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I think there are very good songs, but the way we discover and listen to good songs has changed. The entire music industry has been turned on its head. Basically the only thing I can hear on radio where I live is crap. There are very few independent radio stations anymore and none near me. The vast majority are own by several large companies. They employ program directors for each genre of music their stations play. Individual stations don’t have their own program directors. There really is zero competition and what you here is determined by a very select few. I don’t even listen to radio anymore. For me, radio died when Rush Limbaugh died.

Now I use Spotify. I mostly listen to full albums - just like when I was a kid. The only thing that’s missing are album liner notes and album art. I also have made my own play lists. When I hear about new artists I search for them and check them out. There lies a big difference than in the past. It used to be when listening to the radio, the local program director would work in new songs and you would passively hear the new songs - multiple times, whether you liked or not. Sometimes a song would grow on you, and others. Eventually it would get more air play and sometimes a song would just plain get worn out as it was frequently played on multiple stations.

Searching on Spotify is usually a single chance at success. If I don’t like a new song, I don’t listen to it again. There’s no chance a song will grow on me since I don’t play things twice that I don’t initially like. Really, that’s my problem not Spotify.

There’s another way I hear new music on Spotify. Spotify creates top 50 play lists based on songs that are similar to things I’ve already listened. I listen to one of these this afternoon and there was some really decent music on it. Some of these artists I haven’t heard of before. A couple I am going to give a second listen. That seems to somewhat similar to listening to the radio in years past, but a bit more active.