E-Paper
Trust your music algorithm. It can’t get any verse
When it comes to music and new sounds, sometimes bots do know best. Why fight them?
“Don’t mess with my algo, bro!” A friend prone to hacking words with the delicacy of a butcher said this to me recently, as I took charge of his phone playlist while we drove through the endlessly unfolding apocalypse that is a Bandra road.
It is one of the favourite sports of elder millennials to crib about the algorithms that coldly slot us into categories such as “elder millennials”. But this “algo” comment made me think. The DJ elves in my Spotify know me rather well. In fact, I like the idea they have of me more than I like the real me. The robots have won. And instead of dread and indignation, I feel understood. I feel held. I feel heard.
Anyone with a smartphone is used to ads that make them wonder why they receive those particular suggestions. Sex toys for the chronically shy; high fashion for the ridiculously uninterested; posh holidays for the broke and romantic poetry for the recently broken up. The Spotify monster, however, is as comforting as a baby otter and sharp as a tongue on Twitter. It can find a song that best complements your mood; or find the perfect one to change it.
I begin the day with Leonard Cohen’s So Long Marianne, or Coke Studio Pakistan’s Chaap Tilak (featuring Abida Parveen and Rahat Fateh Ali Khan) off Spotify. Every single day. I have no great personal history with either song, both of which are terrific. I just find them to be sufficient to declare the day open. You might see how someone like me might be in dire need of direction. The algo gives me that.
Spotify knows I need to follow up Leonard Cohen with Nick Drake’s Pink Moon and The Velvet Underground’s I’ll Be Your Mirror. It knows I want to follow up Chaap Tilak with Kaagaz Ke Phool’s Waqt Ne Kiya and Pasoori’s acoustic version. (Fun fact: the Ali Sethi/Shae Gill song was the second most streamed song in India in 2022. The top spot went to AP Dhillon and co’s Excuses.) The Spotify algorithm allows me to have a musical conversation with the different strands of myself with minimal disruption and digression.
But, there’s a twist. Therapists say that people who confess to cheating on their partners often admit that the transgressive relationship made them feel “new”. The same goes for our relationships with playlists. I want all the comfort and pleasure of the known, but every now and then, I want to “mess with my algo”. It’s deeper than the desire for novelty, this quest for newness. Spotify recently revealed they now cater to 500 million active monthly users. That’s one hell of a community, and I can only imagine the varied musical realms they occupy while I’m ensconced in my ‘Best of’ bliss.
So, perhaps my friend’s annoyance was misplaced. Messing with the algo creates the transgressive space we need on our music streaming apps. Allowing other people to play their songs off your phone is the kind of loss of control I whole-heartedly prescribe for our over-curated lives. The randomness of Dilliwaali Girlfriend after Beethoven’s Fifth can lower the tone of an evening in all the right ways. Try it.
