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Comment by RiverCrochet | Hacker News Reader

> The only real case for what is soon to be lost, I think, is that of a limited selection of music in the car forcing you to spend time with it, forging deep and often weird attachments

Honestly that's the whole article, lol.

My thoughts: Nowadays we may have deep and weird attachments with algorithms.

I don't know if this is a bad or honestly even a new thing. The music industry and its attempt to market music could be considered a type of algorithm, or even multiple algorithms. Defining and marketing genres of music "algorithmizes" the product I think - if genre X sells, then more musicians will try to call their music genre X and maybe even modify their product.

And people who grew up in the physical medium heydays of the 60s through the mid 90s are definitely attached to their preferences.

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I can totally relate to the "deep and often weird attachments" you forge listening to albums, although I'm not sure I agree that there's a case to be made for it. A few weeks ago, I heard a song in a random gelato shop in Italy that instantly sent me back 15 years. To my knowledge, its band only had one hit (at least if we go by airplay), and this was decidedly not it. Yet I knew it well because I tend to listen to whole albums and this song was on the album with their one hit. After the high of hearing an obscure alt rock song in the strangest of places passed, it dawned on me that I didn't like that song now. Nor had I fifteen years ago.

I still listen to albums in their entirety, but I have to wonder how much exactly we lose by having the choice to only take what we like from them (without buying them in their entirety). In defense of the author, I will say that listening to the same song you don't like much enough times can make you at least tolerate it. Perhaps having all of the music of the world at my fingertips has just made me pickier, not necessarily happier.

The song in question, by the way, was "Time Won't Let Me Go" by The Bravery.

Well this is exactly why Apple iPod and iTunes became popular so quickly. A lot of bands and record labels were pumping out albums with one or two good songs and the rest garbage filler, so customers felt cheated when they paid $16 for a physical CD. With iTunes they could buy just the good songs for $1 each. Some artists and pretentious music critics whined about listeners missing out on the whole album experience but there was no going back.

I can totally relate to that, what a hit of nostalgia. I don't know if I ever bought an album on iTunes.

It's interesting how the streaming era has brought the whole album experience back. I only started listening to full albums again once I switched to streaming. Although I'm not sure how many people are taking advantage of it (for the exact reasons we both mention).

This is why a not small group of people hate U2. Some album of theirs was on Apple devices by default and would be the first thing that played when you turned on the car for some reason.

That could be why some people hate U2. But, they already had a devoted cadre of haters. They were too successful for too long for there not to be.

War is a good album, though, IIRC.

Bar Bar Barbara Santa Barbara…

Well, familiarity breeds contempt, so to have exotic things, you need to dance the line between what is plain and what is too strange to make sense of. An algorithm should do that for you.

An algorithm with your playlist history along with others' should provide decent recommendations. Spotify used to let you dislike things and it worked really well, but then they stopped doing that and my recommendations became generic garbage.

Agreed on Spotify recommendations. I felt like the playlists I got from Spotify circa 2017 did a really good job of walking that line. Nowadays the "song radio" and "artist radio" playlists are bad. Definitely a step back. There are bands I still like that I've added to "Never play music from this artist" because Spotify puts them on every single playlist for me now.

Spotify “radios” became BS, no matter what song you choose to “radio” it will resort to play tracks from your library resulting in always the same songs being played, wait, maybe that’s why the call it “radio”. What we need is a “discover similar” function, don’t tell me that in the world of everything AI they cannot come up with better recommendations.

I think the music industry marketing is different though as it used to be a broadcast style attempt with a limited channels. Via radio in certain markets and station, different TV channels, later satellite radio.

Most people were seeing the same things as everyone else was.

Algorithmic marketing today allows everyone to have their own worldview which might not be shared with anyone around you.

I would love a algo that recommends music the artists loved and listens too. Musicians musicians are were its at.

> Honestly that's the whole article, lol.

To be fair the story about taunting her brother with Champagne Supernova when he needed to pee was pretty funny. But yeah, there's not a lot of meat there.

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