I’m a musician, and everything you’re describing is spot on. And it’s not just an age thing. Technological access has ALIENATED people by providing consumers ease-of-access to their own interest bubbles, and it has lowered the bar of access for creators to produce musical content, REGARDLESS of quality.
The result has been a diminishing emphasis on physical infrastructure to grow LOCAL musical scenes. Because musical access can be so remote and fine-tuned, there’s not necessarily a need to tune into your local or regional talent if you can look up whoever you want online. When there’s no cultivation or comps of genre and style locally, scenes can’t grow, and instead they’re replaced by top-down industry trends and arbitrary “aesthetic” associations. And when music is produced with a focus too heavy on commodification, it becomes bland and derivative. Music and artists lose their staying power when they lack genre and style cultivation in service of commodifying their work in an oversaturated industry (the inverse can be true too, artistic cultivation alone doesn’t make music interesting or relatable).
I think people crave what live music provides that remote listening and recording can’t (at least as a commodity focus), but there’s also a lot of value wrapped up in the curation of taste that you can refine with a record collection, just like a library. Remote library access is going to feel overwhelming if you don’t have an organizational system or physicalization of your medium. The incentives to ravenously seek out new talent or branch out and experience new styles or genres are likewise less apparent when the access to what you know or are comfortable with is so overwhelming and distracting that you don’t know where to start to parse what’s available (like how you’ve noted its affected you).
I use Spotify to search for specific artists I know or hear about, not to discover new talent. If I were on it for my own work, I would just consider it free marketing, because I expect noting in the way of income from it. I wish it was like substack for music, but alas. TikTok, for all its moors, is far better at promoting talent through its algorithm (although I have reservations about the use limits of that platform as well. It’s just YouTube Shorts the App™️).
My balm is to try and parse local scenes and pay attention to what good artists are saying in the industry about their style or genre. Hit up the smaller festivals if you can, and see what groups come through venues near you. Word of mouth, network, play it live. I wish there were more old-school style magazines available to dig into and encourage more of an analogue approach, but until something like that bounces back stronger, it’s email list-servs and artist websites for me. I don’t trust much of the current big-media music commentary stuff like Pitchfork right now, and academics can be out of touch (depending on the individual).
It will get better. It’s just a mess right now, and discussing it is important!
Happy to have come across this article, I have been feeling the same rut with Spotify and how I enjoy music now, too. I used to curate my own tastes, listen to albums repeatedly on end, and really connect to my music prior to streaming. Spotify really did open my eyes to other types of music when I first started using it in 2015, but you're right, it feels like I am in constant battle with the app now. Their desktop design I believe is purposely obtuse to have you just give up and listen to something. It is nearly impossible to curate anything resembling a library. I've begun being a bit smarter about how I listen to music on Spotify (liking albums, not songs for example). Wondering if you've found any worthwhile solutions to this streaming burnout.
This is lovely, but does Bandcamp not do it for you? (I certainly don't spend nearly as much on music as I used to in my 20s, but the money I do spend tends to go on there).
Oh man, this topic gets me so passionate!
I’m a musician, and everything you’re describing is spot on. And it’s not just an age thing. Technological access has ALIENATED people by providing consumers ease-of-access to their own interest bubbles, and it has lowered the bar of access for creators to produce musical content, REGARDLESS of quality.
The result has been a diminishing emphasis on physical infrastructure to grow LOCAL musical scenes. Because musical access can be so remote and fine-tuned, there’s not necessarily a need to tune into your local or regional talent if you can look up whoever you want online. When there’s no cultivation or comps of genre and style locally, scenes can’t grow, and instead they’re replaced by top-down industry trends and arbitrary “aesthetic” associations. And when music is produced with a focus too heavy on commodification, it becomes bland and derivative. Music and artists lose their staying power when they lack genre and style cultivation in service of commodifying their work in an oversaturated industry (the inverse can be true too, artistic cultivation alone doesn’t make music interesting or relatable).
I think people crave what live music provides that remote listening and recording can’t (at least as a commodity focus), but there’s also a lot of value wrapped up in the curation of taste that you can refine with a record collection, just like a library. Remote library access is going to feel overwhelming if you don’t have an organizational system or physicalization of your medium. The incentives to ravenously seek out new talent or branch out and experience new styles or genres are likewise less apparent when the access to what you know or are comfortable with is so overwhelming and distracting that you don’t know where to start to parse what’s available (like how you’ve noted its affected you).
I use Spotify to search for specific artists I know or hear about, not to discover new talent. If I were on it for my own work, I would just consider it free marketing, because I expect noting in the way of income from it. I wish it was like substack for music, but alas. TikTok, for all its moors, is far better at promoting talent through its algorithm (although I have reservations about the use limits of that platform as well. It’s just YouTube Shorts the App™️).
My balm is to try and parse local scenes and pay attention to what good artists are saying in the industry about their style or genre. Hit up the smaller festivals if you can, and see what groups come through venues near you. Word of mouth, network, play it live. I wish there were more old-school style magazines available to dig into and encourage more of an analogue approach, but until something like that bounces back stronger, it’s email list-servs and artist websites for me. I don’t trust much of the current big-media music commentary stuff like Pitchfork right now, and academics can be out of touch (depending on the individual).
It will get better. It’s just a mess right now, and discussing it is important!
Happy to have come across this article, I have been feeling the same rut with Spotify and how I enjoy music now, too. I used to curate my own tastes, listen to albums repeatedly on end, and really connect to my music prior to streaming. Spotify really did open my eyes to other types of music when I first started using it in 2015, but you're right, it feels like I am in constant battle with the app now. Their desktop design I believe is purposely obtuse to have you just give up and listen to something. It is nearly impossible to curate anything resembling a library. I've begun being a bit smarter about how I listen to music on Spotify (liking albums, not songs for example). Wondering if you've found any worthwhile solutions to this streaming burnout.
This is lovely, but does Bandcamp not do it for you? (I certainly don't spend nearly as much on music as I used to in my 20s, but the money I do spend tends to go on there).
I always enjoy reading your work, thanks for your time spent writing.