About a year ago I got a spotify subscription. I loved poking around and clicking from artist to related artist and finding all kinds of great jams. I started subscribing to playlists too… Muted Jazz, Chill Party, Mellow Morning, among other ones with syllable names. Then, while perusing the main page, I saw a cool one called Discovery Weekly. I looked through the music on it (I was really into an Icelandic pop artist at the time) and saw some favorites and some that had album covers I would typically dig (fuzzy childhood photos, taxidermied animals) and subscribed. The playlist updated every Sunday night, so I always tried to save my most favorite songs before that happened. I was in awe each week and started to wonder who on earth was making this playlist. The creator’s name, simply ‘Spotify’. They had lots of playlists that I imagined to be created by someone at their schnazzy tech headquarters, which probably had kitchens full of free food and lots of couches. Also, probably headphones. I began to daydream about someone at the Spotify headquarters who wanted the world to discover this music, all of which I listened to on a near-infinite loop. I thought of them being some handsome dude, imagined us having a chance encounter ten years from now. He’d strike up a conversation, ask what I did. I’d be walking home from some award acceptance ceremony, nobel peace prize perhaps? I’d ask him what he did. Well, I’ve been at Spotify for about twelve years. I used to make their Discovery Weekly playlist, but now I’m in upper management. I’d look at him, say I loved that playlist. And we’d talk about that for the years to come as the start of our love that began twelve years earlier.
One Monday, I was frantic because I’d forgotten to save a glorious song; it had steel drums at the beginning. That’s all I really know. I searched to see if other people archived the Discovery Weekly playlist. Oh phew, I found one, I thought, as I clicked and scrolled to see effing heavy metal. I looked on some random message boards when it hit me like a brick hurled by a sassy little league baseball player: the playlist was generated based on my interests and was different for everyone. So much for the beautiful man at Spotify who had impeccable taste in music. So much for the steel drums song. Ugh.