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Quick question: WHY?
Like many, I have Spotify, and pay for it to avoid the constant ads and improve the sound quality. Like many, I have it on my television because the March of Time has somehow created a situation where I have no stereo player in my home. I still have CDs that sit on a shelf unused and probably need to be sent to a recycle shop or sold or thrown in a landfill. I also have some (gulp) LPs but they adorn my office shelves like tchotchkes of a bygone area--even the millennial guy I know who collected vinyl has stopped doing so because it's "too expensive." I threw out my last turntable about 15 years ago but I keep the records. Sentimental, probably
Back to Spotify. I was making a holiday playlist for putting up our tree this year. I prefer the oldies to the newies, and the medium oldies like Driving Home for Christmas. Anyway as I was browsing I decided to look (and this is on my TV app) at the various genres thinking maybe there would be one called holiday.
There wasn't. What there was, well. That's why I decided to post this.
What there was were the expected playlists like Made for You (which had songs that are algorithmically linked to the account meaning songs my wife and sons click on). Also the expected K-Pop, Top Hits, Jazz, Hip Hop, In the Car, Chill, Punk, Party, Blues and even Educational, Kids & Family, Latin, and Ambient. All this is fine.
Then I saw a Playlist called Glow. Hm. Glow? Turns out this is subtitled "Songs from the Community." The community being the ineffable LGBTQ+ community. There is also a Spotify-produced playlist called EQUAL. This one? You guessed it. Songs exclusively made by women. Then there was FREQUENCY which, no, wasn't the top requested songs, but was a playlist of music made exclusively by black folks. The subtitle: "All Black like the Cover of Essence."
Question is Why? Why is this needed? Audiophiles want genres that have something to do with the music, no? Who decides to listen to music just because it was produced/written/performed by a gay group? Is this just Spotify pandering? And if so, who signed off thinking this was a swell idea? What does the performer being gay have to do with the sound? Do people actually care about this?
My best steelman is that they are trying to signal boost "underrepresented groups" but of the three groups mentioned arguably only women are underrepresented in music.
Theories appreciated.
I think t his is Spotify sprinting full-out to stay in one place. People really, actually have been driven insane by Intersectionality/DEI/etc.
When 'Emo' first emerged in the early 90's, I recall being gobsmacked that some pretentious a-holes decided their music was 'emotional' as opposed to all of the other music that wasn't. Since then it's been one stupid made-up genre after another to the point that I hardly care. I only care because when I release a track myself, I want/need to tag it so that is ends up anywhere within the possible blast radius of people who might want to listen to it.
I once got a promo record, this was 2015, and the record said something like "file under trans-core." What? Trans is a type of art form? It's a genre? I suppose I believe it, but probably not in the way I was supposed to. Of course it was the same old bland techno music everyone else is making--nothing made it more trans than anything else except maybe the song titles and vibe? It was just a way for the artist to try and carve out some new category they could sit atop of.
And that's the game. There's no art here, no deeper meaning. It's all pandering it's all cynical attention grabbing. It's all a fad and always has been. It's all fake in the most blatantly Holden Caulfield kind of way. Spotify is merely trying to keep up with it, they decide nothing.
As for the overall terribleness that is DEI, there was a pretty good substack about how the NYT and Bloomberg buried a report that directly points at how these types of initiative boost racism, bigotry, Balkanization and authoritarianism. I enjoyed it and it should probably be a top-level post: https://substack.com/inbox/post/152110346
You really didn't see the obvious evolutionary difference between early emo bands and the hardcore punk scene they developed out of? There's a pretty clear difference that makes the name make sense.
No, I was a metal head...hardcore was not my thing (to put it lightly) so I didn't listen to it. I had heard of Fugazi (13 songs is ok) and I liked Bad Brains, but I didn't like the hardcore scene and avoided it. When I heard the term 'Emo' (in 1996?) for the first time it just seemed pretentious.
Makes sense and I get your point out of context. But when you listen to Minor Threat and then listen to Youth of Today and to Rites of Spring, it's reasonable to refer to the latter and its genetic descendants as Emotional.
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Interesting article! Thank you for linking it.
I expect for anyone who might not already be convinced, however, the study will not be compelling or alternative rationales will appear. For example:
The (pat?) response is to say "Thus we can see, there are in fact no neutral scenarios, nor any situations where bias does not exist." This is the end state of DEI: Racist/sexist turtles all the way down.
I am also skeptical of the study, but then I'm skeptical of most sociological and psychological studies. I'd need time to look at it for methodology issues (of which there are almost always a few, in addition to all the statistical noise in psychometrics). I am at first blush very willing to believe it at face value, but that's the still soft voice of the serpent.
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