SPOTIFY

What an amazing app. An endless array of music, overflowing with all the mainstream crowd pleasers and the nichest hidden gems. Entertainment at it’s finest, in the forms of clever conversations, elaborate plot lines and tales of real life serial killers, condensed into episodes that help make your menial tasks seem a little less boring. Before I say any further, I’ll address the banshee gorgon in the room, Spotify’s eternal bursts of advertisements.That’s not really the point of this post, so I’ll just quarter assedly brush over it. Yes, so spotify is torturous and is its own biggest enemy, with its limited skips and the insufferable voice of that child who wants his dog to get a slice of pizza (noble cause for a child, but does that redeem him for having a voice like that? No.) Ads completely ruin the mood, is such a turn off, and so on and so forth. Insert all other grievances regarding the app here. Okay, so now that we're done with that, I can move on to what I actually wanted to talk about.

The true miracle that is the spotify algorithm.

At this point I feel like this application that lives in my phone is one of my closest friends. It has added so much value to my life. It has been there for me when I didn't have anyone else, especially when I didn’t have anyone else. The algorithm is a thoughtful, kind companion that gently offers you tiny (mostly) 3 minutes long pieces of art that have the power to change your life. So generous. As Always.

Your algorithm probably knows you better than anyone else does. It knows all the tracks in the playlist you cry to, the songs you frequent when you fall in love and every single one of your guilty pleasures. Isn't that beautiful? I know I'm romanticizing AI, but honestly this is the kind of AI romance I'd be into. If my spotify algorithm decides to take human form and manifest as a glorious green person adjacent being, I would 100% fall in love with it.

Simply put, the algorithm studies your listening patterns and suggest songs that it thinks you will like. And then you end up with bucketfuls of new songs that you would never have found on your own. And you love them, and you think that they're all your special finds. Until you meet that one friend of yours who listened to all the same music as you growing up, and she knows all of your (now not so) special finds. And so you realise, that Spotify is not sending these songs your way because it thinks they're 'you', it’s sending you these songs because they're popular.

And now you’re enraged. You feel that you have been betrayed by your little sing-songy friend. But then, spotify reminds you that we're all trapped in a system that will only support you if you're popular. Kind of a heart breaking realisation, huh? In the light of this new found existential crisis, you subconsciously forgive spotify for it’s sins of unimagination and laziness.

Listening to music itself is an art. And often, the reason we listen to music is to help us feel and fill the void a little. So everytime you play a song, attempting to fill the void, and then Spotify takes the wheel, it takes you down a path of other songs that too, will fill the void. And other people would’ve played that song and went down a path similar to yours. And their voids would have also been filled, by those same songs.

So everytime you find someone who shares your love for a particular gem hidden in the underbelly of the spotify application, know that you're knocking boots with a fellow traveler heading in a similar direction in life. It lets us know that there are some commonalities in our collective experience. It lets us know that as you were discovering the softest, most soothing song that would help you get through your hardest heartbreak, someone else was listening to it for the first time, mid panic attack, finally able to find their breath. We all have our own private little moments with these extremely public pieces of pop music.

When we were younger, we were all united by our common interest in the most trending songs at the time. We built our music tastes on the songs they aired on TV or the radio. Options were fewer, and thus the Venn diagrams of all our music tastes showed much overlap. But the internet has now provided us with unlimited music, a plethora of choice. So everyone breaks off in their own direction, finding the songs they enjoy, the overlap getting lesser and lesser. Sounds quite sad, doesn’t it? This is where the algorithm saves us from a horrendous fate of not being able to bond over music with the ones you love. In a situation where our listening patterns should be absolutely chaotic and non-intersecting, spotify brings in some order, by conjuring a small plot of common ground, giving us a little something to hang on to, in the sea of versatility.

We are all tied together because of this app. The soundtrack to all our lives have some elements in common. It helps me cope, knowing that in one way or the other, we’re all in this together.

Thank you, Spotify. I forgive you for the ads.