After the Music Library

I’ve been thinking recently about how ridiculous the idea of a music library is in the streaming age. Especially considering that the majority of music that is consumed today is disposable and has a short life-cycle, will anyone be listening to Blurred Lines in 5 years? No. That doesn’t devalue the song, it holds purely entertainment rather than artistic value.

I’ve never had a stable music library. I’ve long lost my original iTunes account (I probably dislike all of the music contained anyway) and used to delete tracks that I got bored with. My libraries have always been what’s most relevant to me right now. Which can get boring quickly but as does a single rarely-changing library.

Sometimes I want to hop back to the songs I was bored with a few years ago or find something new. My Spotify account has had over 100,000 streams in the last year. Earlier I landed on Spotify’s default discovery feed and I’d never really noticed its merit before. It was recommending music based on artists I’d listened to, asked me about songs I hadn’t listened to in a while and let me start playing music while continuing to scroll through. I actually found some artists I’d loved from years ago that I had forgotten all about.

This kind of feed or maybe this functionality in a more traditional radio view has the potential to change how we consume music. Spotify got us in by saying that streaming is exactly the same as your iTunes Library but with a subscription. My bet is eventually music apps will start playing around with playlists or change how they work altogether and this will likely annoy users but will fit with the shift in behavior. Playlists are definitely better than going through one giant library but the metaphor doesn’t covert well for streaming as you aren’t limited to that selection of music and Spotify likely knows new music you’d be more interested in trying out.

Interestingly I’ve actually put together my legitimate music collection recently with a selection of LP’s (vinyl) that have been building up around the well produced albums that I really love.

Spotify reminded me of this song so thought I’d share/remind you of it.