Back to posts

Cultivating a taste world

At the end of last year I canceled my subscription to Spotify, for a couple of reasons:

  • The pushing of AI-generated music above human-made music
  • The investments in AI war technology
  • The atrophy of my own “taste muscle”

I’ve heard friends name the first two as reasons they’ve felt uneasy as well, but today I’d like to focus on the third.

The taste muscle

“Good taste” strikes a balance between what’s familiar and what’s novel. Something that’s 100% familiar is boring, but something that’s 100% novel is difficult to connect to. I wouldn’t be interested in listening to music that’s just a copy-paste of what’s been done before, but I also might have trouble appreciating something that’s so far out of left field that it just registers to me as noise. And something that’s comfortably familiar to me might feel challenging to someone else, or vice versa. Someone that I personally would consider to have good taste would be recommending things that sit somewhere in the middle of that continuum for me: not so familiar to be boring, and not so challenging to be inaccessible.

Taste isn’t static, either. I think part of enjoying art is learning over time how to broaden one’s taste – how to train one’s palate to enjoy new and unfamiliar experiences. Keeping a narrow taste for too long can cause it to ossify and trap you, like for the old man who says, “all new music is trash.” It’s a shame to let curiosity fade because of an unwillingness to brave a bit of discomfort to find something new. If you stop flexing the taste muscle, after a while it’ll quit working at all.

The past couple years I’ve noticed that my taste in music has started smelling strongly of Spotify. Somewhere along the way it stopped being my taste and started being the taste Spotify chose for me. I “find” new songs and artists because they’re pushed to me by algorithm. I “discover” new subgenres because there’s an official, auto-updating playlist for each one. And, to be honest, I’ve loved the music Spotify has told me to listen to – its algorithm knew I would love it! But the thing that bothers me is that it’s become an overwhelmingly passive process. I eat whatever food is put in front of me.

My first complaint with Apple Music, on the other hand, is that it doesn’t push me past what I currently enjoy. Its interface prioritizes what I’ve already saved; I tend to listen to what’s already in My Library rather than playlists that might pull me in a new direction. It’s difficult for me to find and follow other people. The experience feels very closed, and not built for discovery.

This made me consider how I do find new music, new media, new experiences. Have I been too reliant on an algorithm trained on what I’ve liked in the past? How do I find something that’s “challenging” for me, or might take time and effort to learn to enjoy?

When I was younger I used to spend a lot of time surfing the web. Sometimes I would follow blog circles or use StumbleUpon to get a random-ish page; later on I started browsing Tumblr, which had a sort of algorithm but also a big focus on following and reblogging. One of the fun parts of surfing was that you’d often end up someplace you didn’t expect, reading or watching something that wasn’t picked out for you or made with you in mind. You were sifting through lots of mildly interesting stuff in order to find the gem exciting enough to pull you down the rabbit hole. At least for me, it was not a passive activity. Maybe in a way it lit up the “hunting-and-gathering” part of the brain.

Since then my experience on the internet has become less like surfing and more like consumption. I don’t feel led by curiosity. An algorithm is meant to show me things that already align with my stated interests, so if I see something that’s too unexpected it almost seems like there’s a bug, or that my time is being wasted. Scrolling on social media feels very passive.

And passive discovery isn’t “bad”! Through years of listening I had taught Spotify exactly what I love. Apple Music and YouTube Music will also auto-play for me related music that’s…passable! But I’m trying not to rely on being spoon-fed, and instead be more active in my interaction with music. I want to listen to a friend’s playlist with artists I would never have found on my own; I want to hear a song on an Instagram story and take the extra step of looking up the rest of the EP; I want to read a blog I trust and find something new. I want there to be an active step, and I want it to be connected to people.

A taste world

It can feel a bit weird to be part of an online community. On one hand, I can enjoy all the same references and memes as my friends…but why did we all see the same thirty tweets today? Has our Venn diagram become that close to a perfect circle? I think it gives us the impression of being part of a subculture or niche group without our having really chosen it or bought into it. Being brought together by algorithm feels very impersonal.

Or what if the culture at large is drifting more and more towards something we don’t want to engage with? Is my only choice really to just “vote with my likes” and hope that I start to see more interesting posts? And regardless, a shared corpus of liked content does not a community make. How can we take the reins and build a community actively instead?

I recently read something along these lines in an article by W. David Marx:

The vast majority of people on earth are going to drown in a lukewarm bath of AI gruel, and there is probably no effective means of mass resistance on their behalf. The consequences will be very bad. But it also means we’re likely to return to the common pattern of cultural consumption from previous centuries, where sophisticates live in their own separate taste world that is not AI-dominated. I refuse to believe this is an “elitist” position when anyone with self-determination and curiosity is also free to join in this separate taste world, and its members should encourage others to do so.

What “we” need, however, is a group consciousness of being in this sophisticated taste world and not in the AI-algo taste world. Every successful cultural movement, from Native Tongues to Lilith Fair to the European avant-garde, has had this consciousness…. “We” have enough time and resources to create our own taste world.

What’s interesting to me is that a group consciousness leads to the creation of a taste world. It requires the choice of being active in one’s curation of taste, as opposed to passively consuming. To do so with others on a larger scale requires a group-level conscious choice. What is the infrastructure we need in order to make that happen – is it something like Perfectly Imperfect? Is it a blog, a meetup, a group chat, a Discord server? A Listserv??

I’ve been thinking about this mainly through the lens of music, but many forms of media already have an active community-based element: a book club, a film discussion series, a monthly dinner party, an artist’s Patreon community. Every city has a local music scene. Anyone can listen through a concert lineup with friends.

One of my desires for this year is to make that choice, be more active in my interactions with media, and pull others along to do the same. I want to start putting my taste muscle to use again so that it gets stronger rather than weaker. What do you think? Won’t you be my neighbor in this taste world?

Further reading