Music

Music plays an important part in my life the way it does for many of us. I struggle to bond deeply with people who don’t care about music. In my life writing, making, and listening to music have always been intertwined. On this page, you may learn more about the music I consume.

How I listen

Having grown up with cassette tapes, burned CDs, and LimeWire MP3s, I now listen to music through my paid Spotify subscription. Aware of the ethical and political considerations, I make daily use of the service, and use it as a central archive of the records I’ve listened to since the late eighties.

Discovering new music

I do not use Spotify’s “Made For You” playlists. Instead, I look for user-created playlists, usually by searching for artist name + vibe, or mixtape mmyy.

In addition, I enjoy reading the work of music critics, especially outside of their regular context of a magazine or other publication. Lastly, I enjoy how people like Chris Glass and others feature songs they’re listening to.

Listening to favorites

I treat user-created playlists as mixtapes users made for people like me. I’ll listen for songs I like, and then go from there. Beyond that, my listening habits are album-centered, and not playlist-centered. I’m trying to make an effort to make music less decorative, so I tend to avoid playlists like “coffee house tunes” or “workout jams”.

The repeat feature is set to off by default, making it so that I have to make a conscious choice about what to listen to next, and to give myself the reminder that I’ve listening to work created by a person, just like when I used to listen to physical records.

For each month and year, I create a mixtape playlist featuring my favorites from that period.

Cataloguing

I have a Last.fm Pro account which has been tracking my listening habits since 2006. It is a profound sadness in my life that I neglected to use it’s Scrobbler feature between 2008 and 2018. It has left a decade-long gap which I will never be able to fill.

Because I believe that tools do not matter, I create an annual export of my Last.fm data which I store in a large Excel file. This way, my listening data can stay with me as long as I have access to a piece of software that can read Excel files.