How music discovery became predictable

The larger universe of recorded music is easier than ever to access today. But is the experience too curated to allow for happy accidents?

- Akhil Sood

If I could, I'd pay serious money to travel 20-something years back in time to experience Nirvana's ground-breaking album, Nevermind, for the very first time again. Having borrowed a cassette from a schoolfriend, I found an opportune time to go to my parents' room and use the two-in-one music system—a "deck." This wasn't a parent-friendly record; on Smells Like Teen Spirit, the main guy, Kurt Cobain, screams about his libido repeatedly. While I'd heard one Nirvana song—Come as You Are, via a stray MP3 on someone's CD—I had little idea what was coming next: a sonic thunderstorm that would blow my teenage brain right out of my ears.

All of this today sounds like gibberish. "Two-in-one?" "Cassette?" "MP3?" In the early-to-mid-2000s, these were essential terms in the cultural lexicon. Music consumption and discovery, as with every generation prior and since, was for millennials too dictated by the prevailing technology of the time, and indeed its limitations. Only, that particular period is the most tumultuous in recent music history. It was an era of upheaval, transformation, and chaos, as the world shifted from the physical to the digital: cassettes were commonplace and affordable (a standard ₹125), but they were being phased out. CDs were a popular if rather more expensive format. These were found, neatly arranged by name and genre, in brick-and-mortar shops, imagine.