The two of these things aren’t mutually exclusive to be honest. It’s possible to
I very much miss places and experiences which don’t exist any more, or have changed as society has changed.
An example is the way music is consumed. When purchasing physical media it took much more effort, thus you were more invested. You would typically visit a music shop, purchase the album, take it home and listen to it. There would usually be an album liner where you could read the lyrics, see photos of the band (which you’d only otherwise be able to see in magazines) and you felt like you had a direct connection with them.
The purchase of the physical asset connected you in some way to the artist and made for a type of relationship with the music which is much harder to emulate with streaming services, where the music is free and available immediately.
As a result, the way I like to discover music is at odds to the way Spotify wants to provide me music. It wants to provide me more of the same, I want to discover things I haven’t heard before.
That being said, Spotify has given me access to music I didn’t know existed by artists I love but had never heard of till I found them on someone’s random playlist. And it’s perpetually there when I’m driving, exercising and working. It plays for it doesn’t require rhe effort or thought of dubbing tapes or recording from the radio.
But it’s also improved music in general. It used to be possible for an artist to make one or two good tracks for radio play and then create subpar filler for the rest of the album, but now all of the tracks of the album are sold separately so every track has to be of equal quality. Additionally you aren’t bound to just the one song played on the radio when looking for new artists.
Friendly suggestion to anyone reading this that many of your favorite artists are on SoundCloud and other platforms: it costs nothing to send them a message to say you love their music.
Direct platforms like bandcamp also make it feel so good to know most of every dollar is heading their way.
The two of these things aren’t mutually exclusive to be honest. It’s possible to
I very much miss places and experiences which don’t exist any more, or have changed as society has changed.
An example is the way music is consumed. When purchasing physical media it took much more effort, thus you were more invested. You would typically visit a music shop, purchase the album, take it home and listen to it. There would usually be an album liner where you could read the lyrics, see photos of the band (which you’d only otherwise be able to see in magazines) and you felt like you had a direct connection with them.
The purchase of the physical asset connected you in some way to the artist and made for a type of relationship with the music which is much harder to emulate with streaming services, where the music is free and available immediately.
As a result, the way I like to discover music is at odds to the way Spotify wants to provide me music. It wants to provide me more of the same, I want to discover things I haven’t heard before.
That being said, Spotify has given me access to music I didn’t know existed by artists I love but had never heard of till I found them on someone’s random playlist. And it’s perpetually there when I’m driving, exercising and working. It plays for it doesn’t require rhe effort or thought of dubbing tapes or recording from the radio.
But it’s also improved music in general. It used to be possible for an artist to make one or two good tracks for radio play and then create subpar filler for the rest of the album, but now all of the tracks of the album are sold separately so every track has to be of equal quality. Additionally you aren’t bound to just the one song played on the radio when looking for new artists.
Friendly suggestion to anyone reading this that many of your favorite artists are on SoundCloud and other platforms: it costs nothing to send them a message to say you love their music.
Direct platforms like bandcamp also make it feel so good to know most of every dollar is heading their way.
I still go to record stores and purchase music.