I overall prefer skaters who chose music that they can make theirs. Yeah, i know it's nebulous.Sure. We all have our favourites and aspects we don't like and that's a good thing. I just usually try to find patterns and was left wondering.
I mean, of course many factors can play a role. Personally I often like fast, modern skaters with more current music and a more athletic, but very fluid style... but I might also just like someone because something about them strikes me on an entirely different level... or I first saw them in a difficult situation which left me feeling they needed support... or something like that...
but Uno at 13 doing the show tunes worked for me, but Kagiyama doing the same tired selection doesn't. I don't like 1950s music very much, so the guys who onky select those big bands music don't appeal to me. I also get tired like everyone else from endless repeats of the same songs. In addition, since I started watching dance, I don’t like it when single skaters pick the same thing as is the theme in the rhythm dance. This season, anyone who didn’t have to do tango, but did, made my auto deduction list.
It helps when you can understand what the skater is trying to achieve there, imo. I speak English, Russian and French, and I simply love Italian and Spanish, so music with words in those languages impacts me the most when skaters storytell well. On the other hand, I also like it when Japanese and Korean skaters perform to anime and video-gaming music more than anything else they could chose.
I like big, wild skating with heavy use of upper body, what people ding as armography. I understand that the refinement requires arms to the sides and focus on footwork, but so long as they skate fast and with ardor, I can't see on TV the difference the edges make.
For me, confident skating with big, wild, not telegraphed jumps is appealing, like, I didn’t even notice that C.Kim doesn't have extensions. It is far more obvious live. That’s the reason why I try to see every skater live.
In the end, energy, vivacity and grit/purpose added to bleeding edge TES is likely to get me and something that makes them standout. Overall though, tech and individuality is more interesting for me than the glide and spirals. I have a lot of pent-up dislike for spirals.
There are actually very few skaters I don’t like in respect to their skating, basically just Brown, Kagiyama, Gold, Semenenko and Satoko M.