If you’re on social media, then you’ve probably noticed everyone and their grandmother posting their Spotify Wrapped or Apple Music Replay, a function that allows users to share their yearly listening statistics. While this ritual may seem harmless on the surface, it highlights a growing issue in our society: music has become too easy to access, and that ease is negatively changing how we value and experience music.
Streaming services like Apple Music, Spotify and YouTube Music offer users instant access to nearly any song they can and can’t think of. In doing so, it encourages and fosters a culture of immediate gratification that is killing the qualities that make music enjoyable.
In the past, listening to music required some effort. From dropping a needle on a record, rewinding a cassette or waiting for your favorite song to come on the radio, there was an element of discipline involved. That effort made the reward of finally listening to that song feel earned. Nowadays, a song is a simple tap away, as there’s no need to do any work discovering new music. And while the convenience of it is undeniable, it reinforces a larger problem with our society; that patience is unnecessary, which has caused the satisfaction of true discovery to become obsolete.
Instant gratification not only shapes how we listen to our favorite artists, but also how we value them. Songs have become nothing but background noise instead of experiences to savor. You used to have to actively be with the music, which created a ritual that lent to its enjoyability. Music loses its value when it’s constantly there to fill empty moments rather than be actively appreciated. It’s no wonder why our attention spans are dwindling, and this problem is only made worse when we use services like TikTok to dictate music popularity, where the audience craves something short and catchy rather than something with value and meaning.
The ritualistic nature of finding new music is also a dying art with streaming services. Searching for new artists and spending time with an album, the good and the bad, were once core to building a relationship with music. Now, that’s been replaced by an algorithm of what artificial intelligence and executives at Sony, Universal and Warner Bros think we would like. We may think it’s “discovery,” when in reality, all we’re doing is eating what they’re feeding us. This has removed the discipline and curiosity that made listening truly personal and rewarding. In a sense, streaming services have made listening to music a passive activity rather than an active one, weakening the connection of person and music.
I’m not saying you should go and delete all your favorite music streaming software; if you enjoy the streaming service of your choice, more power to you. But what I am asking you to do is to remember that which makes music meaningful, and I think it’s the effort put into it, whether it be on the artist’s side or the listener’s side.
