In 2015 Spotify's Daniel Ek said that he wanted Spotify to
'be the soundtrack of your life'. Undoubtedly, Spotify and other streaming services are achieving that but the utopian vision is more prosaic in practice. Less 'that was the best day of the summer' and more 'put on some tunes while I cook'. It is a soundtrack, but less the soundtrack to a blockbuster movie and instead more like the soundtrack to daytime TV. Music has become sonic wallpaper that is a constant backdrop to our daily mundanity. (Though the pandemic, the climate crisis and stagnant labour markets can make even the mundane look aspirational for many).
Like it or loathe it, this sound tracking dynamic is likely to play a key role in what the future of music consumption looks like. But it is not all sonic dystopias; personalisation, algorithms, user data and programming also have the potential to reinvigorate music passion. Here are two key ways in which Spotify and other streaming services could transform music listening ten years from now:
- Dynamic and biometric personalisation: The current recommendation arms race works from a comparatively small dataset, focused on users' music preferences and behaviour. The next battle front will be the listener's entire life. Any individual user can appear to be a dramatically different music listener depending on the context of their listening. Even the same time of day can have very different permutations; for example, looking for chilled sounds at 7pm after a manic Monday but banging beats at the same time on a Friday. If streaming services could harvest data from personal devices and the social graph, elements such as heart rate, location, activity, facial expression and sentiment could all be used to create a music feed that dynamically responds to the individual. Instead of having to actively seek out a workout or study playlist, the music feed would automatically tweak the music to the listener's behaviour and habits. The faster the run, the more up-tempo the music; the later in the evening, the more chilled (unless it's 9pm and you're getting ready for a big night out). Selecting mood and activity-based playlists will look incredibly mechanical in this world. Think of it like the change from manual gear change to automatic in cars.