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I believe in ghosts.
When I was young, I refused to sleep unless I was sure my parents were near me for fear that a ghost would sweep me up and take me off. I often stayed wide awake through the early morning until I was positive that they were a simple screams-distance away.
My fear and worry over haunting spirits has dissipated with time. Now, the main ghosts I contend with are unfortunate memories and sometimes people, who make their spectral return to my life at certain, ominous moments.
But a sense of haunting also follows me digitally. Algorithms, with their looming watchfulness notice what we do, what we search, what we listen to, and like phantoms, make themselves known in symbols and markings. A suggested ad. A recommended account to follow. A newly overwhelming barrage of a certain type of content suddenly haunts my TikTok feed. These ghostly signs can range from the silent and subtle, to the crude and crass. Sometimes ghosts misplace your pen, but other times they squeal throughout your hallways.
On the spectrum of subtlety to abject obviousness, Spotify’s musical recommendations lean towards the latter. Their recommendations for me are often laughably ham handed and basic. Basic, not in the sense that I’m getting the same Calvin-Harris, major-pop hits that I expect everyone is also getting, but in the sense that I am getting what is the most obvious, crude sorts of recommendations for someone of my demographic: 22, gay, boy, big city, etc. I doubt fathers in their 40’s are being recommended the “Etheral” or “hyperpop” playlist as much as I am. And my daily mixes are assemblages of pop girls and techno. And yes, these are genres and vibes of which I engage, but they are also the most stereotypical recommendations for someone like me. Like yes, but . . . I contain multitudes???
No sign of the algorithm’s haunting is more obvious, blood-on-the-walls, glass-shattering than Spotify’s autoplay though. Different from direct recommendations, autoplay functions as a model of what the algorithm expects you to want to listen to when you no longer are in control of what is playing. Once the album you’ve put on is done, Spotify keeps the vibes vibing by queuing up something they expect you want to hear.
There’s a kink in their system though. At least for me. My auto-play suggestions are suspiciously consistent. Actually, consistent is too generous a word. On my Spotify, the algorithm is playing the same song every singe time it reverts to autoplay. Like no matter what I’m playing, it haunts me.
That song it plays, I hate to say, is “Bunny Is A Rider” by Caroline Polachek. I hate to say it because I do love this song. But Bunny is a Haunting me!
No matter if I’m playing Beyonce, or Frank Ocean, or two shell, or Kendrick, or Charli, or Phoebe Bridgers, I swear to God . . Spotify queues “Bunny is A Rider” without fail. It’s a problem I find maddeningly specific.
Damon Krukowski, of the band Galaxie500 and one of our great chroniclers of streaming culture’s injustice and malaise, wrote an insightful piece exploring the nature of Spotify’s crude autoplay system. Krukowski noticed that his bands song “Strange” was getting considerably more plays than other songs from Galaxie500’s catalog. There was no particular reason why this song should so clearly outperform the band’s other songs, so after some conversation with folks at Spotify, he learned that the reason was because “the algorithm aims to select music that matches in some manner the music that just finished playing. How it makes that match is a trade secret. But the simple goal is a resemblance – a familiarity - to whatever the user had initially chosen to hear.” It’s that sort of cold, analytical surveillance of music that has led to other streaming hits from days past, such as Pavement’s B-Side track “Harness Your Hope” netting over 50 million more streams on Spotify than even their most beloved tracks. In essence, music that shares a resemblance to popular sonics, is boosted in Spotify’s eco-system.
So surely, an element of familiarity is at work with my haunting. “Bunny Is A Rider” is nearly a parody of contemporary pop form. The lyrics are nonsensical and exist more to represent the rhythmic, phonetic candy that is major pop. It’s almost like Cocteau Twins for the streaming age. The music itself is an assemblage of modern pop styles as well; it’s underscored by an off-kilter funk bass line, tethered by a whistling lead melody, and the drama is brought by a sweeping chord progression that rises at optimized, almost lab-perfected moments. It’s a musical pu pu platter.
In this sense, I can see how the dumb code can see similarities in everything from the more experimental end of my electronic music listening, to the sonics of my pop and hip hop go-to’s. But this only explains half of why this song is so stubborn in my feed.
Spotify’s algorithm functions off an analysis of musical data, but it also engages with how music fans react to certain songs — what they like, skip, and add to playlists. It also has an attenuation to each of us as individuals. “Bunny Is A Rider” seems to speak to all pillars of their recommendations when it comes to the business of Tobias. It’s a genre-bending anthem that traverses through all the sorts of sounds I like. It’s likable and an easy song to listen to and probably has a relatively low skip-rate, and thus is favored in their system. And demographically, Polachek and her brand of pop experimentation, notably appeals to those of my . . . ilk. Just take my word for it. Gay boys really like her. And as such, the algorithm has set its sights on me and decided to recommend this song by her every chance it can.
Did I break the algorithm? Maybe in a way I did, because Spotify surely does not intend to recommend users the same song ad infinitum. But more than break it, I think I revealed its ghostly markings. Made it dumb enough to reveal itself in its crude and demeaning gaze.
“Gay boy . . . listen to this!” it squeals at me in it’s shrill and wretched voice. Too bad that ghosts usually thrive in subtle secrecy. And when they make themselves too obviously known, those that share spaces with them tend to light some sage and rest. Be gone cruel spirit!!!!!!!
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