Towards the end of last year I read Kyle Chayka’s Filtwrworld and since then I’ve had the theme of curation stuck in the back of my head.

Basically everything on the Internet has turned into a “feed” over the last decade or so. And every major feed has algorithms applied to inject more ads and optimize for “engagement”.

After reflecting on it for a bit I decided to try and cut out as many algorithmic feeds as possible. it got me back into RSS rather than using Google News. I never really used Facebook or Twitter but did start to use Mastodon which just uses a chronological feed of everything you follow. Movies, series and books I already primarily got through recommendations from friends and family.

The one place I really haven’t been able to get rid of the algorithms is music. Most of my listening is done while I work and is just background noise rather than intentional listening. It seems like this is one of the primary ways people are consuming music from streaming services. Chayka describes how this is leading to a homogenization of the content created and recommended.

To combat this trend in my own listening I’ve moved to try and listen to more records. I got out an old player and speakers I picked up secondhand back in college.

The process of listening to a record is very deliberate and intentional. Listening to a whole album is how (presumably) the artists intended it to be consumed. I’m not sure the word but maybe it feels more authentic when listening this way?

There is also the added benefit of physically owning the media rather than renting it. But that’s a whole other topic.

One thing I am missing that I’ve been looking for is a good place to find human curated recommendations for music. A lot of what I’ve been able to find is largely fans of a band or genre just pushing that and not really putting the time into critically thinking about the different aspects of the content and how it relates to other works that someone may find interesting.

One bright spot of human vs algorithmic curation has been blogrolls. A curated lost of what people I find interesting find interesting has been a great resource at filling my RSS feeds with great content.

So I’ll continue my push this year to remove algorithmic feeds and focus on finding sources of human curation.