Music discovery as a service
A personal history
I hit play. A song envelopes the room. The party’s ears all perk up:
“How did you find this? This is amazing! Who is this?”
In all honesty, no one has ever ever asked about the “how” :lol-sob:
But over the years, I’ve taught myself how to separate the musical wheat from the tracts of chaff. I want to be a source of musical integrity. To find cool shit. To get everyone else to listen to better shit…
…whether they liked it or not?
Was this search for me? Was it for my friends? Why do it anyways?
Looking back, I always loved diving headfirst into music. It was always a passion of mine. But I didn’t realize it. It was private.
Almost nothing gives me such immediate joy. Playing an instrument? No. Listening to music? Sometimes. There’s no getting around it, though. New to me might only last a day. And discovery is work. It’s randomly fruitful.
This passion became more obvious with mixtapes. The curated playlist for that night or now the impulsive shares on my company’s #music Slack channel. Discovery has always been an intentional process of stumbling around, even with whatever technology is available at the time.
I can distinctly recall the days of peer-to-peer music sharing. The first MP3 I downloaded, “Our House” by Madness. The optimistic Wild West of the Internet was here, even if we didn’t know it.
An ’80s hit was new again. The entire university music library was there for the sifting. Every hard drive had something to give.
A Napster shopping-spree was amazing at 2.5k/second (hey, not everyone had a blazin’ 56k modem). Visiting my friend’s house for 20k/second DSL was mind-blowing. The world’s music library was at our fingertips. It was in our control. And this sure beat MIDI (or the occasional WAV) versions of my favorites cataloged on floppys. Digital music became worth something.
It wasn’t always computers. I constantly listened to the radio. I steeped in what was now, whatever that expert radio voice knew. I wanted to be a part of the musical world. That began with grunge and later bled into the late ‘90s’ TRL rock. How can I forget tape recording Powerman 5000? Waiting for that song to play to add to your literal mixtape was quite a chore. Could the DJ please not talk over the song’s intro?
My early motivations to discover music was all about conversation. I wanted to be able to chat with anyone and everyone about the newest music. To connect with them about something that mattered to them. It didn’t matter if I liked the music or not. I had to know what they cared about. Nights were spent with a clock radio smushed tightly yet quietly playing the latest hits.
Do I really need to know all of the latest JLo hits?
Once that grew tiring, digging into microgenres and deepcuts was the fix. I would emerge every now and again, producing a mixtape for a limited audience. But most of this discovery was for me. It was for my enjoyment. I wanted to squeeze out and distill the best. My fixations were Italo Disco, obscure-ish Neon Indian songs, or Minimal Wave diamonds in the rough:
Much of my evidence of that exploration is lost. The winding paths are long faded. The artist names are fuzzy. Who knows what songs I’ve dug through. I might remember here and there. Without an audience or any active community, forgetting becomes all too easy.
But it’s all about the journey, right? How good was it? I forget.
Nowadays, I heavily rely on tools like the Spotify algorithms or a handful of tastemakers. The process is now passive. And Pitchfork surely isn’t what it used to be (e.g. independent). The habit’s missing. The ownership or the dopamine hit of really finding that literal treasure trove of songs is a distant memory. The hits are spoon-fed. Is this really a reflection of now?
What am I missing?
I know more is out there. That what’s motivated me to re-learn this whole dance. This was always my hobby, hidden in plain sight.
Who knows where it will lead?
