And let all the tension go” with Decompression, a list of soft electro-acoustic tracks by Aphex Twin, Jack Johnson, Royksopp, Daft Punk and Alexandre Desplat. Getting up before dawn? Spotify has your soundtrack in “Early Morning Rise,” 25 tracks offered because “You need a perfect set of songs when the day starts off early.” Decompressing after a rough day? “Take a deep breath. Regardless of environment, each new collection adds a touch more nuance to the whole, tailored especially for you, here, now. Its pitch: “Listen to music curated by music experts.” Amazon’s recently launched Prime Music streaming service offers a far smaller library but compensates by a similar volume of lifestyle playlists.Īll boast of being “curated,” a buzzword that suggests a faculty’s worth of contemplative aesthetes scouring archives - instead of mostly uncredited humans wearing bass-heavy Beats headphones and dragging and dropping a quota’s worth of tracks into another “Beards & Baristas” mix. Last month Google acquired Songza, the mood-based platform that has earned devotees because of its ability to generate lists based on activity and time of day. In May, Apple bought headphone maker and music streaming service Beats Entertainment for $3 billion its Beats Music service boasts of its thousands of hand-curated playlists. In the answer lies profits, and if recent corporate transactions are any indication, billions of dollars await the service that finds a solution. Through mood-based playlists that compile sounds from across eras, companies are in a race to see who can best connect with a listener’s current emotional state, activity or life circumstance. All are committing much time and online real estate to exploring new avenues of doing so, many of which tap into our desire for music that reflects, enhances or adjusts how we’re feeling. Other than solving the huge problem of fair compensation for musicians, the key question facing Beats Music, Pandora, Spotify, Rhapsody, Rdio and others is how to rein in the confusion. Loud, soft, old, new? Sad or happy? Lennon or McCartney? (Harrison!) Vocal or instrumental, intense or subdued? Rhythmic thump, distortion, anger? Or aural salve, warm with calm tones, space and easy melodies? In doing so, for a brief moment we reflect. We launch platforms and ask, what do I want to hear? We open iTunes and a decade’s worth of MP3s await on various hard drives, existing as lines of text on a screen and lacking any emotional allure. Few answers are more crucial to the success of music streaming services than the puzzle of navigating the infinite jukebox, where unlimited choice stirs a special brand of overwhelmed malaise.
0 kommentar(er)
