Introducing the Categories
Through the categories I am trying to meet people's listening behaviour, as I have observed different habits in how people are willing to approach new music: Some people are really open into new sounds and like to explore new bands and artists, some prefer the more “convenient” way in putting on someone’s playlist which could meet their taste while others tend to listen to a few tracks over and over again. The categories “engaging with new sounds”, “being on the safe Side”, “brief inspiration”, and “playlists” will all cover these different forms of listening behaviours. I would declare electronic music as my speciality and the genre I'm most versed in, thus “a deeper dive into electronic music” will offer the possibility of discovering a diverse range of gems that electronic music provides. Lastly the category “German sounds”, as the name suggests, will only include music by German artists, thus these reviews will be written in German.
However, my main issue and a decisive reason why I review music is because I have observed the following: Through a lot of conversations with friends it has become extremely apparent, that most of them are overwhelmed with the immense access audio streaming services provide, thus they normally cannot be bothered or do not have the time and energy to properly search for new music without any references. So, they end up in the most common way by browsing through Spotify's’ generated playlists. This development almost scares me, as users merely register what they listen to and algorithms choose what they listen to next. Artists can pay Spotify money to get included into algorithms or playlists, so only big artists and labels are able to afford this “pay-to-play-method”, which makes it difficult for small, independent artists and labels to build up a bigger audience. Us, the ones who consume the music, are not actively in control in what we listen to. The more we listen to music picked by algorithms, the harder it will be to discover something genuinely new while maintaining musical diversity.
I want to make a mark and take an active stance against this development by making small difference through my blog, giving people the possibility to receive music by someone who is very keen to be well informed, careful and critical.
