Billy Bragg did the John Peel lecture today..excellent I thought.
Twas very interesting what he had to say on the likes of itunes and spotify.
And how it doesn’t really promote new music, basically just suggest something similar.
Unlike Peel’s shows on which he would play Dutch hardcore, next to finnish heavy metal next to whimsical indie next to the Bhundu boys. You might not like it 99% of it but it was always interesting and he gave even the most outsider music airtime.
I used to make mixtapes from Peel shows, only picking the the tracks I liked. I listened back to them recently and there are fragments of tracks, peels voice, radio static of tracks I didn’t like, inbetween the tracks I recorded in full and those moments are actually more interesting.
Anyway I digress….
Most users/listeners on Spotify only listen to what they’re into in there formative years and rarely explore new music and as good as 6 music is, (freak zone, mark radcliffe, tom ravenscroft less so) it’s all still genre programming.