Infinite Content
Animator & filmmaker Don Hertzfeldt on the difference between crate digging & streaming from a recent interview:
Not to sound like a curmudgeon, but when I was a teenager, I took the train to go to the record store to find rare stuff. Spotify is way more convenient, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to get out and to feel like you’re hunting, to feel like you’re living your life. I’m going to the movies, I’m going to this show. What streaming has done — it’s very convenient, but it’s taken the feeling of going hunting and turned it into we’re all just being fed. We’re all farm animals that are just being fed, and we’re being fed content. You can just stay home. Just stay home. We’ll just feed it to you. No wonder everyone’s depressed.
See also surfing the web vs. *waves hands around at whatever it is we’re soaking in here*. (via @coelasquid.bsky.social)
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Another take on this subject that I enjoyed is Jason Guriel's short book "On Browsing." https://www.biblioasis.com/shop/new-releases/on-browsing/
I enjoy investing the time on what to watch - algorithms are garbage, I don't accept what they're promoting. I spend a lot of time researching and curating lists for myself - it's become a hobby almost, I guess I like the hunt.
I've used AI to suggest movies "what are some under-the-radar comedy dramas from the last 20 years? as an example.
In the early days of mp3 sharing, or file sharing in general, IRC was one of the primary sources.
It was literally crate digging. You’d connect to someone’s fserve and browse through each directory manually. Maybe you’d come across something new. Hopefully it actually was what the file name said it was, otherwise you were out 20 minutes because that’s how long it took to download one song over dial up.
I’m sure a lot of it’s nostalgia, but it was so much find discovering a some new piece of music you’d never been exposed to before.
A similar sentiment in this very thoughtful piece:
Why An Easier Life Is Not Necessarily Happier
https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/why-an-easier-life-is-not-necessarily
An excerpt: "take seriously our biological need to be challenged, or face the danger of evolving into creatures whose lives are more productive but also less satisfying."
And also in this podcast with Sam Harris, Sebastian Junger talks about how "consequence creates meaning." Not that we need to report from war zones, but doing things that present a challenge, whether it's digging through a bin for a cool album, scaling a mountain or pushing oneself on a new ski run or an intellectual pursuit of a new language or writing a book...all these things can give our lives more meaning. Ever since I heard this quote I've been thinking about it all the time.
A good life, like any good story, requires tension. We are not attracted to stories and entertainment where there is no tension, its boring. There's no need to stay tuned. In real life without tension, there is no need to get out of bed in the morning. But that is what we are doing to ourselves.
I never liked feeds and playlists for music. Rate Your Music has been my own version of crate digging for the past 15 or so years.
Also, remember Rdio? Wasn’t that little app great?
The bigger problem, I think, is re-discovery. You saved an awesome album 7 months ago and listened to it once. How on earth are you going to find it again if you have 3000+ albums saved?
I use Marvis Pro on iOS with a random list of albums. My own rediscovery feed.
Getting harder to find obscure records these days. And I say that as someone who has dug crates from Columbia to Colombia. Plus, YouTube is really where digging pans out with the good stuff - so much stuff you'll never find on Spotify or at any record store, honestly.
All these thoughtful comments and I’m just sitting here realizing I’ve been saying “Tuesdays coming, did you bring your coat?” and “my spoon is too big” quietly inside my head on a regular basis now for OVER TWENTY YEARS. Wow.
see also kurt vonnegut going to buy a single envelope
I've been primarily buying and listening to music on Bandcamp for the past few months for this very reason. Having a limited selection of mp3s that I paid for incentivizes listening and relistening, which I like.
I even re-started my ancient Soulseek account to get back into P2P sharing of music, which I agree is absolutely like digging through your friend's records - you never know what you'll find. I was surprised and happy to learn that the community there is still pretty active!
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