The infinite jukebox and the best of Motown

We’ve been listening to this quite a bit at home lately: Motown: The Complete No. 1’s.

That’s more than twelve hours of music, from The Miracles to Erykah Badu. Some of it, particularly from the 80s, is not so great, but as you listen, you’re of course reminded of how great Stevie Wonder is. Rdio has more than 40 additional hours of Stevie for your listening pleasure. More than 30 hours of the Jackson 5. Hundreds more hours of The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, The Temptations, Commodores, Diana Ross, and on and on. And that’s just riffing off of one album in one genre. Freely choosing from an infinite buffet of choices is a completely different way of listening to music than any of us grew up with (unless you had tons of money or worked in a record store). For me, it’s been an incredible way to take advantage of Tyler Cowen’s observation that there’s way more good unheard stuff in the back catalog than there is new music…e.g. if you haven’t heard John Coltrane’s The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings, it’s likely to be better than most new music you’ll hear this year.

• music
• Rdio
• Tyler Cowen