Data from a longitudinal survey of the musical tastes of young people distinguish five basic vectors of its development: an orientation toward the Western paradigm; young people's unlimited amount of time spent in the consumption of music; the indiscriminate nature of their music interests; the influence that a person's membership in a particular social group has on his reception of music; and the presence of a deep gap between the level of development of the concept of taste in the scientific literature and its current state in the practice of the aesthetic education of young people.