The philosophy of tracking music

Or how I spend too much time wondering why I log my vinyl listening

Here’s a question: if you have a record player, do you play the same album digitally while you listen? So the songs are tracked on Last.fm or Spotify Wrapped?

I do, and have done for some time.

I’d never given it much thought, but then I saw someone on Twitter declaring it bizarre behaviour and I leapt into action.

And, by leapt, I mean sat down and wondered “why?”

The surface rationale for the behaviour is simple: I want to track the music I’m listening to. I feel an overwhelming urge to dungbeetle the data I’ve been hoarding since 2006.

Making sure records are included too makes this picture more complete. Easy.

Author, pictured.

I’d guess the second reason we track music is performative.

Let’s be honest, it’s naive to think that logging your listening data is only for solo consumption. Much like how consistent diary writers have half-an-eye on a future reader, I have the subconscious hope that someone, someday praises me for my music taste.

“Good job, lad,” they’d say, resting a warm hand on my shoulder after pouring through my Last.fm, “you really do listen to some great stuff.”

Then we have the third reason many of us track our music: society.

Specifically, the control society.

And if you think that sounds wanky, prepare yourself for what’s coming next.

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While I was thinking about tracking music, I was reminded of Michael Foucault’s ideas about power.

Yes, we’re going seriously off-piste.

Without getting suffocated under too much bullshit, the theories we’re interested in are two-fold.

The first is that knowledge and power are intertwined. Power is based on knowledge. Yet power also shapes knowledge.

The second theory is that the environments we live in are used to express power.

Think of a gym.

It’s open plan. The space is brightly lit. There are windows and mirrors everywhere. It’s set up to make you feel observed. There are norms in play that you adhere to. A hidden knowledge. You dress a certain way, you exercise with a certain intensity. Those are the rules.

In other words, the location expresses power over your behaviour.

Now, according to an excellent paper by Jukka Vuorinen and Harley Bergroth, Foucault’s vision of power was based on discipline society.

A discipline society exerts power through institutions, like schools, military barracks, factories, and hospitals.

Yet this no longer describes the world we live in.

Wish I could hear what Foucault thought about having his head pasted onto a Transformer. Probably something insufferable.

The Vuorinen and Bergroth paper contends that as our world becomes “increasingly data-driven,” the discipline society is being “replaced by what [Gilles Deleuze] calls the control society.”

As Deleuze posits, a control society is one where “power is aimed at itself by the self.” We police ourselves, in other words.

A discipline society exudes its power by unification, but a control society is about coercion.

If we think of it in terms of schools, a discipline society tells children there’s only one way to learn and forces them to. A control society says there are eight different types of learners, pick one.

Of course, we’re unique and multifaceted. None of us learns in a single way, but this approach neatly categorises us. It’s a set of prescribed classes we’re allowed to operate in.

Another way of looking at it is as algorithmisation. If that wasn’t a word before? It sure is now.

Anyway, a key feature of control societies is how they split the self — and algorithms do the same.

We’re not people. We’re a group of categories: our age, likes, location, and so forth. Our entire selves have been split into individual features.

There’s the illusion of freedom, that we can be what we want, but we’re ultimately inserted into a set number of structures we have no say in creating.

Now’s the time to loop this back into music tracking. Trust me, I’m gonna manage it.

“What’s the deal with algorithms? What’s Al Gore got to do with it? And believe me, I’ve seen him dance, he ain’t got no rhythm.”

Data is knowledge. Knowledge is power.

Logging listens — and really any sort of personal data tracking — is a reflection of the control society we live in.

We are exerting power on ourselves.

Whether it’s counting steps, calories, or the movies we’ve watched, we’re encouraged to break ourselves down into trackable chunks.

When it comes to music, we forgo the undefinable pleasure of listening in order to subjugate ourselves to the crudeness of experiencing it via spreadsheet.

Tracking our own data has reduced us. We are no longer whole. Our selves have been split so we’re easier to sell to. We aren’t individuals, we’re market segments.

We’re victims of algorithmisation.

Concerned? I wouldn’t be. I mean, who has the time?

Plus, I really like tracking the music I listen to. And I will continue to do it — especially when I play records.

Makes you think, though.