Listening Offline
Ditch the streaming services and embrace tradition—as in bringing back traditional ways of discovering music.
by Miguel Gonzales
Recommendations feel artificial now. There’s no magic in having an algorithm suggest music based on what you listen to. That isn’t any fun.
When someone says they’ve discovered a new artist, there are two ways to interpret their statement. One: they trudged through Google, browsed through Bandcamp, heard about an artist from a friend, or read a review they were persuaded by. Or, two: an algorithm recommended that artist. From prior conversations, it's almost always the latter.
Algorithms make finding new music very convenient. On Spotify, there are countless ways to get algorithmic recommendations: a list appears on the bottom of playlists with similar songs you can add, the algorithm curates playlists solely on your taste, and an AI DJ even replicates the experience of listening to a radio show playing songs from your current and past rotation. But for some—including me—convenience is less ideal and unfulfilling, especially when the algorithm is purposefully designed to produce instant gratification.
As a young kid discovering the internet, I would visit my aunt on the weekends bringing my cheap MP3 player. She had a desktop computer with LimeWire downloaded, long before the peer-to-peer service shuttered. It was thrilling to see the screen of MP3 file names (most of them probably viruses) pop up as you’re sifting through hundreds of files to find the one you’re looking for.
Other memories such as messing with the car radio dial, listening to CDs on my parents’ stereo system, or ripping those CDs onto iTunes and putting it on my iPod afterward are some of my first formative experiences with music. I recall these memories because I went out of my way to search, discover, and personalize my own musical landscape. No algorithm can recreate that.
Streaming services play a role in providing wide-access services, where music is accessible to audiences internationally. However, its dependency on algorithms has simultaneously destroyed the process of naturally springing across music. There’s nothing wrong with discovering new music from an algorithm, but the problem lies when natural discovery is sacrificed for computer code.
Bust out those iPods, get word-of-mouth recommendations, go on a Google rabbit hole, or compile low-bitrate MP3s and burn them onto a blank CD—the freedom of choice is in your hands when the algorithm isn’t doing it for you.
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