More about Tech & Music

My last entry spoke about Soundcloud. In this entry, I would like to focus on the broader effects technology has on tastes and trends. This includes things like Facebook, MySpace, and Last.fm.

Musical communities prior to the internet were probably a lot more intimate. Often the sharing of music was between friends and family. The way that music was shared really influenced an individual. Even though a person developed his or her "own" musical preference, there was a huge amount of influence involved from various sources. One of the things today's technology offers is a much more isolated exposure to various musical genres and styles. Although there is still a highly social element to musical tastes, it is easier to hone one's preferences "in a bubble," if I may. Websites like Amazon, Last.fm, and others now have suggestions based on other user's feedback and in some cases, algorithmically determined musical compatibility. And while this will ultimately lead you to other music you enjoy listening to, how much is lost in translation here? While we all enjoy finding a new artist that tickles our fancy, there's no feeling like recommending a cool new album to a friend and becoming fans together. Of course, this still happens plenty, but the ease with which finding music online facilitates means that more and more of our musical tastes are developed in a less personal manner.

Now, of course that's not to say that many of these recommendations are done without human interaction. Often, the recommendations do come from other people. However, it's often users who you will never meet. So, although the collective musical community is helping each other, they are doing so through GUI's and Tag Clouds rather than intimate conversation. This dehumanization of the process changes the whole idea of what "taste" means. Most people perceive tastes as being an extremely personal decision. They also see it as a defining characteristic of their own sense of individuality. However, musical taste is a peculiarity in its means, as it is decidedly outside an individual. Short of a person who has never heard music in their lives picking up a twig and some stones and making noises from it, every music someone is exposed to is based on other people's ideas about what music should sound like. Our tastes come into play where we decide whose ideas most align with our own. But there are a whole plethora of things that affect our ideas, about what sounds good, what you can relate to, and what is simply rubbish.

So, on the flipside, perhaps this expansion of options actually improves our ability to define our own tastes. By removing the nudge of those we care about, we are free to pick whichever music we like (so long as our roommates don't hear us listening to it). What is certain, though, is that finding new music has never been so easy. Musical proliferation is certainly at a high point these days. Genres are constantly emerging, dying, splitting, and changing. It's left to the individual where they fit.