Generally, music is considered to be one of the most popular and ancient modes of human expression. It features largely in all histories and all cultures and indeed has been one of the main ways of passing on cultural traditions to new generations.
Many people view music as a positive influence for societies. They also believe that the influence on individuals is wholly beneficial as it is a long-established way of communicating and helping us to understand the whole range of human emotion and experience in a more spiritual language than words can represent.
However, there are different kinds of music and the qualities of classical music traditions are not necessarily part of the music many people experience today. In the modern world, there is a huge music industry that sells piped music to supermarkets and advertisers. We are also constantly exposed to loud modern music from people’s CD players, iPods or car radios. So the view of music today as a kind of noise pollution produced by selfish people, is also a common and negative one, but it is difficult to think of a world without music.
Certainly, there is bad music that may have negative influences, particularly on the young. But people’s taste in music tends to change as they get older, and it would be difficult to find someone who had no positive musical associations at all.
In conclusion, I think that music can have both positive and negative influences on people and society, but it is an integral part of human expression that we cannot really separate from our lives.