Dream pop and the community around it is one of the more thoughtful music communities I've encountered.

I've been part of several music communities online and offline over the years. The dream pop community has a higher than average proportion of people who think carefully about why they like what they like — who can articulate what a record is doing and why it matters rather than just whether they enjoy it. This might be selection bias — people who are drawn to a genre that requires patient, active listening might be more likely to reflect carefully on the experience.

The quality of recommendations I get from people in this community is consistently better than in communities for genres that are more technically demanding or more commercially successful. The recommendations are specific and well-reasoned, and they're usually right about what I'm going to respond to.

I don't know what produces this, but I think it's partly that dream pop rewards the kind of articulated attention that produces good recommendations.