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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 it’s just the preferences of the employees at these companies. They see themselves as taste makers.
It’s also a reflection of changing tastes. Just like a rockstar of the 80s was considered “legit” if they did cocaine and heroin and had a ton of promiscuous sex, a hip hoppist of the 90s was considered legit if they dealt drugs or killed somebody, whatever the equivalent of the 2020s is somebody who is a part of one of these groups.
If you’re trying to listen to the music for the aesthetics of the music, you’re just old. The music is just a superposition of the identify of the creators and the people who listen to it. It’s almost irrelevant what it actually sounds like.
This is very accurate as I’m beginning to notice all the pop songs nowadays sound exactly the same. They all have a very similar and homogenous feel, to the point that I don’t see why one would be a fan of any one in particular, except as a signifier of some other fashion trend (gay, queer. Trans, black, woman and some combo of these)
Hope this doesn’t sound too Chud of me but the straight white male artists seem to be the ones who try hardest to differentiate their music in style (although you’ll still find plenty that sound generic)
This is such a bizarre take to me. Can you provide some specific examples of songs that you think sound “exactly the same”? I think there’s plenty of differentiation among pop artists today - easily as much as there was during any previous era, and almost certainly more than in, say, the 1960’s.
I think this community suffers from a general inability to actually appreciate pop music, and apparently even to detect differences between different songs, artists, and sub-genres. This is a reflection of the limitations of the user base, not of these artists.
Agreed. Pop music seems to be in a really good place right now, and has a ton of variety.
I guess part of the problem with all discussions of music is, what genre are we talking about, does that count as pop, does this, etc. Does, I like the way you kiss me, by Artemas count as a 'pop' song? What about, I had some help, by post Malone? To me they are both pop songs, but I could see arguments for defining them (and all the other pop songs I like) out of the pop category and then maybe I too would think that 'pop' music is bad.
(Am I being overly literal and autistic when I define pop music as, popular music played on mainstream (none genre specific) radio stations?)
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