I’ve continued to build on my “Christina’s Highlight’s 2024” playlist since my last post. Yet several times this fall when music was playing in the background while I worked, a seemingly unfamiliar song would disrupt my focus. I’d turn to my phone and scroll through Spotify looking for the title highlighted in green. But there was none. Like any librarian, that led me to the random wisdom of the Internet, where a targeted search showed that hundreds of Threads and Reddit users shared my frustration.

Vindication. Except, is it?

I know that I’m typically solidly in the “majority” camp for adopting new technology, so I try to step back and ask myself if I don’t like something because it’s new or if I don’t like something because I actually don’t like it. Or, perhaps, semantics.

To me, a playlist is a personal creation. Radio/Stations are where I want to be introduced to new music in keeping with a genre or theme. I’ve spent hundreds of hours on curation for my personal playlists; it’s not where I’m looking to meet new music. But so many words have changed over time. Technology makes it easier than ever for meanings to morph and spread and morph again.

The AI Overview, however, agrees with me that playlists are human-created and radio stations are driven by algorithms. Not that I exactly trust the Overviews for accuracy, but I do tend to note when responses match what I already believe.

This leads me to my bigger takeaway about how the information landscape has changed since I graduated from library school, back when people were already asking about the value of the degree when information had become so much more readily available.  

Theoretically, there is a world of music within arm’s reach most of my waking hours. In practice, I’ve just gone deeper into the same genres I’ve been listening to since Middle School. Ironically, most of the music that’s intrigued me outside of those genres in recent months has been discovered through the radio. The Radio radio. Shaboozey, anyone?

Even when the radio is on in the car, for most stations I can now see the artist and title as songs play. I can’t be the only one who remembers a childhood of waiting through commercial breaks for DJs to announce a new artist or title? Perhaps this is why I am so much better at music trivia or games like Podquiz now- with the visual representation of what I’m hearing constantly reflected on my screen. But there’s also still so much I don’t remember. That I don’t know. Or that I didn’t even realize I didn’t know. Simply having information available doesn’t mean we access it or that we can remember it elsewhere. I feel like there is a never-ending promise from technology companies that improved access to information will improve human quality of life. Frankly, sometimes that’s overwhelming. That’s why it can be easier to retreat to the playlists we know, the ones created by our labor, the ones that don’t distract us while humming away in the background. But there is something to the serendipity of the radio/station – the opportunity to discover something we didn’t know we’d like but that has been curated for us by an outside source, whether it’s a librarian or an algorithm. Just not through Smart Shuffle on my playlists.