Spotify’s ‘Discover Weekly’ is making the golden age of music less confusing
We are in the midst of a golden age in music. I am aware that rock is virtually dead, or at least more irrelevant than it’s ever been in popular music history and I am not arguing that the world is all the better for it (I love rock and I tend to think the opposite is true). I will not make a strained case for the superiority of Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and Kanye West over John Lennon, Brian Wilson and David Bowie.
New music isn’t better, or at least not indisputably so. But the state of music listening is. We have MP3s; free music on YouTube, Bandcamp, Soundcloud and other Internet resources; free or cheap music via music streaming services; and loads of information on new releases and 70-plus years worth of popular music. New music doesn’t even have to be better anymore. There’s just more now: new music and old tracks unearthed from vast troves previously concealed by the radio-record industry hegemony of yore.
So why do I feel robbed? This is a strange sentiment to have at a time when one can easily access a near-limitless music library anywhere, from devices as large as a desktop computer to a smartphone that’s no larger than a pocketbook. But as music consumption gets easier, it seems as if it’s simultaneously getting more complicated.
PRE-DIGITAL HABITS
The unprecedented access and convenience built by digital technology has displaced an entire set of pre-digital habits. For instance, I used to listen to the same three albums for months, forging with them an intimacy that I find unachievable today. There was a sense of monogamy then that may seem depressing now but was actually thrilling, how a song or an album could occupy an exclusive space for days, weeks, and even months, until it became everything.
There was also the tyranny of radio and MTV, which reduced entire galaxies of music into a tiny, repetitive, industry-sanctioned snapshot. It was limiting, but it was also comforting, knowing that one can never get lost navigating a world with set borders, a map, an itinerary.
The current musical landscape resembles outer space: it is too big and there is no end in sight. You are left alone to navigate the cosmos of genres, new releases, which portions of an artist’s discography are worth your time or disk space. The process can be fun and rewarding, but as fans of indie music during the pre-Internet era can attest, it doesn’t have to be so overwhelming. We were aided then by curators and guides like “Not Radio” and “Groove Nation Sessions” on NU107 and 120 Minutes on MTV. There were only a handful of outlets and they didn’t require you to click on links or keep a dozen tabs open. You just had to sit back and listen.
WEEKLY PLAYLIST
Music streaming app Spotify, the standard bearer of this confusing golden age, is now restoring this experience with its new “Discover Weekly” feature. A regularly updated weekly playlist put together by Spotify, “Discover Weekly” predicts the songs one might like based on one’s listening history. It’s more than just a personal DJ — it’s like having a best friend who happens to be an expert on all kinds of music.
The first time I listened to my “Discover Weekly” playlist, it seemed as if I’ve been spied on all these years. It knew that Crowded House’s Distant Sun was one of my forgotten favorite songs in high school. It somehow knew that I lost my CD of the High Fidelity soundtrack years ago and that I miss Bob Dylan’s Most of the Time. It knew that I would like The Wave Pictures. It knew that I’m old enough to appreciate deep cuts from The Bangles, The Charlatans and Cowboy Junkies. Of course, it didn’t really — I knew these were mere results of a complex algorithm, but simulations can only be judged by their verisimilitude.
The value of this sentient-like technology cannot be overstated for someone like me who has virtually exhausted all means of discovery. The thousands of songs I’ve saved and downloaded on my Spotify account already represent the extent of my knowledge and memory and I feel as if I’ve run out of branches to climb. The infinite nature of digital music has a way of making you feel so limited. The beauty of “Discover Weekly” is that it charts outer space and makes it look so user-friendly.
NEW APPROACH TO MUSIC PREDICTION
Internet radio service Pandora has been using a similar music-predicting technology, but this is a new approach in music streaming and certainly the first of its kind available in the Philippines. Content breadth is no longer the critical weapon in the music streaming wars, and as the struggling new app Tidal has come to realize, neither is artist exclusivity. There are just so many songs out there to go around and competing for exclusivity seems like splitting hairs in a forest of fur (Taylor Swift’s manipulative control notwithstanding). The key now is curation.
Spotify has a leg up for now, but it won’t matter in a future where predictive curation becomes an industry standard. Music streaming may have served as the final nail in radio’s coffin, but it’s now resurrecting it in its improved form. There are no rambling DJs. There are no silly radio ads with annoying voiceovers. There is only the throwback pleasure of ceding the controls and letting someone else do the searching for you. The golden age of music is now starting to feel a lot more like home.
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