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Shiftheads - Does Your Music Streaming App Know Your Music Taste Better Than You?
Description
Music discovery used to depend on radio, record stores, friends or simply hearing the right song somewhere. This is a story of how your streaming service can surface a decades-old track you didn't know existed and somehow decide it belongs in your headphones.
Ryan O'Donnell's App served up Pavement's "Harness Your Hopes," a B-side that eventually eclipsed the band's original streaming hits. That raises a much stranger question: what does an algorithm actually know about why you like a song?
Maybe our tastes aren't quite as unique as we'd like to believe. But algorithms have also created a strange new path through music history, where forgotten tracks can return and younger generations can stumble into artists and songs long after their original moment passed.
Topics: Spotify recommendations, music discovery, Pavement, algorithms, older music
Originally aired on 2026-09-28