nnirrorJun 2

I recently finished reading the excellent book Mood Machine by Liz Pelly, which traces the rise of Spotify. Highly recommended. Here are two quotes that stuck out to me.

1.
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The pop music philosopher Robin James, in theorizing why music culture has become entwined with the language of “vibes”, has argued that in embracing vibes, we’ve adopted the language that algorithms use to perceive and organize us. She has explained vibes as a way to typecast users not based on identity but on their actions and data breadcrumbs, in terms of the “trajectory” that someone might be on as a user. “We’ve learned how to interact with the algorithms so that they perceive us in ways that we want to be perceived,” she said in a 2023 podcast interview. “You’re pre-packaging yourself as a data subject.”
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melondruieJun 2
Show threadnnirror

2.
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a bizarre parallel music world has taken root, beyond just the ghost artists and streambait.

When the recommendation systems are optimizing for extended listening sessions, when they are filled with made-up genres, when music that sounds like other music is what’s most data-blessed, the reality of what we’re hearing on the playlists and AI DJ streams isn’t music culture, it’s Spotify culture. It’s a weird data-refracted version of music culture. When I look at a Spotify bedroom pop playlist, it doesn’t feel like I’m learning about bedroom pop, it feels like I’m learning about the SEO-optimized version of bedroom pop that exists on the Spotify servers. The same goes for just about any micro-scene or musical tradition that Spotify has attempted to map. The creation of finer- and finer-grain data points to label artists and users with exists, in part, to make it easier to market to users by dividing them into advertising segments. It often has nothing to do with the artists or songs themselves, or the intentions of the artists or the scenes that they came from; instead, it’s music culture writ large recast as fodder to fuel streaming-friendly one-click buttons for different moods and lifestyles, a whole environment that meets music in the context of only data; captured, commodified, and managed.
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Jun 2 at 2:11pmWeb
Show threadNika BassJun 3

@nnirror I can honestly say that my relationship with music has improved a lot since I left Spotify in January.

I was getting passive, indifferent and really confused regarding what kind of music speaks to me, “my musical identity” was blurry, so to speak.

Now I actually know and decide what I want to listen to, my intention and genuine desire to listen to something specific each time is back.