Are We All Developing the Same Taste?

As this year’s festival season begins to wind down, a particular memory keeps replaying in my mind. At Glastonbury, I found myself standing by the bins at the back of the West Holts field. Thousands and thousands of people were ahead of me, all straining to see and hear the three tiny figures of the Sugababes on a distant stage. After some time, I turned to my partner and asked if we should leave. She suggested we wait until they play “Overload,” only for me to realize they were already performing it. We stuck it out a bit longer but eventually gave up.

Overcrowding became a recurring issue. Access to the enormous Other Stage was restricted during Avril Lavigne’s set. Without early arrival, there was no chance of seeing Barry Can’t Swim. Bicep had to pause their set due to safety concerns. Resident Advisor’s Gabriel Szatan, in a thoughtful piece, observed that crowd-control issues hinted that the festival had lost touch with electronic music’s ascendancy among its current attendees, suggesting a misalignment of acts, stages, and times.

This may be true, yet what if we looked at it differently? Think of those aerial shots capturing 200,000 people scattered across 600 hectares of land for the weekend. Now imagine them as a heatmap of taste. With over 100 stages at Glastonbury, some areas were packed while others remained sparse. More than ever, it felt like everyone wanted to see the same things. Could it be that we were all being guided by an invisible hand towards the same likes and dislikes? Has taste shifted from nuanced distinctions to a nudge towards uniformity?

Another example of audiences coalescing around a single musical figure is Taylor Swift. Her global Eras tour, now in its European leg, has become the highest-grossing tour ever, expected to generate $2bn. Concerts have not only broken attendance records but have even measured seismic activity. Both in Seattle and Edinburgh, the ground literally shook. While not everyone listens to Taylor Swift, her massive profits and impactful concerts suggest that many do.

Her most recent album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” was streamed a billion times on Spotify in its first week, setting another record. While Swift’s megastar status affords her independence from playlists, they still have a reinforcing effect. Algorithms have fundamentally altered our listening habits since Spotify launched 16 years ago, now boasting 615 million global users.

The music industry has adapted, albeit reluctantly. In 2014, the Official Charts Company began incorporating streams into its hit compilations. This has resulted in a peculiar portrait of contemporary taste. Alongside five Taylor Swift entries, the top 20 bestselling albums of 2023 include hits from Fleetwood Mac, Eminem, Abba, and Oasis—echoing the tastes of our parents or grandparents. Streaming was supposed to eliminate traditional gatekeepers like music journalists and radio DJs. Many speculated that genres might completely disintegrate. While pop, rap, and country have indeed become fluid, we’re oddly witnessing a more uniform musical landscape, driven by algorithmic feedback loops. As the ambitious student Milo in Andrew O’Hagan’s novel “Caledonian Road” states, “Spotify tells you what to listen to.” His advice? “Say no to algorithmically generated playlists.”

The platforms delivering our entertainment aim to provide more of the same. If a streaming service learns you like sad songs about rivers, it will offer more of those. TV suffers the same fate. As soon as I showed a mild interest in sports documentaries on Netflix, it began suggesting ones on tennis, cycling, and sprinting. In this way, we all may end up on the perimeters of a field in Somerset, yearning to see Mutya, Keisha, and Siobhán sing “Push the Button.”

Glastonbury’s aftermath saw the Sugababes release a limited edition T-shirt reading “West Holts full. Seek alternatives,” echoing the real-time signs near their stage. While it was clever marketing, it carries a deeper, unintended message: actively seeking alternatives is crucial to a less homogenized culture. The “dumbphone” movement, where people seek to reclaim control from sophisticated devices trapping them in screentime, might be early signs of rebellion. Less time distracted by apps means undermining algorithms shaping our collective taste. By recognizing how much we are told what to like, we might push ourselves towards deciding what we truly enjoy, thereby broadening our tastes. When the field is full, seek alternatives.

Source: The Guardian