There's a different kind of softness whose implications are more troubling: the sort-of-indie/pop/folk/rock sound we've come to know as Spotify-core. As Liz Pelly wrote about Spotify's reduction of music to background noise for the workday, I expect we're gonna see the return of the appeal of "hardness" (hopefully a version less tied to straight masculinity.)
There's already somewhat of a hardcore revival, so that may be true. However, I do think the Spotifycore argument is somewhat exaggerated and chalks everything up to streaming rather than multiple factors. Though I respect Liz's research and analysis, I do think she ignores a lot of realities of pre-streaming music - i.e., that lite radio, easy listening, smooth jazz, and all kinds of other niches and formats existed and served huge publics. Spotify didn't invent background music. Playlistification has a lot of implications, but it would be a very big mistake to imagine that the previous norm was intensive close listening and connoisseurship. Studies show that most people exit their phase of highly active music fandom after their teens. In a lot of ways Spotify et al just show us how banal people's listening patterns generally are, all in one place, when previously it was invisible and everyone took themselves to be the normal kind of listener.
There's a different kind of softness whose implications are more troubling: the sort-of-indie/pop/folk/rock sound we've come to know as Spotify-core. As Liz Pelly wrote about Spotify's reduction of music to background noise for the workday, I expect we're gonna see the return of the appeal of "hardness" (hopefully a version less tied to straight masculinity.)
There's already somewhat of a hardcore revival, so that may be true. However, I do think the Spotifycore argument is somewhat exaggerated and chalks everything up to streaming rather than multiple factors. Though I respect Liz's research and analysis, I do think she ignores a lot of realities of pre-streaming music - i.e., that lite radio, easy listening, smooth jazz, and all kinds of other niches and formats existed and served huge publics. Spotify didn't invent background music. Playlistification has a lot of implications, but it would be a very big mistake to imagine that the previous norm was intensive close listening and connoisseurship. Studies show that most people exit their phase of highly active music fandom after their teens. In a lot of ways Spotify et al just show us how banal people's listening patterns generally are, all in one place, when previously it was invisible and everyone took themselves to be the normal kind of listener.