Confessions of a Playlist Editor: In The Flash Of Two Worlds

If you?want to know what's going on with music you need to spend time listening to a 15 year old.? ?

Not only is that difficult, not correct or even possible for many, but I'm fortunate that I love and am a Dad to one.

Regardless of my observations here, I'll allow that I could be biased because she hangs the moon, but I've tried to a fault to just report what I hear from her.

My daughter is not an 'industry nepo baby'.?

I've taken great pains to make sure she?doesn't wear a lanyard around her neck or even raid my music collection.?

Quite the opposite has been in play and not even that I have had any concern.

I have thousands of dusty CDs in the attic.??

We never go up there.??

I don't miss them either.?

Everything has been at my fingertips on streaming for over a decade and 1/2.?

For some odd reason, the MUSIC itself is where I get to sit.??

I'll grant you that I did?love?the endless hours of my early teen years chasing bands, going to record stores, reading liner notes, crate digging at garage sales.?

That was then.

Strangely enough, being in music for my living for?30 years, I don't find that I even have a willing audience in my home that can relate or even cares very much about this sort of nostalgia and that's ok. (?)

My teen daughter has not rummaged through this collection.? Again, it's the attic.??

But here's the thing:? She sees vinyl all the time here at the house and a record player.?

She Curious?? Nope.??

She has not taken on my love/hate of The Replacements or buys into an engaged discussion of how Gang Starr is underrated.. etc.

But she LOVES music.?

She's getting to it with an experience on a different earth.??

Earth-Two.? ?Flash, Issue #123. iykyk

Here's some observations of her and her peers and what they are talking about.? Teen girl, suburbia, etc.

She's been platformed.??Completely and heavily compartmentalized.

What I mean is that each of the streaming social and entertainment apps have been perfectly amazing at delivering on the advertised expectation but are not 'the one killer app that does it all"

Spotify is radio (to me) to her in the morning.? She's made her own playlists or dives into Daily Mix on Spotify, but it's usually her favs.? ?

Since she made it, she doesn't change it and?only occasionally adds things.? It's expected to come on, be familiar and be there.

On demand.?

Sounds like my experience of listening to Z100 in NY every morning.?

Play the hits (really, HER hits), but in this case, radio songs that she chooses...personalized.

There doesn't seem to be any fascination with 'timing' of music discovery from her or her circle.

The algo drives her, and it's apparently?not surfacing new stuff from NMF.? ?

She has a high ratio of streams to listener outcomes on the stuff she knows but everything coming out of her speaker is out of time, crosses ages and genres.?

Consistently though, it's all decent.

Her favorite song right now is "No Roots" by Alice Merton...released 7 years ago.??

I hear it incessantly and like Metro Station's "Shake It' a couple of weeks back, I predict she'll burn right through Alice (unfortunately) in a few days...

I tell her there is some amazing, more recent music from Alice..she nods (kind of distant..whatever....WTF!?)

Again, she's hearing old things, as well as some new but she's not driving?to NEW.?

Weird.?

She only leans in music wise when she wants to be and that's driven by:??

YouTube Shorts and friends.??

Instagram is for checking out what people wear and what she's wearing and seeing 'experience of life' events.? Sort of like how Facebook was for me 10 years ago

She uses an Alexa as a clock, homework questions and background study music and that music is indiscriminate and that's it.?

She listens to a lot but could not tell you anything about the song, artist, etc (who is this kid???).? ?It's interesting that she doesn't use Spotify as this lean back.??

SNAP is king.?

For her. Every one of her friends and by her estimation, her entire age group.

Everything happens on SNAP but interestingly enough, she doesn't learn about music there.

She's not on TikTok (not for her....... it's for 'Everyone else")

(my wife and I breathe a sigh of relief)

I'm a bit perplexed:? Where is she learning or discovering any new music?? ?

She doesn't have the same construct of new music that we're assumed to think her age group or any age group does. (is that more about my own experience of how I discover or did?)?

She doesn't seem to care, even with access to everything new, all at once every Friday.

She doesn't buy Billboard off the stands, listens to radio other than SiriusXM's 'The Pulse' and only with us. (****BTW, Sirius would make even more money if they offered and endless, personalized bundle of only specific stations of our choosing and charged a 1-2 dollars more and we built that package like a playlist, when we wanted to..and if they do already offer this sort of 'build your own bundle' we've not seen it. For us it would be PULSE, 70s, MOSAIC, CNN and STERN. That's it)

My daughter is aware that Taylor has a new album coming.?

She says she likes Drake...(WTF 3x?)?

And the more I poured through my notes for this post, I started to feel a real, alarming, faintly nostalgic dislike for my daughter's consumption and it began to spread...

She's vanilla.?

Her tastes...She kind?of sucks.? ?

She wouldn't be someone I would have wanted in my peer group.

She would not have been the person I called from the rotary phone to come over and hear Iron Maiden's "Piece Of Mind' album that I rode 5 miles on my bike to buy on vinyl at K-Mart when at her age

She would not have been a person I gave my Depeche Mode shirt to wear.

And just before I started to reach for my Spaceman 3 vinyl to cleanse myself and get in my head and cry...

This Earth-Two my daughter is in with music is not Earth-One.??

There isn't us vs. them.? She's not the way I thought of music. The way I wore it.

But my daughter enjoys the beat, the sound, the experience of music and at least an openess of a place of discovery and like feels the same to me.

Just different.

If you as a creator have 'the beat, the sound, the experience" to offer the ears of my daughter and her peers,?

can platform accordingly, etc,?

you can build connections, reach ears and a career for music at a scale impossible for my 80s, Robert Smith soaked brain to get my head around

It's just going to be different from the olds and what they tell you or teach you.

It's way different.