I asked the doctor when, if ever, I would start feeling better again. Allevans gave the meaning and said that there is no way to know. I left the consultation room, put on my headphones, and turned on Spotify. Reminded, as always, to listen to an album I had heard a thousand years ago, I put on Cocteau’s twin records. that sounds like a hot bath. The album ended, and Spotify automatically switched to “band radio,” an algorithmically generated stream of other Twins Cocteau tracks and bands that sounded similar. The familiarity made me feel a little less frightened.
I don’t always like it. When I worked on the culture desk of a newspaper, I spent hours every week diligently searching for the best new music – going to gigs, trawling forums and running a career calculator. Finding something exciting felt like opening a door to a new world. Spotify’s algorithmic, mysterious note-taking model, which previously confused listeners with recommendations, felt drab and synthetic by comparison. But that was a more cheerful argument. Really, I was afraid that the algorithms would make me obsolete.
Perhaps the first Covid arrived there. I arrived in the summer of 2021 and was left with endless fatigue. Just working became impossible, so I resigned and moved in with my parents. dining-rooms, fasting, with horror, nothing; I still don’t know what caused the fatigue.
Finding new music was a way that I felt was impossible, partly because of my laziness, but mainly because the reminder of the life he had left was too overwhelming. I constantly wanted to listen to familiar music – which, based on Spotify’s suggestions – became valuable. Before I knew it, I was a mouse.
This is what Spotify wants. We only see the surface, with albums or tracks simply presented “for you”, or with slick, benign titles such as “daily”. But underneath the gurgling are torrents of information about the exit: genres preferred, times of day, devices used, even how long you listen before you jump. Everything comes together to offer one thing: music you will love.
That Spotify has 626 million– a strong user base suggests this approach works, supported by the feverish social media response to its annual summary, in which users congratulate themselves on how many hundreds or thousands of hours they have listened to a single artist or genre.
But after a period of time when we encountered algorithms, I realized that he was lifting scrupulous worries almost to the point of uncovering new music. I mean new music, the kind that rules your synapses.
I wondered what Spotify thought of me. Ancestor? Hateful? How could the machine know what I was listening to? that old D’Angelo track over and over again, not just in a friendly tone (although it was clearly part of it) but because I needed familiarity to distract myself from not being able to walk more than 10 minutes without feeling sick? Algorithms have deep intelligence how? we hear, but have no understanding why? we do
In three years my health is better. The Spotify model helps when I need it the most, which I am grateful for, but now as I try to recall the joys snatched from fatigue, the algorithms are holding me back. The company’s marketing brags about “discovery,” but this is not the kind of case to tackle with intricate tricks. I have bought albums in the past purely because I liked the look of the cover and they are often rubbish. Fine.
But then there was the time years ago, when I went to an experimental Japanese music scene in East London, full of artists I’d never heard of, and never knew my mind was warped by the sub-belligerent scene. it existed I loved Spotify, on the other hand, takes a tentative, calculated, dull detour. Finally, there is nothing else to do but to maximize customer engagement.
I am certainly not the only one who has been seduced. Life has many ways of guiding us from doing things with emotions, and algorithms are ready to mature things. But if you don’t want to give up streaming, there are steps you can take.
Spotify does, in fact, has excellent people playing the game – look them up. And remember the outside world app. Your local record-store employee will have a favorite list of the year – ask them about it. Music venues are still hosting gigs – go and see someone you’ve never heard of. The radio still exists – listen.
I’ve tried all these things over the past few months, and I’ve been listening to the Lacinia band Curabitur Pile in a radio appearance earlier this year I was chosen by the noise rock genre. It’s aggressive, unstable, brilliant music – not like anything I’ve tasted before, and certainly not something I’ve ever had stuffed into my Spotify playlist.
You can now expand all of this to your own ends, and I understand that it may seem like an awkward suggestion of a fool’s errand. But to me they were quiet rebels.