May not always say it or brag about it buy I never have spent a penny of my own money on Spotify.com. However, I know full well that I am now the product of Spotify.com. But I don’t care ‘cuz one thing I’ve learned once I finally got off my butt and started LISTENING to all the recommendations coming out of their algorithmic suggestions engine. I spent a number of late afternoons evenings in Winter and Fall some years (I think 2015 was when I started?) picking my favorite songs from albums I once owned. And like a dutiful A.I. powered robot, Discover Weekly would come back with 30 tracks EVERY week. Without fail.
I spent the first couple years not paying any attention because I thought recommendation engines were dumb and ONLY promoted what record companies wanted (a little like commercial radio payola amirite?!) So I ignored it, but my old standby Apple iTunes was slowwly transmogrifying into Apple Music and also recommending music as well. I tried that, liked it and took Spotify much more seriously. And wouldn’t you know it, it got better and better the more data I fed to it. And again I wasted probably all of 2015-17 ignoring suggestions. But I finally around 2017-18 got serious about listening to all 30 Discover Weekly tracks to start liking/disliking stuff. Again, algorithmically, Spotify is dialed in, and the mark of a great algorithmic suggesetion engine is SERENDIPITY.
A lot, over 75 to 80% of the recommendations are bands I never heard of or never new existed. And probably don’t exisst today ‘cuz back catalog and all that. But what’s really cool and special is when the bands and solo artists still are around, producing stuff and publishing it up to Spotify. That’s how I’ve bumped into odd little historical outfits (Yellow Magic Orchestra) and better known but obscure tracks (Nilsson). But today I learned that Japanese Breakfast/Michelle Zauner is amazing/fantastic, but in particular I had to share the track as delivered to me as #16 of 30/from the album Soft Sounds from Another Planet. Diving Woman track #1 from the album. What can I say?
Take Throwing Muses, and move it ahead to the present roughly, but just the most kickin’ bassline one can imagine with a single guitar riff played over top. All I know is, haven’t heard the same similar before, and now I want to listen to all of the Japanese Breakfast catalog. And I owe it all to Spotify.com. I learned one thing in this journey since 2015 is,
1.) I may “think” I know about all the music that’s out there, but I am wrong
2.) I know this because for the 8 years since 2015 Spotify has never/EVER made a single repeat on Discover Weekly
3.) I have found more obscure, interesting, and dare I say it “enjoyable” stuff that I know could never have been suggested, shared with me by a single recorded music nerd.
I would need a network? Nay and ARMY of devoted recorded music nerds to suggest the tracks (over 8,400 and counting) that I have liked since I’ve started listening to Discover Weekly on Spotify.com. So even though I have to occasionally listen to ads from Geico, Grammerly and Doritos, I don’t care. What I’ve gotten in return for me data feels like so much more than what I sacrificed. So here’s my praise, #fanboi celebration off bumping into an artist I wasn’t familiar with (or I should say AS familiar with, I had liked 1 track from Japanese Breakfast about 2 weeks ago). There’s so much music out there, I’ll never get to listen to all of it, but with Spotify, at least I’ll FIND, or discover the stuff that’s being made that I like and is being published/released.
Carpet Bomberz Inc. 