Inside The Musical Echo Chamber
Do recommendation engines stop us from discovering new sounds?
What says 90s music to you? The all-conquering pop music of Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys and Spice Girls? The rise to the top of the charts of alternative bands like Radiohead, The Prodigy, Massive Attack and Smashing Pumpkins? The britpop battles of Oasis vs Blur? Maybe it’s classic house singles by Robin S, Livin’ Joy or The Original? Or the golden age of hip-hop — Dre, Jurassic 5, Wu-Tang Clan, Snoop? What about jungle and rave? Like many things, musical memories are in the eye of the beholder. Too, apparently, are streaming playlists.
At Blokur our fortnightly quiz night more often than not has a round with a musical slant: guess the song from the lyrics, pick-up song, black music history, glockenspiel name-that tune…And just as reliably it features fortnightly protests that the questions are too obscure or backward-looking.
Perhaps hoping to improve future quiz night performances — and already confident of their 00s knowledge — one of my colleagues recently dug out the All Out 90s playlist on Spotify to test their 90s music knowledge. With a cover image featuring the Spice Girls, the track list takes in all the pop classics you would expect: Britney, *NSYNC, Mariah Carey, Destiny’s Child, Whitney Houston. They reckoned they knew about half the songs on the list — still work to do, but plenty to make a good contribution to the next 90s round on quiz night.
Curious to see what the gaps were, I fired up the same playlist. Interesting, I thought. Spotify have chosen to open their All Out 90s playlist with Human Behaviour by Björk? That was followed by Radiohead, Pulp and Massive Attack. All fantastic artists. But it seemed surprising that the ultimate 90s playlist would start there rather than Britney or Madonna. Well, it turns out it doesn’t exactly. Here is the All Out 90s playlist that I was shown, side-by-side with the one shown to my colleague:
Amazingly enough, not a single song appears in the first ten tracks of both playlists — or versions of the same playlist. Even the cover image is different: Nirvana on the left, Spice Girls on the right.
Spotify says that it adjusts its playlists based on your musical taste to give you more of the music that you love. Pretty clever huh? No matter what you do, Spotify will always find a way to play you music that interests you. But could there be a down side?
We are all familiar by now with the idea of an echo chamber when it comes to news or politics. The more you engage with certain types of stories and ideas, the more platforms like Twitter and Facebook show you those same stories and ideas. It makes the experience of browsing online more agreeable — I only see things I am likely to agree with — but it also means that I am not forced to engage with the other side of the argument. And the more we each talk exclusively to our own side, the less chance we have to learn or compromise.
Don’t worry, I am not about to argue that playlisting algorithms have this kind of political impact. But does it matter that when I go looking for new music, I always hear something similar to what I already like?
I like to think that my path to discovering new music has generally been a bit more accidental. I remember listening to Mary Anne Hobbs’ Breezeblock on Radio 1 late at night and discovering Mogwai through a live session that was interrupted by a power failure halfway through; getting to love Shostakovich as a teenager simply because it was chosen for us to play in youth orchestra; and waking up halfway through an Adam Buxton interview with Brian Eno to hear the otherworldy sounds of Gavin Bryars’ Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet. It seems sad that the drive for algorithms to play me only music designed to meet my exact tastes might mean that I am never shocked into loving something new, or expanding my musical horizons.
Or then again, are Spotify’s algorithms just doing the same thing on a massive scale? Presumably I would only listen to the Breezeblock if I wanted to hear a varied mix of new music. Presumably I would only join a classical orchestra if I was interested in playing classical music. Presumably I would only listen to an interview with Brian Eno if I was open to leftfield musical ideas. And am I kidding myself that I am really looking for new sounds — am I really just looking for music that sounds similar to my favourite artists?
What do you think? How much of our musical discovery is driven by the search for something new? How much is a search for the familiar? Does it matter if we are always recommended things that a computer knows we already like? And what does your All Out 90s playlist reveal about your music taste? If you’re a Spotify user, click here to find out.
