It’s the end of the year and, as is becoming tradition, everyone’s social media is being flooded with Spotify Wrapped. This year I discovered Sleep Token and am furious with myself for missing them at Bloodstock back in 2022 (I did see them this year in Manchester, but the ordeal that was getting to that gig is a story for another day!).
And in another tradition almost as old as the Spotify Wrapped share, we are seeing the opinion pieces pouring out of every newspaper and blog feed about how we are all “trapped by the algorithm!!” And they all seem to follow the same rough outline:
Spotify is collecting all of our data. It knows what music we like, when we like to listen to it, what our friends listen to… and that is scary! Back in the good old days, we all used to go into music stores and pick up any random album we saw and thought the artwork was interesting, then we’d discover that, actually, we do like New Wave Indie Jazz! I’d share music with all my diverse friends, no two of whom had ever listened to the same band, and who constantly introduced me to something new. It was a glorious time of musical revolution! Then the algorithm came along, and now I listen to the same bands I have been listening to for decades and never find anything new – and that is the fault of the app, not me.
You can perhaps guess what my opinion of these opinion pieces is going to be. Let’s take a look at some of the claims and break them down…
Back in Good Old Days I’d constantly be finding new and interesting music!
Yes, this is probably true. When people think about this, they are usually thinking back to their teen years. You were developing your own tastes, your own means to listen to music – be that a record player, stereo stack, cassette player, Walkman, or even a CD-Walkman! Personal music devices were a game-changer (and no doubt had their own panic surrounding them).
You also had, for the first time, your own disposable income, perhaps from your first job, or maybe you got paid by your parents to do chores around the house. You were learning what bands or artists tickled that bit in your brain that makes you want to sing or dance.
You were also learning which ones weren’t your thing. I am a metalhead at heart and grew up during the 00’s Nu-Metal era. KoRn were the first concert I went to without an adult, Slipknot and Disturbed were my preferred weapons of choice against my mum’s Tina Turner and Celine Dion. I wasn’t interested in listening to Nelly Furtado or The Killers, because their music didn’t instil any great joy in me, not like System Of A Down did. Which brings me to my next point.
My friends introduced me to new music, not The Algorithm!
Again, this might be true, but why should it be any different now? My friends still introduce me to new music, and we use Spotify to do it. I share songs on social media that I like. I have a WhatsApp group full of people I met at festivals and we all share all the time: “What’s your favourite act from this year?”, “Anyone into Ren?”, “Zeal & Ardour’s new album isn’t great…” If you aren’t having these conversations with your friends anymore, maybe you should do something about it?
As for the suggestion that all our friends listened to different music – no, they didn’t. Musical taste was one of the things that helped form the “in” group. You look at Mods and Rockers, or Scallies/Townies and Moshers; the music was a defining aspect of the scene, along with the fashion. The fashion was usually a visual signifier that you were part of the same crowd, and a conversation could always be started with “so what bands are you into?” knowing there will be some common ground.
Having an app that works based on similar knowledge, by grouping artists that often appear on other users’ playlists together, means I get to discover Hilltop Hoods because my enjoyment of Watsky merged via Bliss & Esso. The algorithm helped me find a new favourite group! None of my friends were into Australian Hip-Hop, but other Spotify users were, and so it connected me.
I used to go to record stores and buy anything to hear something new, and the hit-and-miss was great!
I struggle to believe that all these bloggers and columnists were wandering around record stores, completely ignoring the genre signs above the sections of music, and buying stuff at random. Some claim that, as music journalists, they were doing this to find new music – but that isn’t how it works. Generally, a band/artist/record label/producer would reach out to music magazines asking for a review, and a journalist would be tasked with reviewing it. The journalists are rarely going out to find any random band to review, and never without a preconceived idea of their intent. That would be madness.
If you want to find new music on the app, just type in what kind of thing you want to look for, and the algorithm will spit out what people into that scene usually like. I just tried this with “alt-jazz” and that is not my thing, but now I know that for sure.
Good reasons to criticise Spotify
Spotify collects a lot of data, this is true. It massively underpays artists for their art (a typical stream of a song pays £0.003, hardly a living wage for the majority of musicians). They pay millions of dollars every year to platform a misinformation and disinformation podcaster in Joe Rogan.
The company will skew results for the artists that sign exclusivity contracts and punish those that fail to do so – make this the focus of your complaints about the algorithm. I am not saying that Spotify is incorruptible or even a good company. But the complaints around the algorithm giving people what they like are weak at best. If you got older and settled into your music choices, then that was a decision you made.
You have access to the world’s biggest music store, and you can listen to it all, any time you like. Choosing to press play on Oasis for the 100th time this year isn’t the algorithm pushing them on you, it’s you listening to your music. Don’t pretend you’d actually be into vampire-mall-punk if only the app gave you the opportunity to try it – stop blaming the algorithm, and just embrace being a 90s indie kid.
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Accompanying the annual sharing of Spotify listening summaries are accusations that the algorithm holds users back from discovering new music
The post Spotify Trapped? The algorithm is not what’s keeping you from new music appeared first on The Skeptic.