Shuffle

Unlike many of my peers I store my music in an iTunes library. 2,000 songs across all different genres representing most periods of my life. I’ve tried a couple of times to switch to Spotify or another cloud service, but never found them compelling enough to switch. So instead I have physical mp3 files sitting around on my hard-drive.

I only have a couple of playlists, so the vast majority of these songs are sitting in a blob together. Occassionally I look up a specific artist or song, but my default listing mode tends to be stabbing the shuffle button and seeing what comes up.

I’ll lean back and listen to a middle school era angsty rock song next to a pop anthem next to a Jack Johnson song. Discongruous for sure. But I frequently don’t even realize that the song has changed if I’m plugging away at some work.

I will immediately notice song changes though if I’m listening to Pandora radio station. The songs will all be much more homogenous, at least musically. But the fresh songs stand out by virtue of their newness, the boundary between songs a sharp shiny edge rather than a well-worn slope. Familiarity certainly breeds its own comfort, no matter how odd it may seem from the outside.