Behind on Music
As with so many services these days, Youtube Music is a sort of devil's bargain to capture an unthinkably high consumer surplus (vis a vis CD buying in the 90s) at the expense of some degree of autonomy. The Now Playing view on CarPlay no longer even shows the album a song comes from; clearly the winds are blowing toward an imposed lack of awareness and interest in any organization of music besides The Algorithm. It's passive-aggressive but not a huge issue by any means.
It has changed the way I consume music, and I can tell The Algorithm is quite aware of it. I have gravitated away from albums, but beyond that I have allowed The Algorithm to dig deep ruts. I am a playlist guy. More than ever, I grind songs over and over, studying them, deeply enjoying them, and then I wander away to something else. I know I've had the "repeat one" pattern to some extent for a long time, but this feels different and more severe. It's "Maroon" by Taylor Swift, then "Circles" by Post Malone, then "Saturday Nights" by Khalid, then "Higher Love" by Steve Winwood.
And The Algorithm is quite happy to follow "Saturday Nights" with Charlie Puth maybe half the time. It sometimes feels like the time I somehow got an 80% feel for the random number pattern of our Bop It game: one song to the next, and a bad transition slowly gets trained out of the balance until it's forgotten. Then the songs are forgotten in turn.
I can't say it's a bad thing overall, but I do feel like the album pattern is something worth being moored to, to some extent. I like sitting down and feeling the coherent trajectory of a self-contained vision for music. The Algorithm feels like walking your way through an Olive Garden menu using the wine pairings. Does "Zombie" by the Cranberries really follow "All for You" by Sister Hazel? I mean, I guess so? But you do have the ever-present counter-issue of albums that just aren't that good. It's a chellange to balance it, but I do think we're better off now than we were before. I wish the artists could say the same.