Yesterday, on the way home after a delicious dinner at a small Colombian restaurant in the neighborhood, I noticed that the driver was listening to my favourite jazz program and whose host usually treats me with great attention. I was so happy to meet a member of the Jazz family that I immediately texted the show host and the jazz-loving driver got greetings from him, live on air.

The driver told me that listening to jazz made him more atttemptive to other kinds of music. “Now I even like opera!”, he said. I could not help but thinking about the enormous power of music to get people together, and how one genre usually leads to another, often making classifications between classical and popular music silly.

Speaking of jazz in particular, perhaps because it is a niche that has been out of the spotlight for some time already, it gives us the impression that its fans are but a few souls scattered around, which is a big mistake. The jazz family is huge and everywhere.

Talking about the congregational aspect of music, I think that sometimes it clashes with the so-called herd instinct or, as the Oxford Dictinary defines it: “an inclination in people or animals to behave or think like the majority”.

Extensively exploited by advertising, it explains a lot of the “more of the same”, that seems to be the policy for most radio stations (and tv shows etc). Any attentive music listener knows what I am talking about. With the argument that “this is what people want to hear”, an intense narrowing of what is heard or not heard on major communication channels is justified.

The algorithm (always the algorithm) did not invent musical sameness. It just intensified an already existing process. It is somehow sad we actually do not even notice how our playlists have very few choices that are truly ours and a whole lot of suggestions from…guess what? Your Highness, the algorithm.

Of course, you read this many, many times already, but you do not care too much, because the algorithm and you are the same, you think. It knows exactly what you like. It can see your soul and preview what you want to listen, right? No, honey. Wrong. Totally wrong.

The first step to find out what you really like is to pay attention to what you hear and decide, undisturbed, whether a song will be saved in your playlist.

The next step is to find out more about the artists who touch your heart. There is a world of music production that is not part of the streaming platform catalogs. Do your homework and be amazed by your discoveries!

Now go back to your “most played from the previous year” playlist and review your concepts. I would love to know what’s changed, what’s left and what’s new.

Be seeing you!

G.F.