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The Cultural Value of Algorithms





I am aware that there are misgivings amongst the musical community about Spotify's business model, and from the bits I know, these are perfectly reasonable. Unfortunately, it is useful and productive consumer model, and it's this I want to briefly write at you about.

Spotify's catalogue is huge, an ever-expanding horizon that seems to want to engulf the soundscape in totality. It's easy to use, and you can usually find the album or artist you want to listen to. But it's true genius is in its algorithms, specifically the ones it uses to create the playlist it constantly nudges you to listen to.

Now, because of how pushy it seemed, I avoided my Discover Weekly and Release Radar playlist like the plague for ages. This was a mistake. Or maybe, because I hadn't listened and followed enough, they just weren't right for me yet. Now, however, I spend a good two days paying attention to them, and then expanding my aural sphere to at least 3 of the recommendations per week. When it learns what you like, the hit/miss ratio works very much in your favour, I find.

We all know the flipside to this: oh, it's gathering your data and learning about you! Panic! Horror! I'm not advocating we take leave of our senses and just hand over this sort of information about us to just anyone, but some amount of it is necessary. There's no way we can build the high sci-fi world of our dreams without it. By all means be wary of data nabbers, slurpers and peddlers, but also realise that it does help you in ways you easily overlook. At least 20% of the music I listen to on a regular basis has come from algo-generated suggestions, possibly more.
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