In episode #5 – POWER of “Ways of Hearing”, Damon Krukowski states at the beginning of the episode, “the marginal-the rejected-the repressed- is whatever the powerful have decided if of no use at the moment”. He goes on to ask “But might it might not be a key to alternate approaches to art, to society-to power itself?” What I believe Damon Krukowski is trying to say is that the powerful companies that we have today like Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, etc have all the power to what you listen to based off algorithms. Those mainstream platforms have the power to what’s relevant and irrelevant based on the weekly listeners on that genre or song, which closes the opportunity to many options that you do not know of because they aren’t high in numbers according to the company. These companies decide what music genre or songs are old, no longer viable, and are not to be recommended to you which gives them control over what you listen to and closes opportunities to new genres of music that you may enjoy or songs you may enjoy listening to. It may recommend music to which society finds fit at the time. Nowadays you go to the top songs in the United States and it is just music that society is mainstreaming at the time, most of that music is just rap which is what the younger audience is listening to, there isn’t much variety and you don’t have control over this because it’s based on the companies interests and society’s interests. Damon Krukowski mentions that it is not like before when you could walk into a record store and you would enter a whole new world. He mentions that you would have to explore and would decide on which record you would like to listen to. You would be able to communicate with others in the store and hear their recommendations on what to listen to. This made people more social and would open many new genres and music possibilities for you to listen to. The generation we live in now is not the same as it was years ago when we had record stores. In my opinion either or is suitable based on the person and their interests. Now we can listen to all kinds of music with just a click of a button on our phones. Even though many of these companies have control over what is relevant and irrelevant I believe that having the option to listen to music on our phones with just the click of a button is not a bad thing. Technology will advance every year, and it can either be a good thing or a bad thing, but as technology advances things are easier to access just like music has. Music indicates between the powerful and the marginalized by the companies that are powerful deciding what is the right song for you based on an algorithm instead of going to a record store and choosing which song you may like based on recommendations of the people around you and your decisions.

In the Damon Krukowski “Power” episode, he discusses about the relationship between music and its consumers in the digital era. Back in the day, music wasn’t accessible like how it is currently. Starting off, going to the record store and buying music was the only way you can attain your favorite tunes, but with that in itself, that was an experience. you would go in and see a variety of art displayed everywhere, art you haven’t seen before. You were exposed to many different genres, songs, and artistry from all over the world. Comparing it to today, now things are way more efficient and simplified. With the expansion of big streaming music platforms, music that you enjoy is accessible at your fingertips whenever you want it. In these streaming services, you can search and listen to songs under a minute and be provided recommendations of other artists you may like in that category. The digital world discovered a new method in making the bond with art convenient for us, but the connection to the art has devalued since then. How we approach art now is very different from way back then. It’s a big world out there and there’s things beyond than a search engine.

I think it is pretty interesting to get to know someone else’s point of view of music and how it’s changed. In this case, Damon Krukowski compares how music was way much hard to hear and having to wait a period of time for you to hear about an artist or what new album they were coming out with. Compare to how music now in 2020, we are getting connected to music apps that we all use now. Now music apps get to have our info, billing info, and getting charge monthly, and before, we only bought a cd and listen to that music until we thought it was time for a new one. He says now we don’t hear new music or talented artists since were stuck listening to the same theme and the recommendations we get from the apps or google. He is right. In my opinion, some of us are stuck in just a few artists and don’t explore anything else. We are also paying more and most likely selling our info to these companies.

According to the podcast episode “Power” Damon Krukowski argues that the marginal rejected the repressed because of how easily we can listen to music with a simple touch from our phones when before there was a specific store we all went to get our favorite records or CDs. What I believe Krukowski is attempting to say is the way the huge companies have control over us; they gather all the data from our most liked music, to which songs we play the most, to even which ones we are most likely to skip. Companies get the benefit of us by gathering this information and give us more recommendations that can be near the sort of music we may like. All things considered, he called attention to how excellent the record shops were with so much information in just one store.

As Damon Krukowski stated the quote, he is arguing that nowadays even our approaches to art such as music are being controlled by the media, and we may not be able to reach a music or artists that are beautiful and talented just because they are not sponsored. In the beginning of the “Power” episode, Krukowski told that he sometimes visit record stores not to find the music he wants but to find musics he hasn’t yet discovered. He can also meet variety of people with different taste in music and therefore you can get more knowledge of music as well as the relationships with people. By using online to purchase or search music, we are unlikely to meet new taste of music because the internet will observe and analyze your searches or purchases and give recommendations based on those informations. Internet does all the searches for you and therefore we are unable to determine whether the music fits for our taste.

Damon Krukowski’s “Power” episode explores the effects of digital distribution of art and how it affects our choice/selection of music. He elaborates on this idea by describing the function of the algorithms used by massive streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music. These algorithms are designed to maximize usage of their services. The algorithms goal is to keep consumer retention through creating custom generated playlists based on AI interpretation of the music they listen to. After all, alienating your consumers music taste doesn’t live up to the new modern paradigm of tailored consumer experience. In a system that rewards sameness, powerful and exciting music that you would otherwise never hear, become marginalized as its punished for not matching up with your tailored experience. Therefore permanently held outside our view of the millions of songs already competing for our attention. Powerful corporations have such a handle on our consumption of music, that it’s difficult to exploit the enormous power and value in marginalized music. We miss opportunities to challenge our music taste and inherently prohibit the discovery of some of the best music the world has to offer.

Another take on the influence of streaming services, are who the algorithm uplifts. Musicians with access to better financial and/or circumstantial opportunities will have an advantage in “beating” the algorithm and achieving some form of success on these platforms. This inevitably means that musicians of underprivileged backgrounds never have their art – their truths heard and spoken to the masses, forever lost in the others millions of song that’ll never be heard in the mainstream.