Blog Post #7

There are songs that we have only heard once or twice some we haven’t even heard at all. The reason being that they are “The marginal-the rejected-the repressed is whatever the powerful have decided is no use at the moment”. The marginalized would be the songs that the popular society has casted aside and deemed inappropriate for the era. Eventually all music gets retired but the marginalized art get put away before its time. Music shows who the powerful and the marginalized are. The powerful would be the popular demand the ones society feels have more of an influence.

Forced Exposure is an independent music distributor. At Forced Exposure Jimmy Johnson and his employees encounter over fifty thousand titles each week one hundred new titles arrives. They take the time to listen to each new song, he feels that distribution has a responsibility to give attention to each artist and not just scan over the piece of work. Forced Exposure is like a “deceased magazine” giving 75,000 words a week describing each record listened to and full detail printed catalogue offering recommendations of the new songs they have heard that month.  Forced exposure in comparison to Spotify involves more of a human interaction.

With Spotify you are not left scrolling through music there’s an algorithm to recommend music based on what your mood is or what your believed interest are no one at the company is actually listening to the music being recommended to you. Most of the songs are overlooked the recommendations will more likely be the songs that are currently more popular so songs that you would like you would never hear, all because of the songs played during one mood you were in while looking for music to listen to or what may have been your interest that you are no longer interested in. The algorithm being used also present music with acoustics similarities so your left listening to music that almost sounds the same but just have different artist. This way of recommending ensures that you are not surprised by music.

Surprise is not very helpful to many corporations. The idea is to find you something that you are comfortable with not to surprise you with something you’ve never heard and you become disinterested. You want to hear something that you may like even just enough to keep it playing to the end. Discovering music with Spotify, Apple Music, Google Music, or similar applications the goal is find you new music that you have not heard, but are more likely to like because it sounds like the other songs that are in your collection.  The music is familiar so it’s not surprising. Since today era is so technical it makes it so much easier for ad trackers to tally what catches our attention.