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Music Articles

Music, commerce, & identity: don’t let the algorithm play you

Music
Mar 13, 2018

Music, commerce, & identity: don’t let the algorithm play you

BY : KAREN OLIVEROS

Get woke and wake up.

If you’ve ever been on a dating site or started basic chat with a stranger, you’ve noticed that the top things that ever really matter are: where you live, what you do for work and what I find most important – what music you like. Music breaks down language barriers and strips us down to our most guttural emotions of ‘like’ and ‘dislike.’ That’s because music came before everything – it precedes language as a communication tool. Yes, a neanderthal’s grunt was a #1 hit before we even figured out how to say “Hello.” Because music is form of communication, it allows us to realize our humanity. The potential to open our mouths to create harmonies or bang on a bucket to create rhythm is a phonoaesthetic act that defines us as social beings. Without tools or money, but with music, we have the potential to create value – a social currency that lives outside of the constraints of economy, politics or even – dare I say it, social media.

But that mostly pertains to live music. In terms of recorded music, value works a bit differently – so differently that its created the foundation for a multibillion dollar industry. It’s easier to monetize recorded music since there’s the potential to create all sorts of value: social value, use value (i.e. in the sense of music licensing, entertainment), secondary values (i.e. brand endorsement, positioning, product sales) and beyond.

Commerce only has a place in music, because commerce loves culture and culture loves music because people love music. History has shown us that anytime there is anything good that people love, it will get swallowed up by commerce. Non-music experts (myself included) have opinions, more so strong opinions, about the music they choose to listen to as well as the music they happen to hear in their day to day. It’s one of the few arts that doesn’t require proper education to have a strong personal opinion. An opinion some would even find themselves in a fight to defend (i.e. Biggie v. Tupac). The requirements for a music lover or fan are nothing more than an understanding of their personal taste and identity that draws a line between the self and the message the music is delivering.

We’ve romanticized the intimate dialogue between the listener and the art only to find out our preferences are tone death. We consume the world around us filtered by our own point of view which is, let’s face it, flimsy and ever-changing. We consume this way not due to lack of personal vision, but due to that vision being but a compilation of external and internal motivations which are as inconsistent as weather, time of day, year, sleeping hours, metabolism, sexual intercourse etc. Fuck, we’re fragile.  

At the same time in technology, our preferences have been distilled into an algorithmic profile that lives in the form of “recommended tracks” and “daily mixes.” Boiling down to, “you bought this, you might also like this.” Not to our surprise, most of the time, the system is right. It’s right, because the algorithm would rather give you a track that is non-offensive to your taste, rather than a track that might make you feel something different. That means that the way we listen to music matters, because it determines the messages and dialogue we’re participating in. These algorithms keep us in an “identity” bubble.

Yes, the dialogue between us, our taste, and our music is disjointed, but we should at least have the option to have conversations about music across genres. In the almost perfect marriage of art and commerce, commerce has inadvertently corrupted the dialogue between music and people, compartmentalizing listeners and marketing to them. We know other forms of social media have created bubbles that have led to a slight restructure in social order, and in the world of music, it can have similar negative effects – starting on a personal level.

If a streaming service or the radio isn’t challenging and developing your taste then it’s just making you beige. Music says a lot about you, so don’t be lazy. Find new music via friends/blogs/the world, start conversations and use your power to place emotional value on the music you think is best. Do it and create your own new emotive currency.

Here are some tracks you may or may not have heard of before, feel free to vibe with it or skip it, up to you! 

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