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AJ's avatar

This is a such a thoughtful, incisive post, in particular for a 1980's kid who would call radio stations and ask for songs to be played.

What it gets at is the idea from cognitive science that pleasure is primarily found in the 'anticipation' of something rather than in the acquisition of that thing, and it's f'd up and counter-intuitive (could we live in a permanent-state of almost-having something?). But your mention of the sort of euphoric journey you went on to find the Riley song speaks to that directly: it was, as the old chestnut goes, the journey and not the destination that was so meaningful. I once got back from a trip to Jamaica in 1999, and after hearing so many of the same bangers over and over, came back and drove 30 minutes to a local record store, where I went through a print catalog and found the CD that had the Wayne Wonder song, and then I placed an order with the record store and the CD didn't arrive for 6 weeks. For one song. The anticipation was incredible.

So appreciate your writing Jonah.

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rikallen's avatar

Thank you so much for this post! We need more music fans thinking about the ways they consume music because Spotify is ruining both the music making and the music listening ecosystems. (check out UMAW & their campaign “Make Streaming Pay” for more on this)

For anyone who wants to stream stuff in a more ethical & joyful way, I would recommend Qobuz for the following reasons:

- pays musicians ~10x Spotify rates

- higher audio quality

- nice clean UI

- doesn’t constantly try to foist new “features” and “updates” that keep you eternally engaging with the app

- doesn’t show play counts, very bare bones algorithm, & has a great blog/magazine.

This paradigm encourages you to educate yourself, ask for recc’s from your friends, seek out newsletters like BBSP, and generally be more proactive in your musical life.

If there’s more demand for real people to recommend good music instead of pay-for-play algorithms, more people will write cool newsletters like this one. I’d love to get back to an internet landscape with more of the 00’s / 10’s music blog energy.

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