly rhythmic, bass-heavy music that humans seem to prefer. Where did this preference come from? And if music really is a supernormal stimulus, is that necessarily a bad thing? Can a supernormal stimulus be morally neutral, or perhaps even good?

It depends on what your threshold is for supernormality.

I would say no; bone flutes are among the oldest human artifacts, we may have been making music for as long as we've been using language.

There is, on the other hand, a clear supernormal 'vibe' to pop music, which has been tuning in since the 80s. If you look at the waveform of a contemporary pop song, it looks like a brick: everything has been compressed and condensed to fill the available audioscape.

This is the one to read

Great way to convey a dense topic! Thanks for sharing!