The culprit that we only listen to random music is 18

When was the last time you listened to a record from start to finish? If you’re like me, you’re probably the type to let Spotify’s algorithm decide for you, shuffling a playlist so each song is different.

[El truco de Spotify para que tus playlists no se repitan las mismas canciones una y otra vez]

I don’t blame you. The way of enjoying music has changed a lot in two decades, and streaming services are largely to blame; Spotify itself encouraged this custom by allowing free users to play only random lists and not being able to directly search for the album they wanted.

Almost two decades of random music

It’s not that random music listening is something typical of millennials or zoomers; anyone who has used cassette tapes will remember creating their own “mix” of songs from various albums. But it wasn’t until technology made it easy for us to get a new song every time that this practice really took off. And Apple is largely responsible.

18 years ago, one of Apple’s most controversial devices was launched, and it’s already said: the iPod shuffle. As its name suggests, this music player was designed to play random music (“shuffle” in English), depending on the files it had stored on its internal memory; It was precisely this detail that made this possible, since it was the first iPod to use flash memory, which was faster and able to eliminate the pauses between songs that occurred on hard disk players.

Shuffle was actually a technical necessity, since the iPod Shuffle didn’t have a screen like the other models, so we couldn’t browse through our disc library; we could only play the files in the order they were in, or randomly. The experience was completely different from usual, because each time we received a different order, with songs that we had perhaps not heard for a while and that we could rediscover, thanks to a function of iTunes that obtained random songs from our library. It also saved us time, since we avoided having to choose between the available songs; iTunes has received a feature that automatically fills the memory with random songs saved on our PC or Mac.

I remember the iPod Shuffle sparked a lot of talk about the future of music. In its time, many denied this device and what it stood for, complaining that it new generations didn’t appreciate music album cover. Even though it may not seem like it, song order is something that has caused headaches for many artists and producers, and in many works it is vital for their complete enjoyment. There are albums that tell a story, or that try to take us on a “roller coaster” of emotions, playing with the order of the songs that are vibrant and those that are slower.

Today it is not so important. Many artists no longer create music with the concept of “album” in mind, but rather take advantage of the algorithm; many have even stopped releasing records, opting to release a single song once in a while. If your audience only listens to one of your songs, why spend time on the rest? The songs themselves have also changed, for example in duration (and that is that services like Spotify pay for each reproduction, so it is practical that the songs are short so that each user generates more reproductions).

I’m not saying it’s bad, just it’s different to the way music was enjoyed before. I’ve already confessed that I almost always listen to random music, out of convenience more than anything else; even if from time to time, when I have time, I prefer to isolate myself and listen to a record.

At the time, Apple defended itself against criticism of the iPod Shuffle by claiming that its iTunes usage data indicated that many people preferred to leave the player on shuffle; it is obvious that this was already common practice. But being less expensive, the iPod Shuffle was the first digital player for many people, and the introduction to this style of musical enjoyment was continued by Spotify and streaming services.

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