Trying to dig through the proverbial crates
As someone who deeply loves listening to good music, I’m really curious about how the future of music is going to look in AI. Being surprised by and discovering new music feeds my soul. How are we going to be able to truly DISCOVER new music when what you are fed is predetermined?
The algorithms and silos music streaming apps create impact my mood. With each “if you like this, then you’ll like this” I feel less inspired and hopeful. I feel like each note, chord, beat, sample, sound is something too familiar to spark any sort of spike in joy. Sure there are some gems — and I frantically go to save that gem in a playlist, like my life depends on it — but it all becomes so monotonous and drab. Music as art is not drab. We NEED art. As a controlled experiment to understand chaos, shared art makes us feel less lost, especially within the real chaos of the world. There’s nothing worse than having a song that was on repeat on your playlist, then six months later you start hearing that same song repeated on the speakers at your gym, your coffee shop, commercials, etc. It’s like, “Yes, we already know…and now we can’t stand it…” It’s like when you were a teenager and your parents joined Facebook — I ended up leaving the platform and it turned out to be one of the best decisions I made in my life.
James Blake made a good point in a recent post. If we are all being primed for AI, how can good art make its way through the black boxes?
I recently discovered a new band, AnnenMayKantereit. I was blown away by the fact that they have over 1M followers on Instagram and none of my other audiophile friends had heard of them. Even the ones who are notorious for their elitist obscure music tastes. How could this beautiful band have gone under my radar for so long? Am I getting old? Is THIS what losing my cool means?!
Here’s a great Kylie cover they do with Parcels (a relatively known band). Listen for the beautiful raspy voice and look for the almost ironic, but endearing, dance moves.
Granted, they are German and their name probably maxes out many character limits, but that voice! Those melodies. All of it is just *chef’s kiss* x 10000.
They aren’t an “electronic” band too. Do we have learning models for that? How have I never been recommended their content? What kind of world are we heading into where discovering “new” music becomes obsolete? I will always and forever have music recommendations as a love language — giving and receiving. The most meaningful sharing of music is when my friends reply with, “I LOVE THIS SO MUCH! WHERE DID YOU FIND THIS?!” It’s an expedition into an unknown, hard work put in to manually discover the “undiscoverable” in a recommendation machine world that feeds you what it wants you to hear. A world that will turn anything it can’t categorize into an “other.” The young punk in me — that went to hole in the wall shows where everyone expressed their emotions however they pleased — welcomes that uncharted land. A land that rejects the drab and gives hope. No overthinking it, no analyzing and modeling it, just experiencing and feeling — that which cannot be reduced to computations.
