Spotify: Robot or Philosophy?

 Hello.

I started doing a thing on Twitter this year called ‘#1of365in22’. I did a similar thing in 2016, which was simply a way of having something to do on Twitter except trolling Piers Morgan. That in turn was inspired by John Aizlewood (renowned music journalist and all-round brilliant egg), who does his ‘A Song A Day For A Year’.

The difference this time is there’s a philosophical element to it. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. Let me explain.

Here’s the system (and you’ve got to have a system): I choose an artist on Spotify, I wait for ‘[that artist] Artist’ to appear, and I press ‘Play’.

The idea is that the resulting track is either the average or mean track by that artist. This could be the only philosophical question here: which of the two is it?

To be the mean track, I think everyone pressing ‘Play’, anywhere in the world would have to get the same result.

To be the average track (which is what I’m expecting to be a more obtainable result), everyone pressing ‘Play’ gets a different result but the track isn’t that artist’s biggest hit.

I assumed that any artist chosen needed a large catalogue to increase the ‘sample’, to avoid any “one-hit wonders”.

So for instance, if I press ‘Play’ for New Order (who have a sizeable back catalogue, but for a casual Spotifier might only be known for ‘Blue Monday’) and ‘Blue Monday’ is the first result, the experiment (and it is an experiment) is over.

I haven’t done New Order yet. The ones I’ve done so far have not brought up the ‘Blue Monday constant/variable’: they’ve kinda been album tracks that are still strong, or surprising tracks I hadn’t heard before. (Talking of sample sizes, I’m not a big sample myself as many of the artists I’ll choose will be unfamiliar to me despite their renown. This is a sort of disclaimer I suppose.)

A second element of jeopardy was added: once I knew the track I Googled said track, and the first YouTube result for that track would be the one I posted to Twitter. (The first time this skewed things was for AC/DC: ‘Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap’ came up on Spotify; a song recorded when the deceased Bon Scott was lead singer. The first YouTube result was a live version of the song recorded much later, when Brian Johnson had taken over.)

As we “speak”, I’ve done 22 of these searches and had one interaction as a result. That one interaction was a comment on the artist I searched on January 1st: The Fall. Unfortunately for this blog, it had absolutely nothing to do with the experiment. Never mind. The Fall do however bring in an extra cubist fourth dimension to the experiment (as well as life itself)...

The Fall existed in a different world to us. They definitely exist beyond this experiment. The song that ‘Play’ called up on January 1st was ‘No Bulbs’ from their ‘The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall’ L.P. I think this is not only an “average/mean” track by The Fall, it may be an average/mean title too. Fans of The Fall love the titles as much as the music, it’s their fourth dimension. I’m digressing here, but if for instance ‘To Nk Roachment: Yarbles’ is the MOST The Fall title (please feel free to correct me The Fall fans, I know you can), and say ‘Lost In Music’ (a cover version I know, but throw me a bone here) is the dullest... ‘No Bulbs’ definitely (in my mind) sits in the middle. Why? Because in itself it’s not a particularly weird title by The Fall’s standards, but when you know Mark E Smith is going to rant on about having no BELTS in his “trash-mount” of a flat, before moving on to bulbs, it’s funnier (and The Fall are funny, apart from all the other fantastic things they were).

I said “are” and “were” above, because unless you saw every concert by The Fall, or you are a surviving molecule of Mark E Smith or his grandmother (bongos), there’s always more to learn.

So to conclude we have ‘Spotify Search’ + ‘YouTube Search’ (Where The Fall titles are variable Yarbles) for the math(s) fans. And I’m willing to admit this is simply someone (let’s face it me) wrestling with a robot (Spotify) because I can’t be bothered to upgrade to ‘Prime’ and lose the adverts.

No pressure, but if you join in on any day, I would love to hear your results.