Chained To The (Algo)Rhythm? (Thinkpiece)

Something I've spent a lot of time thinking about over the last year, but something that's really hit me in recent weeks is the absence of active discovery that people do when listening to music. The majority of people just don't explore on their own, and as something that's a fundamental aspect to my enjoyment of music I find it an honestly alien way that people listen.

Firstly, what do I mean when I say "active discovery"? Well, I most certainly don't mean some sort of exercise whilst holding a magnifying glass, but I do mean an Indiana Jones-esque approach to finding new music. When I say "active discovery", I mean seeking out new music with intent; it doesn't have to be new in terms of its recency, just music that's new to you, music that you're previously unfamiliar with and music that may be pushing you out of your comfort zone. Just as we're told to try new foods from a young age, I think the same attitude should be applied to music. You never know what's out there, and there's always going to be something you'll like.

Two years ago, there was a lot of buzz around a couple of studies carried out by Spotify and Deezer analysing people's likelihood to seek out new music versus their age. Many people were shocked to find that it was as young as 30 years old that people stopped discovering new music, and that the prime age for humans to to discover what becomes their favourite music was around 14. The reasons that the study emphasised were rooted around the busyness of adulthood and the lack of time to discover new music, but I can't help but think: do most people even truly actively discover music...at all?

There are many obvious influences that have shaped people's music tastes throughout time, but quintessentially it comes down to exposure. The music you're exposed to most during your formative years is most likely to be the music or styles of music that you forever gravitate towards, but tracking down people's exposure to music has become far less cut and dry than 20 years ago due to the increased range of ways to consume music that have come to precedence since the start of the Internet age.

Perhaps most ubiquitous with music consumption throughout the 20th century, radio was top of the game for an incredibly long time prior to the takeover of streaming services, and it would indisputably have been the main influence for most people during its period of dominance as the easiest way to listen to music. I think it's safe to say that everyone can acknowledge that radio is a rather passive way to consume and discover music, especially if you're listening to commercial radio stations that drip feed you what they're being payed to. Personally, I don't have anything against commercial radio stations and I'm not discrediting it as a valid form of music consumption but, where discovery is concerned, indeed, even in the case of more obscure and niche radio stations, there's a degree of spoon feeding that I can't ignore when I'm on the subject of active discovery.

Nowadays, streaming music is the method of the majority and the potential for discovery is ripe with the vastest collections of music being a search away on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music and more. It's an absolutely fantastic opportunity; however, how many people are actually using that search bar for anything other than the artists they already know and listen to? No, the primary way people listen to music on streaming is via curated playlists and mixes, often specialised to a set genre or personalised to the artists and styles they already listen to. The opportunity and potential for discovery may be there, but the reality is all too often a dependence on a drip feed of familiar and comfortable music.

"Back in my day" would be a wholly inaccurate way to introduce the paragraph on vinyl ownership, predominantly due to the fact that I've not had 17th birthday yet. It was, however, a time when people's ownership of music required physically going out and buying records, an environment where discovery was encouraged due to the inability to listen to albums in full without the vinyl, and the only tasters in the form of radio promotion and recommendations. As much as this may have dictated what you choose to buy, you hear stories from people during the respective heydays of vinyl and CDs making purchases based purely on the album art, the name or a game of eenie-meenie-miney-mo. 

I think what's most important to note is that people allowed them to have the freedom of choice and the ability to actively discover more so in the days before the Internet than they do now. It seems odd that at a time period where music is at its most diverse, every day going forward coming with the opportunity for ever more music to listen to as more is being released and yet most people seem chained to the algorithms that control the music they listen to.

It's probably clear from this post that this is a topic I feel quite passionately about, and so I implore those of you who rely on algorithms to dictate your music taste - go out! No, don't go outside, the shops are all closed. Go onto whichever streaming service you use and look for something new. You could type a random phrase into the search bar, you could find what's popular in a genre you don't usually listen to or you could simply ask someone else for a recommendation. Be active, be adventurous and find music you enjoy.

Check me out on Rate Your Music: https://rateyourmusic.com/~DelocalisedLogan

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Loganjbest1