Music is very special, and believe it or not, it encompasses all life, at least that’s the way I see it.
In all aspects of human life, music is a universal language that connects us through multiple cultures and experiences. Through the sounds of nature and tunes we hum, to the rhythms we walk to, there’s at least some aspect of music in everything we do.
Throughout time, a certain taste in music has always been acquired through discovery, either through the radio, CDs, the use of vinyl and cassettes, the process itself is something which turns everyone’s taste in music unique. As kids, our special taste in music has developed from listening to the radio and CDs our parents played, cassette or vinyl, if people truly do that.
Through all these different outlets, we’ve developed a certain taste for certain artists, genres, sounds, and rhythms that we favor over others.
The process of discovering new music is very special to me; I enjoy exploring the value of all music and its many genres.
At a young age, listening to my parents’ own CDs and radio preferences of Spanish music like Cumbias, Bachata, and Rancheras were genres of music that have stuck with me. Playfully through the radio, turning the knob to see if each station actually worked, I discovered a wider array of music which I greatly enjoyed, like my favorite radio station 105.1 K-Ocean, ¨The Central Coast’s #1 For Throwbacks¨, playing Hip-Hop and R&B, another genre of music I’ve come to really enjoy.
This process of discovering new music has become ever easier through the use of streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music. Through easy access to new artists and the accessibility to create playlists based on certain areas of our taste, these services have completely opened the doors to countless opportunities in exploring new music. This has been a good innovation to the process of listening to and acquiring music.
While these services have inserted themselves into the experience of music discovery, holding massive libraries of music, they have also inserted themselves into the experience by “suggesting” new artists and music that isn’t what you’re looking for, which at times can be very annoying.
The issue at hand is that these suggestions are based on algorithms of popularity, music that is new and hot at the moment, that feels more like a forced algorithm than your own. I’ve encountered this problem several times, when attempting to listen to a suggested playlist from Spotify, the suggestions are less music that fits what I’m looking for and more music that’s popular at the moment.
Usually, in my created playlists, they contain a mix of many different types of music and artists, I play them in shuffle, and once they finish, Spotify offers song suggestions. It has been an occurrence that maybe only 2 out of 10 of the suggested songs are songs that I would like.
The #1 enemy? Our lack of attention. An app like TikTok, built on short videos, working on trends, at times these trends are born from music. TikTok has become somewhat of a collaborative entity with streaming services, greatly changing the value of music, appealing to a crowd that now works on what’s popular and new, who watch a trend die out and move to the next.
For those who treat music as a quick work of art meant to only sell, burn out, and repeat, I can’t help but think their taste in music is bland because of it.
I’ve come to develop my musical tastes outside of a regular algorithm of what’s popular. Through the media like movies and their soundtracks or musical references, driven by curiosity, I’ve learned to search for many of these small musical parts.
Notably, the artist that I have always found the most interesting has always been Björk. First hearing of Björk through the film Léon, I became captivated by her odd character and odder music. Her entire discography, which I’ve fully explored, has truly helped me develop part of my unique musical taste. At times when I’ve mentioned my interest in Björk to others I’ve been met with reactions of cluelessness. Björk, as an artist, has paved a way in music that I fear many don’t get the chance to properly explore when stuck in a mainstream algorithm.
Outside of Bjork, through streaming services and other areas, I’ve come to know over 300 artists and have liked over 6,000 songs, enough to add them to my huge library of liked songs. Notably, some of my other favorable artists like Donna summer, Queen of Disco, I’ve come across through acknowledging their great roles in music, from hearing of her through samples in other music, I was brought to her and came to explore her great influence in music and the disco scene during the 70s.
Other artists like Azealia Banks, through social media, I mostly came across them because of their infamous controversy with an entire country, and out of curiosity, I explored their music and found myself captivated by their Hip-Hop and Rap genre with a mix of Electronic.
These genres of Hip-Hop, Indie, Disco are just some of the many genres of music that appeal to me, practically any type of music will appeal to me as long as it’s treated as art and not a product as a lot of current music. Great contrast in genres and in likes and dislikes is what the discovery of new music has been for me.
Rather than choosing to easily listen to what’s popular and what everyone else is liking because of a trend and algorithm of promoting active content, I actively seek out diverse areas of music.
Through a focus on niche topics and their inclusion of musical references, through streaming services, I make the effort to click away from promoted content and dive more into related topics of music that interest me while still being driven away from my usual interests.
I’ll keep broadening my understanding and interests in many genres of music, discovering different perspectives and ideas that many of us would rather miss through a forced algorithm.
