Music curation was done by actual people before, almost every social circle had some kind of DJ or music digger providing new stuff. It's another point where technology had a negative influence on the social fabric of society.

It still is done by actual people, just not as many who do it professionally.

The vast majority of my music recommendations come from friends and acquaintances who share tracks in FB groups, chat, amateur Bluetooth speaker "DJing" at gatherings and so on.

"Hey man, you gotta hear this one" is alive and very well.

It's easy to underestimate how important scenes are in music - clubs, musicians, DJs, producers, promoters, managers, vinyl stores, even musical instrument stores - all cross-networking and building organic scenes which incubate influential styles.

Scenes exist on social media, but they're much more diffuse and for some reason are more likely to tinged with irony and/or nostalgia. So they seem to be less effective and - ironically - less experimental and creatively diverse.

> Music curation was done by actual people before

You can find such thing now as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23717756

Amusing. This is still pretty common. In fact, I'd say there are more of these than before. The change you perceive is more likely to be a characteristic of you and your social circle (perhaps you are older, perhaps the friend who would have done that is now taking care of his firstborn, perhaps you've outgrown those groups).

You'll see this same thing in so many different places. People will say "It's not the same now. Back then it was like X". Most commonly, it's more like X than it is different, but the person saying it has changed.

The "problem" is the oversaturation with good enough or listenable stuff, meaning that careful curation by people doesn't have the social impact it had. Curators are middlemen and become obsolete similar to traditional media in aggregation theory.

A reaction or evolution from that is that many who were curators or DJ's get into music production, which means that they hang out in music studios of some kind, forming different social connections (e.g. with musicians). It creates a social divide between the people who just consume from algorithms and those who create.

>You'll see this same thing in so many different places.

Because it's an inherent feat of technology. Groups also form because different people bring different things to the table. One might be into music, the other one into cooking etc.

But cooking isn't enough, it has to be keto & vegan. People move up one level which changes the composition of their social circle.

>People will say "It's not the same now. Back then it was like X". Most commonly, it's more like X than it is different, but the person saying it has changed.

I wish it were like that because I'm a tech geek myself, but thinking more deeply about the topic and the composition of groups has changed my mind. The divide created by technology is real imo because it isolates groups.

>The divide created by technology is real imo because it isolates groups.

The divide is real when it's blindly applied without thinking about social disruption is what I wanted to say.

It still is. DJ mixes

I've had a different experience with Spotify - their discover Playlists are trash for me

I find I have a better experience discovering music by making a playlist and then doing the playlist radio to get more music similar to it. Eventually it just plateaus and keeps giving me the same artists as the playlist, but there's a kind of sweet spot where I've found stuff I wouldn't have found otherwise.

My god. I got stuck hole where every path led to Cindy Lauper.

Not the worst outcome.

As long as your favorite music is “overproduced electronic music” in a couple different flavor this is the best time to be alive. Everything else is dying.

what a lame comment, plenty of obscure indie bands are thriving thanks to spotify

If by thriving you mean “make almost enough money to cover the cost of renting a studio” then sure.

Spotify discover is great but they haven't solved the problem of flow. Songs that don't fit in context are played next to each other. I wish we had John Peel back in its place, but then I suppose it's on me to find a good dj.

This is precisely the reason why I prefer playlists to anything Spotify recommends. Playlists are human curated. I kinda wish Spotify just bought Pandora and their music DNA. I really mis Pandora’s recommendations