over the last several years I have undertaken a personal mission to further expand and update my listening habits, why use the Internet to just listen to the same music I listened to on CD’s 20-30 years ago? but that comes with a notoriously difficult foe, the algorithm. any time spent scrolling social media will likely reveal at least one person complaining about the algorithm, regardless of the music service they use, only showing them the same songs and artists. especially if an artist is in the middle of a particularly big media run, think Sabrina Carpenter’s ‘Espresso’ over the summer. I spent some time considering that dilemma, even went as far as considering deleting my Spotify account and making a new one in order to start fresh but decided that that would make it even harder to break out of mainstream algorithms.
the solution came to me as I was doing what I usually do every evening, mindlessly scrolling TikTok while I try to wind my brain down enough that I can attempt a couple hours of sleep: in their early days, I used YouTube and Myspace to find new artists all over the world, why couldn’t I do the same? my TikTok algorithm was already regularly showing me smaller artists, I could use those as a starting point for retraining my Spotify algorithm. thus the mission began, creating a playlist where I would just blindly throw the entire discographies of any artist I was unfamiliar with but dug whatever snippet of performance I would see on my FYP. the next step was shuffling these algorithms and just letting it flow, as you’d expect this led to some serious sonic dissonance depending on how the ~1600 songs played out. there were times where Leanna Firestone would be followed by DAMAG3, after whom there was no telling whether or not it would be Ashnikko or Tyler Childers. this playlist also produced my 2023 Spotify Wrap top artist, the wonderful xana.
for a while this approach worked, to some extent I had overwhelmed the algorithm by brute force and was starting to get exciting new recommendations for artists similar to these new discoveries. but predictably, at a certain point the new recommendations started to trickle down, the algorithm was locking in around these new artists. which meant I had to begin anew, another 1600+ playlist with a new set of artists. artists like Polyphia, RAYE, and most importantly my 2024 top artist Chappell Roan. this is mostly not a brag, but I knew her before she blew up. in fact, at one point I went back through my YouTube favorites and discovered that I had actually favorited one of her videos in 2017. looking at the 2025 Grammy New Artist category, the TikTok approach caught seven of the eight acts before they had fully made it onto the big stage (apologies to Khruangbin, I’m not familiar with your game yet).
okay, so that is what I have been up to in the music consumption realm, what does that have to do with what I’m doing here? well to be perfectly honest, I just needed a place to yap about music. I love both consuming and discovering music but frequently don’t have a place to express that, I have also been pining for some kind of creative outlet. for years that outlet was streaming Magic: The Gathering with my friends (yes, the nerdy obsessiveness extends to many areas outside of music) but when I went back to school I couldn’t handle the demands of juggling work, school, AND streaming. taking that step back was necessary and worked, but it also left me isolated and without an outlet to ventilate all of the passions I have storming around in my head. then two extremely events happened that directly led to me here, typing this out while trying to not start brainstorming the next post until this is finished. first, I got a new research assistant position at my school which meant that I could leave my high demand food service job. that freed up both time and more importantly, energy. the opportunities are endless, how will I use this new capacity?! then I saw my friend Cal post about a new series he was working on: writing about his favorite 100 songs, 10 songs at a time. (its great, if you only have time to read one substack yapping about music, go read his)
now we’ve got the energy and the inspiration, but what does it look like? the thought of trying to confine myself to 100 songs gave me the kind of decision paralysis that almost killed this project before it even began. but then I realized I don’t have to have that kind of limitation because realistically this is just for fun, I haven’t even decided if or when I’ll even let people know about this. so for now, the plan is simply to yap about music that I love! sometimes it’ll be a new artist, other times it’ll be a specific song that’s nostalgic, there might even be times where its a particular playlist I’ve found or curated. (if I’m especially inspired it might even be about a book or a show, there are no rules!)
so if you’ve made it this far, hope you stick around.
love,
Claybee