Once upon a time, the Internet was a great place for discovering new stuff. The Weird Wild Web of the 90s had multiple directories (Yahoo), cringe fringey communities (Geocities), and places to solve problems (UBB).
Thirty-five years after the World Wide Web was born (whoa!) finding new things has gotten damn near impossible. It’s tempting to blame an over abundance and continuous stream of data. It’s easy to blame advertising’s influence on search results. It’s simplistic to blame the ominous algorithm.
Regardless of who or what you blame, this internetwork of superficial users who demand the latest shiny thing has resulted in a glut of also ran genres, rehashes of the same ideas, and AI generated drivel. The sheer amount of derivative newness gives the illusion of an abundance of innovative creativity but on a listen, first glance, or reading we realize it’s crap.
Most Discovery Happens Because of People, not Algorithms
El Jefe and I have been talking about the discovery problem for years. El Jefe claims he has a solution. We’ll see. The latest to realize the Internet’s elephant in the room is Jess Weatherbed at The Verge.
I’m a frequent user of Spotify, our fearless leader chooses YouTube of all things to listen to music, and it’s terrible at finding new stuff to listen to. The service is great if you want to listen to artists or a genre you’re already familiar with. Once you go outside your bubble it’s a lot more challenging.
Spotify solved this problem indirectly through one of their data scientists. Glenn McDonald operated a separate website called Every Noise at Once that mapped Spotify’s genres and artists creating a visual tour of music. The map gave Spotify users the ability to traverse over 5,000 music genres and discover something new.
Clicking on any specific genre would introduce you to the latest contribution an artist or band made to the music ecosystem.
But alas, capitalism ruins everything. Spotify fired McDonald in its latest round of layoffs separating him from the data powering Every Noise at Once. And an ear towards new music.
Death by Digital
Spotify is the latest example demonstrating how digital has ruined perfectly sound business models for both consumers and companies. Algorithmic curation doesn’t work because most people’s tastes are idiotic. That’s a truism across everything regardless if you agree with any individuals taste.
There may be more stuff available now than there was in the past, but that doesn’t mean the quality has improved. I’d argue it has suffered. Before digital, radio and social groups introduced you to new music. Then came playlists, DRM, and streaming which destroyed wide exposure of obscure music. New music now bubbles up through a combination of notoriety on YouTube and social media that goes viral.
Movies and TV shows benefited from what El Jefe calls, The Flip. Flipping through channels because you were bored. In a world of on-demand streaming and searching through Netflix, there is no boredom. You can search, scroll and theoretically find what you want to hear or watch. Except, it’s hard to find a hidden gem of trashy TV or something brilliant you may happen upon.
The kicker is…no one is really making much money. In this world of data-driven, digital-delivery streaming companies are struggling to make a profit and are removing complete catalogs of content and purging fully produced movies to cut costs. Netflix, Disney and others are implementing draconian screen sharing policies that weren’t even an issue once upon a time. After years of barely being paid for their creative works, music artists aren’t getting paid at all for their billions of streams on YouTube and Spotify. How can someone earn $0.0006 per stream even when their song was played over a billion times.
Digital sucks at discovery and has devalued entertainment while sucking at it.
Don’t take my word for it. Snoop Dogg puts it more eloquently than I can.
Snoop Dogg went off the script and went in on streaming, AI and the writers strike 😂😂 pic.twitter.com/7vfl5Cpw1C
— Ahmed/The Ears/IG: BigBizTheGod 🇸🇴 (@big_business_) May 8, 2023
-MJ