Month: December 2017

We use Spotify once in a while around here, but not enough to justify a subscription to the premium version as some family members and friends have, so we suffer through advertising and limited controls and low fidelity. (For background play — like during kitchen baking sessions — the streaming service of choice would be the KCRW website, a nonprofit operated by old hometown Santa Monica’s eponymous college radio station. And for serious, dedicated, lights-down, sitting-still listening, it is on to our own dedicated music computers serving up lossless sounds from a 1TB collection accumulated over many years.)

Here is an opinion piece, “The Problem with Muzak: Spotify’s bid to remodel an industry”, that just appeared on The Baffler website and should be of interest to all of us music lovers.  A quote: “Spotify is ruining music. Its algorithmic playlists are made for background listening, which favors “clickbait” music.”

The Problem with Muzak