I wake up One day last year, I realized I wasn’t listening to music anymore. Instead, I just listened to the mud – an indistinguishable series of songs that mimicked my musical taste. My mud addiction stems from Spotify’s algorithmically curated playlists that promise to help me focus or find music that matches my interests. The design of the app always pushed me in that direction, so I took it seriously. It’s that easy! Finding good music takes time. But with a single tap, these playlists provided me with loads of music dripping into the background. Usually it’s from artists I’ve never heard of before and—once the playlist is refreshed—will never search again.
At some point last year, I decided: enough is enough. I don’t want mud as the background music of my life. Instead, I’ve come up with the backlash for one woman so far in regards to rejecting Spotify’s weekly call to “discover” new music, following the artists I love to visit. smaller platforms like SoundCloud and made the drastic decision to spend $50 on a vinyl album that I wanted already saved on my phone.
I was feeling pretty good about kicking my mud habit. But then last week, I heard a clip of Ariana Grande singing Rihanna’s “Diamonds.” Only thing, Grande doesn’t Actually singing. Her voice was created by AI. I realize this is the new iteration of mud. And that makes me think about the events of 20 years ago that led us to this point where mud threatens to take over music streaming.
Two decades ago, two music platforms launched on a fast-growing and anarchic internet. The first is The Pirate Bay, a torrent file sharing site that allows anyone to enjoy music without spending a dime. the other is Apple’s iTunes Music Store—now just the iTunes Store—is celebrating its 20th anniversary next week. Compared to The Pirate Bay, hoarding music on iTunes is expensive, with most songs costing around 99 cents.
The launch of these two platforms, less than a year apart, marked a turning point for the way we consume music. The architects each have a clear vision for the online future of music. When I spoke to Peter Sunde, one of the founders of The Pirate Bay, this week, he stated that the site aims to make music available to everyone, hopefully (maybe ideal) that would give artists a larger audience willing to buy concert tickets or merchandise. The Apple project, on the other hand, provided the music industry with a way to maintain its position in the terrifying new world created by the internet, enriching Apple’s business while escaping the free download frenzy that sites like Napster are typical of.
iTunes outlived the official Pirate Bay. Torrent site is taken down in 2014 and the founders of Sweden, including Sunde, were briefly jailed for piracy. But the mainstream music streaming model turns out to be somewhere between the two: unlimited music in exchange for a subscription fee (Spotify) or time you watch ads (the free YouTube version). However, there is one thing about the iTunes Music Store that has grown rapidly: Apple solidifies songs as a standalone product. “Nobody ever sold a song for 99 cents,” Steve Jobs speak Steven Levy of WIRED, your familiar host, in 2003, added that he needed to reassure record labels that this did not mean the album was dead.
The record labels were right to worry. Apple’s decision to free songs contributed to the album’s demise. That, in turn, opened the portal to the mud—where playlists completely separate tracks from albums and even artists. My biggest problem with algorithmic control playlist culture is how the format — the non-stop stream of different tracks designed for background sound — makes me feel like the music is disposable and the artists are interchangeable.
