The Death of the Playlist - A Personal Plea - The Crescent Magazine: Tulane's Online Lifestyle Publication

What mood are you in? What are you into? Pop? Rock? Indie? If you could curate the soundtrack to your life at this exact moment in time, what songs would you choose? Quick! Pick anything. Here are some playlist options: Confidence Boost, Scarf Season, Still into You, or Get Chores Done.

Yours truly,

Spotify

In this age of playlists and streaming subscriptions everyone has access to music. AirPods in, volume up, hit shuffle and walk to class. Hit shuffle and sit on the bus. Bring your headphones to the gym or else be subjected to the awful, blaring music, or even worse, the silence.

In 2022, Statista reported that CD sales dropped 95% since the year 2000. Aside from the recent glamorization of vinyl, nobody has space for obsolete, clunky turntables or CD players. Everything is digital, only a click away. Music has drifted out of the physical realm and into the abstract, unwittingly changing our perceptions of sound.

Whereas vinyl or CDs could be scratched, broken, or lost, digital music is unbroken, everlasting, and impermeable. Up until we were kids, music was something you had to preserve and protect. Music took up space in our lives and homes. When someone put on a record, the whole room listened. When someone played a CD in the car everyone enjoyed it together. Music doesn’t take up space anymore, yet it subtly pervades our individualistic lives. The communal aspect of enjoying music together is lost, and everyone is plugged into their own personalized playlists. Our generation drowns out the world and tunes into the abstract realm of unlimited, digital music.

The format through which we enjoy art is only part of the transformation. As people craft personal playlists for their specific moods or activities, they jeopardize the whole purpose of the artform- storytelling. Songs are merely chapters in a book, but if you seek the whole picture you need to listen to the full album. Many artists release albums as entire bodies of music which are meant to be heard in sequence. For proof of this storytelling model, refer to the Rolling Stone list of the 50 greatest concept albums of all time.

Picking out songs from an album that fit your niche vibe is like watching only the pilot episode. It disregards the intention of the artist and amplifies consumerism within the industry. Artists recognize our shrinking attention spans and obsession with playlists, so they release singles. They produce groovy songs that make it to the top of the charts and win them Grammys, or radio hits that often lack substance-essentially, they feed us pilot episodes.

We are getting lost along the way. In advancing to the digital age, the lines begin to blur and the art slips through our fingers. Music merely exists in the intangible ether. It’s only attainable through data or Wi-Fi. It no longer demands attention or care but floats invisibly around us. We have manipulated sound to cater to our hungry consumerism and lost touch with the innocence of storytelling through albums. I’m sick of just listening to pilot episodes.