FUTr

I live in America and I think about the future as a hobby - work in progress

[future-spotting]

Inflation made this deal less catchy

[future-spotting]

This is a photo of one of the last record stores on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, MA. Weirdo Records closed its doors on May 21, 2015, leaving Cheapo Records in Central Square the only record store I pass on my long walk to work. We all know this is happening, and I am too young to have owned any records, but I can’t help but feel sad as I watch history disappear before my eyes. I know, I know, vinyl sales have been up in the past few years, but that seems like a strange, desperate trend more than a significant signifier of the future of music sales. All of the music I own and all of the music I don’t own is kept online as little bits of information. I like scrolling through my albums and seeing all of the artists I love, but I imagine that having a physical collection in my home would be a greater pleasure to look through, and I imagine how much fun it must have been to walk into someone’s house and automatically find their record collection. I like the idea of judging people based on how many and which records they own. I’m a music elitist. It just seems really fun for a music elitist. On the other hand, I like spending almost no money on owning music. What are your opinions?

[future-spotting]

RIP Songza!! Songza was a free music streaming service that launched in 2007 and was discontinued on January 31, 2016. Songza was my very favorite streaming service because of the specificity and creativity it allowed you to use in searching for music. Rather than searching for songs, you could browse activities, genres, moods, and decades. The concierge feature suggested activities that you might want music for based on the day of the week and time of day. It was the perfect search engine for “I know what KIND of music I want to listen to, but I don’t know exactly what song I want.” It emphasized music’s functional purpose as a tool that can be used to enhance activities and change or sustain moods. It intertwined music with daily activities and emphasized the importance of choosing the right music for your mood. It was acquired by Google Play Music, which has a much uglier interface and the content and curation quality of the playlists has gone down. Songza was the perfect tool for music discovery. I have yet to find an alternative. Suggestions? 

Playlists I Deeply Miss:

Cool New Music Fall 2016 - This series of playlists, one released each season, showcased the best of upcoming new artists, and it’s where I found some of my favorite songs. 

Sleepytime Indie - I’d start listening to these an hour before going to sleep, and they’d calm my mind and making it a lot easier to fall asleep.

Classical for Studying - Beautiful, cerebral, mellow, structural classical pieces that I would listen to as I was preparing to focus. There was a length of time where I followed a strict rule that I couldn’t listen to any music at the library EXCEPT for this playlist. And I went to the library a lot.

Associating a set of songs with certain moods or activities, and making them a routine part of those activities, can really help focus the mind and prime it to do what you need it to do at that moment! Sleeping and studying are the two things that require the most discipline for me to begin doing, but as soon as I heard the music that I associated with those activities, sleeping or studying became something that felt easy and natural to do. This principle could be applied to other activities too, like exercising or even just getting out of bed in the morning. 

What is your favorite use for playlists?