music

I often quote the example of a metal band who produced this one acoustic ballad. That ballad was great and ended up in a big editorial playlist, generating a lot of saves and listenership. However, the band suffered algorithmically. Algorithms learned that their music was adequate for ballad lovers, recommending it to more of them. When that... See more

The goal of this series is not to present music as disposable background noise to be mostly ignored or tuned out , but the complete opposite — the goal is to present music that can engulf the listener, carefully selected works that can be fully appreciated (perhaps even enhanced) despite sometimes only having peripheral attention paid to them.

For these communities, hearing a generative model spit out a synthetic gospel track or an AI-generated country twang is not just an artistic affront, it can feel like outright blasphemy, proof that tech elites would rather manufacture culture than nurture it.