I’m also a self-taught guitarist/singer/songwriter. I can’t really read music notation in any functional sense…it would take me an hour or more to read a line or two of music off a page and I’d still be wondering if I’ve interpeted it correctly. Having said that, years of playing and writing music have affected the way I hear music.
I’ve gone through stages of musical preferences that are informed by own music-making and I’m really not sure if these preferences would play out in the same manner if I had not become a musician. For example, when I first started playing guitar I immersed myself deeply in a kind of ‘jam-like’ music. An example might be the long jamming in Pink Floyd’s Echoes or Miles Davis’ Right Off. Just lots of extended grooving, often on a single chord. I tended to shun song forms with chordal movement. Over time this reversed itself as I became a songwriter, my focus turned to chordal movement and song structure and my interest in jamming waned.
I also think the trajectory of my efforts as a musician have also led me to appreciate music I might’ve ignored otherwise. I’ve never been a rootsy/folk/blues/country guy but that has changed over time, accelerated by wanting to learn more of the guitar playing in those genres. My interest in trying to improve my singing led to a better appreciation of opera.