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I love and totally agree with this article. Anecdotally at least, I can see an objective drop in the amount of songs I listen to now on my Spotify account vers
by spookyuser 9y ago
I love and totally agree with this article.
Anecdotally at least, I can see an objective drop in the amount of songs I listen to now on my Spotify account versus eight years ago on my iPod. When I had to download individual mp3s and transfer them with a cable to my iPod I would probably have made a playlist of new songs every few weeks or so. Now the only time I ever 'make a playlist' is perhaps once a year. In fact, if there isn't a long trip I'm going on sometimes I don't make a new playlist for an entire year. Part of the problem in this is that there are simply too many songs to add to a new playlist. If I go back through just my spotify likes there could easily be three hundred+ I would need to collate and that's not including Soundcloud or YouTube. This means that when I've finally gathered together a playlist of songs I want listen to it can be 300/400 songs long, meaning I can listen to it for an entire year and some songs will only have been listened to once and others not at all.
This, like the author, strikes me as being so much worse than when I was deeply listening to, if not albums, playlists over and over again for a couple of weeks. They might have only had a dozen or so songs but I knew each of them well and enjoyed them too. Now I can't think of one song in my last mega-playlist that I could recall offhand.
What's even worse is that this clearly applies to more than music. I have an enormous goodreads list that I will almost certainly never finish. A year of Netflix shows that I am perpetually behind on, and a Pocket list that still has articles from the 2016 election.
I don't know what the solution to this is, but there is definitely something weirdly limiting to having an unlimited number of x.
- zodPod 9y agoIn creative ventures we tend to try artificially limiting ourselves. I know that is easier said than done but if you can say something like "I will only use five instruments" or "I will only read books that are non-fiction" or "I will only listen to (genre) of music" or something you then have a focus and it's no longer just an overwhelming list of white noise!
- InclinedPlane 9y agoThis is a big factor behind the resurgence of vinyl. When you have to dedicate time and effort to deciding what music you really want to listen to, when you have to take care of your music carefully (lest you damage it), and when you have an excuse to listen to music as a primary rather than background activity, all of those things enhance the overall experience and can make it easier to enjoy music more (even though in principle all of those things: extra cost, fragility, limited mobility, etc. are downsides).