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.
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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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