We’ve gained so much from easy access to musical recordings. I can sample thousands of recordings as I seek to expand my own knowledge and appreciation. A student can immediately find and impeccable recording of whatever song I assign her. A neophyte can immerse himself in an entire musical world without having to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars at record stores.
What I have found I’m missing, especially when I reflect on my own formative listening experiences, is curation. I learned to listen to jazz thanks to the inimitable Ed Love, who is in his thirty-fifth year hosting Destination: Jazz on Detroit’s Public Radio station, WDET. It was appointment listening for me – as I ate dinner, did homework, read, or just sat – Ed was spinning jazz records 15 hours a week.
Ed Love’s knowledge was (and, honestly, is) broader and deeper than mine. And he used that knowledge to curate a story through the recordings he played. I learned about the art, I formed connections in my brain and my musical understanding deepened with continued listening. (as late as graduate school, I chose a song to arrange from the jazz group Eastern Rebellion, thanks to his heavy playing of it when I was in high school.)
Spotify and all the other streaming services have something like curation. They have algorithms that suggest songs “You Might Also Like….” But the recommendations do not come from the deep knowledge that someone like Ed Love possesses, and they do not make the leaps that he might make – preferring things that simply sound alike or have some other surface trait in common. For example, Spotify insists that since we play The Real Group a lot, our family must want to listen to a lot of Swedish music. That misses the point that what we like is great vocal harmony. An algorithm simply can’t replace the curation of an expert. (To say nothing of the immense value I got from the stories Ed Love told between the tunes he played. The context he gave was just as important, and is utterly missing from music streaming services.)
I don’t have a solution: it’s a hard problem to solve, and music streaming, as I’ve said, is enchanting and so valuable for the listening I do. Something’s lost and something’s gained in this new paradigm.