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.

According to the “power” episode Damon Krukowski concede that “marginal, rejected-the repressed” because the the powerful entertainment companies are all  going digital and they are online. I support his views. He cites that in the audio, a book store, online music all those have many information where we can get that will be very powerful, but nobody can get easily. so, its doesn’t benefit for them.  in my point of view that he try to explain that how difference between record and spotify.  This development of technology, music are done by computer using algorithms. we all hear music which we like it, and  for entertainment depend on our situation and mood. similarly we recommended to other people those music. we never realized  that being marginalized. however, do we know power in marginalized  music? no matter what , there are many things in this world which we never notice  that for powerful for people. similarly, music has same power.

According to the “Power” episode, Damon Krukowski argues that the marginal-the rejected-the repressed might be a key to alternate approaches to art-to society-to power itself. I support his view. As he mentions in the audio, such as bookstores, google search and Apple Music and so on, these things all have a huge amount of data and a lot of things will be marginalized, because nobody can read all the books, search all information what he doesn’t know or listen all the music in the world. Apple Music want to work with the entire universe of available music and it’s employees exposed the music, but no one is listening to everything. It’s impossible and not a human task on human scale. These information are done by computers using algorithms. What’s more, with the development of technology, music is classified by round acoustic similarity in electronic products. We are always recommended some music that right for us based on our context, mood, and where we are, etc. Thus, the music that we don’t hear is like being marginalized. The music we hear that suits us is powerful to us. However, is it there no power in marginalized music? There is no doubt that they are equally powerful, they are not suitable for us, but to others they are not marginalized. All in all, there are so many things in the world that we don’t observe, whether it’s music or something else, that they are called the marginal ,the rejected and the repressed, but they are also a key approach to be power for another people.

In the ways of hearing “MONEY” episode, Damon Krukowski illustrates revolution of music industry and their power on us. According one of his guests Jimmy Johnson, finding musicians without internet and categorizing them was a hunt back in 80’s. Not only they kept every record that released in stock, but also, he and his staff listened and wrote about them. He also mentioned that sometimes finding a musician who wrote a good song takes days, months and even years. All those challenges help companies to develop a method that give them ultimate power on their customers or followers. Thanks to internet and music apps, we don’t need to spend hours to find the right music or go through the challenges they have been through. In early 20’s with development of internet, finding songs with their writers and the right radio that we love to listen got a lot easier. However, music apps had to go through some challenges about recommendation songs to their followers. In 2005, they came up with some algorithm that finds out what type of music their followers like and let them to listen the radio that includes only their type of music. Popular apps, such as Spotify, Pandora and SoundCloud used the same method in order to give better service to their followers. It didn’t take too much time for them to find out it wasn’t a quite success. Acoustic similarities can find in two totally different type of songs. For instance, if you like to listen Michael Jackson, next singer could be Sting which is completely different type of singer or if you like heavy metal song, next song could be classical music. After that, they invented a cultural recommendation method which is used by not only music companies, but also, other websites such as google, amazon and eBay. With this method, as a follower it is hard to escape from their influence. They provide us exactly what we need, nothing else. It takes having all the new experiences we could possibly have from finding a music or writer. Giving us what we only ask, makes blind not see what we are missing. This method makes me ask myself “how can we be sure of listening our favorite radio is actually our favorite radio?”. Giving us only one option makes us lose the ability of compare with other types.

In the Power episode of Ways of Hearing, Damon states that “the marginal-the rejected-the repressed-is whatever the powerful have decided is of no use at the moment.” He also asks “But might it not be a key to alternate approaches-to art, to society-to power itself?” What Damon is trying to say is that most modern entertainment industries have abandoned the old methods of distributing and listening to music. They moved to the internet and no longer rely on record stores and vinyls. Even some music genres are not as popular as they used to be. These days, companies have a lot of influence on us now that they have algorithms that keep track of what we listen to. This allows them to make recommendations in order to grab our attention. Damon describes how entering a record store felt like entering a different world because of the atmosphere they would create. The main difference here is that record stores don’t take your personal information in hopes of retaining your attention to them.

According to Damon Krukowski record stores are “The marginalized, the rejected, the repressed” because the big powerful entertainment companies are all going digital and they are all online.  Record stores and vinal music is of no benefit to them.  I think he is trying to show that the original way of listening to music is now more of an art and goes against our modern way of listening to music.  The difference between the record store and Spotify is you can learn knowledge and insight on different types of records ask questions and take someone’s personal recommendation and opinion on a certain thing whereas with Spotify you get your recommendations handed to you from a computer using an algorithm.  The difference is the powerful care more about making money and being efficient where the marginalized will take more pride in the art aspect of the music.

According to the Damon Krukowski says that “the marginal-the rejected-the repressed-is whatever the powerful have decided is of no use at the moment.” It means something that is not recognized by the public. First, he narrates the difference between the strong and the marginalized through the release of Music by Michael Jackson and Sting. Although two people have different because of the type, the way they publish is the same, people can listen to them at the same time. But in fact this social recommendation is not enough for music. Then they developed an acoustic technique to make the music sound more distinctive. They use cultural recommendations to get people to understand music in terms of what they think of music. The music is polished to great effect. He then goes on to illustrate how developers can reach out to the masses without being marginalized by describing the marketing strategies of Google, Facebook, Amazon, and apple. In addition, we are all trying not to be “the marginal” by society. But while we are adapting to the development of society, we also need to consider whether we have lost ourselves. I think those who are often ignored by us are the most real self.