Written by Jonno Seidler

There’s always going to be a point in the date where someone starts talking about music. This time, it’s the girl who turns to me and says ‘I find it really hard to know what to listen to anymore, you know. Sometimes I’m not even sure what I like.’

Of course she knows what she likes. Your ears and your history are the two best barometers of music you have and will enjoy tuning into. This isn’t going to change. What she’s talking about is a sort of lingering disassociation that I’ve also noticed more and more since I stopped owning records and began streaming them. With excess choice also comes an inability to catalogue, either physically or mentally, the tunes that move you.

If we’re really being honest, it’s nearly impossible to get excited about new albums on streaming services. They all look like bright shiny candy now, and we treat them as such. Admittedly, this could easily be the audio equivalent of " target="_blank">Domino’s customers complaining about their pizza toppings while the rest of the world burns, but if you care about music, it’s important.

In the last week alone, I listened to seven brand new records and don’t remember any of them. A few, including Tensnake, Metronomy, Real Estate and SchoolBoy Q, were ones I was really excited about. I’d made a mental note to check them out, to sit with them for a while. And I did. I cooked to Love Letters, took a long walk with Glow and replayed highlights from Oxymoron at the gym.

Still, nothing. These were releases I pressed a plus button on and will eventually join a large, faceless collection of non-entities that proclaim my cultural capital to the social world at large. When I have to compile my Top 10 for 2014, it’s going to be like playing Lumosity with my Recently Played list just to remember what I enjoyed spinning.

Somehow, the immediacy of streaming also ensures its ephemerality. I’ve listened to the Beck album ten times more than anything else released last month, because it’s physically sitting in my car. It’s also on my phone, synced to my Rdio account and downloaded onto my work computer, but in each of those sites it competes against the endless and infinite swathes of releases for a look-
in.

It’s fantastic that the entire world has come to my fingertips via Soundcloud, it really is. It’s made my work as a blogger that much easier. But it’s also ensured that I fall down a rabbit hole of remixes, edits and mixtapes of music I convince myself I like by faceless automatons who exist for the sole purpose of getting themselves an early afternoon slot on Holy Ship.

Taking a step back, if you really love music, you buy it. Thom Yorke demands as much. You go to shows. You front the cash for an ill-fitting, itchy black T-shirt that only looks good on radio hosts and style photographers. But then there’s reality. And reality dictates that convenience, cost and availability will almost always trump the right thing to do. As a music writer, there is a plethora of artists that I have an interest in, but I don’t love. But I’m worried that fewer of them will ever make that conversion the longer I am a stream-a-holic. Short of seeing them live, there is no responsibility to me as a listener. That includes remembering them.

Nobody wants to be the old man yelling at trains, least of all myself. It may just be the UX of Spotify et al. is designed more for those casual listeners of everything and anything rather than the type of guy who writes one thousand words about the textural differences you can hear across Yeezus. All-access, no-responsibility could be a very successful platform by which to sign up new subscribers, while Neil Young creates a triangular box of FLAC-level sound for those who purport to actually give a shit.

But contrary to the arguments presented by Messrs Yorke and Byrne, I do believe that you can be a music fan and a subscriber to streaming. Perhaps when this overlap reaches critical mass, we’ll find a service that provides us a happy medium.

For more musical musings check out One A Day