This is something Ted Gioia is also saying, and I quite like the idea too.
There's one more thing to this: subcultures. 30 years ago people often identified with this group or another. I dare to say those were the collective curators, where the final vector of the subculture is an effect of thousands of tiny curators: leaders of the local branch of punks or Depeche Mode people or the ravers.
It's almost gone now unfortunately, but I think subcultures may be coming back to fight the algos.
And there are still subcultures that thrive almost completely under the radar. Since you like breakcore, I would recommend researching Free Party, or Free Tekno movement. This is unique to Europe I believe and most of that stuff is not to be found on Spotify.
Weirdly, I just got back on Substack to follow one of those new "curators" you mention. The slop being pushed by recommendation algorithms really drives burnout, as you said.
Thanks for this Ryan - good read. I enjoy watching Youtube in incognito mode to avoid my algorithm shadow. It helps when you want to binge content in a particular niche and not have it affect my ongoing content recommendations.
immediately hit the like button when i saw the title. definitely agree especially with 4! I'll offer 2 anecdotes for nuance:
Gen a - still exclusively on the algos. I've been quizzing the kiddo and his cohort on how they get games and they're still taking what roblox serves them. I find there's a little bit of the 1/9/90 rule at play here where you're still seeing a vast majority take the convenient factor first.
Music tastes change over time. You'll see these graphs popup occasionally that show how our music tastes decline over time either giving away to nostalgia or cynicism. Most often they just show that the peak discovery and obsession time is when you're younger.
Not to dig into the music analogy too much, but I just think that there's another similar pattern there where like music, entertainment and media are starting to fill other voids in our lives. most of these algo music channels are background music, podcasts took over because we wanted to be informed while we were doing something else, etc...
Going back to the interesting person offering their perspective. These micro-communities and audiences that "have a thing" are for sure the biggest spark to watch out for in these non-obvious spaces.
Very thought provoking, thanks.
This is something Ted Gioia is also saying, and I quite like the idea too.
There's one more thing to this: subcultures. 30 years ago people often identified with this group or another. I dare to say those were the collective curators, where the final vector of the subculture is an effect of thousands of tiny curators: leaders of the local branch of punks or Depeche Mode people or the ravers.
It's almost gone now unfortunately, but I think subcultures may be coming back to fight the algos.
And there are still subcultures that thrive almost completely under the radar. Since you like breakcore, I would recommend researching Free Party, or Free Tekno movement. This is unique to Europe I believe and most of that stuff is not to be found on Spotify.
100%
Weirdly, I just got back on Substack to follow one of those new "curators" you mention. The slop being pushed by recommendation algorithms really drives burnout, as you said.
Thanks for this Ryan - good read. I enjoy watching Youtube in incognito mode to avoid my algorithm shadow. It helps when you want to binge content in a particular niche and not have it affect my ongoing content recommendations.
I would do this too if not for the ads
Premium Gang
I could recommend you so much good music, but unfortunately for you it would nearly all be metal or metal adjacent.
immediately hit the like button when i saw the title. definitely agree especially with 4! I'll offer 2 anecdotes for nuance:
Gen a - still exclusively on the algos. I've been quizzing the kiddo and his cohort on how they get games and they're still taking what roblox serves them. I find there's a little bit of the 1/9/90 rule at play here where you're still seeing a vast majority take the convenient factor first.
Music tastes change over time. You'll see these graphs popup occasionally that show how our music tastes decline over time either giving away to nostalgia or cynicism. Most often they just show that the peak discovery and obsession time is when you're younger.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/12/17003076/spotify-data-shows-songs-teens-adult-taste-music
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/33kvci/spotify_users_music_taste_by_age/
Not to dig into the music analogy too much, but I just think that there's another similar pattern there where like music, entertainment and media are starting to fill other voids in our lives. most of these algo music channels are background music, podcasts took over because we wanted to be informed while we were doing something else, etc...
Going back to the interesting person offering their perspective. These micro-communities and audiences that "have a thing" are for sure the biggest spark to watch out for in these non-obvious spaces.