A word from the meek

This past weekend, I opened up a copy of the Nassau Weekly to find an intriguing piece by Elliott Eglash about the nature of music streaming and its implications on our listening experience. Given that I had just recently fallen in love with Spotify’s innovative new music suggestion feature, Discover Weekly, this seemed too bizarrely relevant to pass up. Typical of the Nass, the piece was an interestingly personal and enjoyable read that I highly recommend.

However, I found myself quite disappointed to find that instead of the awestruck admiration that I felt for this novel application of data science, the author seemed to take a subtly mournful tone, as if realizing the end of some intangible aspects of music as we have come to know it. All in all, Eglash’s pensive journey through his listening habits lead to some truly insightful observations, though I find his apprehensions and reservations to be misplaced. Music is different now than it was even 10 years ago when we were children, and Eglash’s column correctly identifies many of these major shifts. However, this idea that our interaction with music is somehow worse off or less valuable today is where his opinions fall short.

A major theme that Eglash touches on is that there is value in the personal journey of searching, finding, and discovering your own music. On an individual level, much of the enjoyment from music comes from the satisfaction of searching endlessly for that new sound, much like explorers breaking new ground on the frontier. On a broader scale, each generation pushes the limits of music to find something uniquely “us,” be it the free-form expression of jazz in the early 20th century, the visceral engagement with accentuated beat and rhythm of rock and roll in the ’50s, or the rebellious, angst-filled disillusionment of grunge in the ’90s. All of this defines our personal autonomy in music, the dimension of enjoyment defined solely by the effort we spend finding something new that we enjoy. Whether you spent hours tediously searching through old record stores or spent Saturday nights finding new bands playing at the local concert hall, the effort spent searching for new music was just as important as the music itself. Of course, our musical autonomy is being replaced by bits and data. Where once we spent time searching for something fresh, programs and algorithms have taken over the job as our musical explorers, and to Eglash, it seems awfully bleak.

In a true Huxley-esque fashion, this willful abandonment of our musical sovereignty has led to an automated feeding of an endless stream of musical pleasure. Given the current technological revolution, the marketplace of availablemusic is magnitudes larger than anybody could have imagined even just a few years ago. As such, there is always new music available just around the corner for us to feed on. Eglash astutely points out that our appreciation for each discovery of new music disappears as it becomes easier to find new music, which is supported by empirical research. The less we have to work for something, the less we ultimately value it. Perhaps this has or will lead to a more superficial appreciation for music as a whole, perhaps not. But really, it doesn’t matter either way.

Music, or at least our interaction with it, is constantly changing. Eglash freely admits this. The way we listen to music now is different than how we listened to music 50 years ago, and will be fundamentally different from the way we listen to music 50 years in the future. This is not a normative statement about the “best” way to listen to music, but simply an observation that generationally, we listen to and value music in fundamentally different ways. Each member of the previous generation must necessarily observe this changing dynamic and will ultimately feel a nostalgic sense of longing for the way things once were. This is the feeling facing Eglash, and it is one that anyone who values music must eventually come to terms with.

But despite his observations, Eglash has a major reservation, one that is entirely separate from music or our appreciation for it. Once he realized just how effective these algorithms are (admittedly better than what he could ever find alone), he naturally reflects on the empirical nature of the human condition, and it’s a bit scary. He remarks that it’s “as if a human being, like a math equation, were merely something to be solved.” It’s entirely true, and that’s the beauty of it all. The very reason these algorithms are so effective is that they begin with the assumption that we can figure ourselves out. Music is simply another aspect of the entirely material human experience, and we’ve started solving the equation.. Left mourning the loss of personally valued aspects of music, Eglash can’t help but search for a transcendental justification for those aspects that are gone. The unfortunate truth is that sometimes, what we value isn’t better or worse than what was once valued or what will be valued in the future. In the end, it’s just different.

ChristianWawrzonek is a computer science major from Pittsburgh, Pa. He can be reached atcjw5@princeton.edu.