on music taste

Music taste is very important but signaling shouldn’t be part of music taste. We shouldn’t signal our taste based on what we want people to know—what songs we put on externally facing playlists to seem legible, to belong to a specific group and to conform.

To like Taylor Swift is to admit that you are trying to belong to a specific group, but it also signals that you must have either not explored your true music taste yet or have ranging taste. If you truly like all of Swift’s discography, you like a blend of hip hop, pop, folk, country, etc. And yet you’re not listening to other folk artists and other hip hop artists.

There’s a conflation in that sense between being a fan of an artist and having a music taste. When Idam shared his playlist with me I hadn’t ever heard most of the songs, or even knew the artists, yet somehow I immediately liked all of the songs based on his human recommendation algorithm.

If we go back to our childlike wonder of liking music because we like it, not because we want to appear “cool” to our friends, what would we listen to? If we let AI make a true taste graph, not based on “genres” or “scenes” what would it recommend?

Music is inherently a very personal thing and is a sanctuary for emotional, sensitive feelings. When I shared my private bath playlist with Idam, it was something that had never been shared before and was never made to be shared. It’s the opposite of signaling. But that’s exactly why sharing it was so intimate and exposing of true compatibility and passion.

Music taste has been ruined now by this social media pressure—we’re terrified of messing up our Spotify wrapped or our recommendation algorithm and feel embarrassed by what it makes with people. Apps like Superfan put this implicit pressure to be legible, to conform. And that’s why everyone’s Spotify wrapped looks the same, why everyone wears the same clothes, and wears the same perfumes. We’re terrified of admitting our own interior feelings, inclinations, moods, and vulnerabilities. Music is all of those. And it has been stripped away of its raw authenticity and power of connection.

When you turn music into a taste signal, you also take away the community aspect of music. That’s why concerts have devolved into social media opportunities where no one knows the lyrics or cares about the music itself. Instead of playing music you like in your own home while hosting, you defer to Spotify’s generic “Dinner Party” playlist that essentially covers top 40 hits as if you were your Gen X parent turning on the radio. In turn, we deny ourselves the opportunity to actually connect and we remove the power of authentic and vulnerable kinship with our fellow humankind. Which ironic, given the proliferation of non-human music centered around a safe, legible ‘vibe’ that you can play at said dinner party. And the loop gets reinforced.

It’s not Spotify or big labels’ fault that we keep hearing the same pushed artists and generic pop slop, it’s actually them just meeting what the people want. We’ve lied to ourselves and believed that “belonging” is conforming and following an anonymous crowd. And that get’s reinforced via power law when all of your friends say they want to go to the Kaytranada set, or Sabrina Carpenter or whatever latest scene or artist is accepted at that time. No one dares to have unique taste, because then you would face the ultimate fear: being alone. No one would go to the concert with you, someone would scrunch up their face and wonder “what is this song??” and you would be rejected.

Music was never made to be a passive listening tool. Historically, all the way back to folklore, it was meant for community-building and as an active activity where people joined in—humming, dancing, singing along. Yet now, we use music to drown out thoughts and pass time. Never mind using music to feel something or evoke an emotion or catharsis, we use it to numb. Playlists for vaguely uptempo music at the club, in the gym, or even on our sad commutes. Rather than passionate, we are dispassionate—both about the music itself and the artists.

So how do we kick ourselves out of this loop? How do we return to the passionate, vulnerable, and unperturbed aspect of music listening? You can opt out of the entire signaling race and return to analog-ish forms like the iPod, which many Gen Z are doing. You can collect vinyl albums like millennials did. But both of these risk still status signaling—what does your vinyl shelf and iPod library say about you. Enter the performative male wearing wire headphones the insufferable bearded millennial.

What if there was a safer space for music enjoyment? What if you could treat your music listening like a private journal? That knew you better than anyone? What if we removed all status-signaling features—no sharing for clout or weekly or annual “drops” of taste graphs? What if each person had their own fingerprint that was encrypted like a blockchain. That could only be transacted on your consent with an end recipient of your choosing. Instead of mind-numbingly following a crowd and posting to the anonymous wave of people you don’t even know, you intentionally shared only when you were ready. And you could keep a ledger of who you shared with and when—for the sake of connection rather than signaling.

What if instead of relying on the labels or DJs or select curators with “Authority” to provide new music, we relied on other listeners with similar fingerprints to show us new music? There would then be peer-to-peer curation, matching, and network effects similar to a decentralized network. No more gatekeeping, but more so focusing on human connection and discovery. For every new song discovered, you feel seen and connected. Listening parties of people with similar taste, not for clout, could be organized in the real world. There are infinite applications of this matching technology based on a real taste graph.

How do prevent people from using this as a signal again? We add friction to how much you can share or to how many people. Your taste isn’t legible, it’s not even visible to you. It’s a secret algorithm and it can change and be updated constantly, just like you. If you don’t know it fully, you can’t “express” it as a signal to others of who you are. That forces music listening to go back to it’s private, more vulnerable state. It’s almost like making you wear the clothes you’d want if no one saw you.