'I can hear music for the first time ever,' wrote Austin Chapman, a 23-year-old film-maker fromCalifornia. 'What should I listen to?'

Austin, you see, was born profoundly deaf. For his whole life, music has been a mystery. 'I had seen people make a fool of themselves, singing or moving wildly on the dance floor,' he says. ' I had also seen people moved to tears by a song, which was probably the hardest 5 thing for me to understand.' Then, just a few weeks ago, his parents suggested that he try a newly developed hearing aid that they had heard about. He went to the doctor's with no great expectations. But when the doctor switched on the hearing aid, he was stunned. 'I sat in the doctor's office, frozen as a cacophony of sounds attacked me. The 10 whir of the computer, the hum of the air conditioning, the clacking of the keyboard, the sound of my friend's voice.' Austin could hear. And for the first time ever the world of music was open to him.

It didn't take him long to decide what to do: he was going to listen to music non-stop. Later that day, he heard his first piece, Mozart's beautiful 15 Lacrimosa (from his Requiem), in a friend's car. He wept. So did everybody else in the car. The experience, he says, was 'like the first time you kiss a girl'. His friends went on to play him the Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson, Sigur R6s, Radiohead, Elvis, and Pink Floyd. But Austin knew that there was a vast universe of music to explore, so he decided to seek further 20 help. He described his situation on reddit.com and so far, he's received more than 14,000 suggestions. As a strategy, he has decided to follow the advice of someone who posted this message on the site: 'This is like introducing an alien to the music of Earth. Once you've tired of classical, you could start with music from the fifties and progress through each 25 decade. That way you can really see the growth of modern music.'