From there I can follow links to Discovered On, a set of playlists that include the artist. Once I get a song I like, that doesn’t really sound like anything else to which I listen, the first thing I do is head to the artist’s About page on Spotify. I also like Sofar Sounds concerts, I go in not knowing what music I’m going to get and potentially find something very different to enjoy. In the days I went outside (because we weren’t in a pandemic) I’d find a lot of very different songs that way. I’m always fast on the Shazam trigger if I hear a song I like in a restaurant, movie or film. In the world of the web, the term “organic” is used for a piece of content we find through actively searching for it, when it comes to music there is a similar process. Only, I think there’s a solution that leverages the algorithmic recommendation process to broaden, instead of limit, us and we can see it already in Spotify. This problem isn’t just one of music recommendations. If I do nothing but passively consume music via a streaming service, I’ll likely never be pushed to the edge, much less out, of my comfort zone. Taking a single recommendation often isn’t enough to break out of the effect of my overall listening pattern. Even if someone was going to lend me a CD, I don’t have anything to play it anymore.
This narrowing has become even more difficult to escape now that my entire music experience is filtered through a streaming service, there’s no longer any time to trip over a song on the radio or even stumble over a recommendation on a pirating site. A problem with algorithmic recommendations, of music, or anything really, is that they can trap you with more and more specificity, narrowing around your interests instead of broadening horizons. Listening to the same things over and over again and not really picking up anything new. I listen to a lot of music and one of the things I noticed over the years is that I got stuck in a rut.
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