Is it just me, or…?

Is it just me, or have algorithms completely destroyed the music listening experience? I like Spotify, but everything I hear is just mush now. Same is true for internet radio stations like SiriusXM and the native ones offered by Sonos. Listen for a few hours or a few days, and you know what you’ll hear again and again and again and again for the next week or month or year. It’s exhausting and depressing. Music isn’t supposed to be like this, something cheap and meaningless…

I’ve been getting back into CDs and honestly loving it. Having a physical object again makes the experience something else entirely. Almost reverential. It feels right again. I listen to one album over and over, but its my choice. And then I go out and watch YouTube videos about the artist and the album, and it becomes this living, vibrant thing. Maybe I could do that with Spotify (and have, I guess, on occasion), but the feeling just isn’t the same. This feels real again.