Hello, dear reader!
As we wind down another year, itâs hard to miss the rampant sharing of Spotify Wrapped [for the uninitiated - âwhere Spotify listeners get a deep dive into their most memorable listening moments of the yearâ] on social media. From this article, which goes deep into Spotifyâs design practices:
Spotifyâs designers⊠moved from six principles to three core areas of focus:
Relevant â Itâs about reflecting you as an individual.
Human â Itâs about communication, expression, and human connection.
Unified â Itâs about how our brand manifests across our features and apps.
In 2021âs Wrapped, the colours were bold, bright and unapologetic. There was even a section titled âYour Audio Aura,â a gradient, fluid combination of colours meant to correspond to the melodic vibe of your most-listened-to music.
What makes this particular visualised data so shareable?
Spotify seems to have tapped into a pretty universal, human need to feel seen and validated. This feature provides you with data - cold, hard evidence - to show how unique you are - which is, honestly, the kind of validation most of us are seeking. Listening statistics seem like a more accurate portrait of yourself than any photograph every could be; thereâs a thrill in letting people in on the secret of your inner world of what you listen to. Whatâs interesting is that itâs something mathematical like data that affirms something un-mathematical like individuality.
Recommended by the (mathematical?) YouTube algorithm:
Spotify Wrapped got me thinking about how we discover music. Any music lover who lived before the internet era will proudly chronicle the pains of making mix tapes on cassettes, wearing their efforts as a badge of honour. A pompous âBack in the dayâŠâ, is usually how the recollection begins (and I know this because Iâve heard it several times, and also because I do it)âŠ
Finding New Music
At some point of the mid-2000s - which is when I decided I wanted to have my own taste in music, and not just listen to what my parents listened to - what finding music looked like for me: going to the CD shop, browsing through rows and rows of CDs listed alphabetically, picking up the ones on which the band looked cool on the cover, checking to see if my older sister approved, noting down the names, and then coming back and begging my sister to find some pirated version of it on Limewire. It was a long process, especially the last step.
Iâve stumbled upon some really great music on Apple Musicâs automated playlists. I love being surprised by YouTubeâs unexpected recommendations. But there is something to be said about intentionally scratching for new music - browsing through stacks of something tangible, not really sure what youâre looking for, never knowing what you could find, and there hanging the possibility of being proven completely wrong (for better or for worse), which is an experience that music streaming services canât - or maybe, havenât yet - replicated.
So in this day and age, when music shops are a rarity, and magazinesâ readership have dwindled , how do you seek out new music, if not through algorithms? Finding unique and obscure tracks as references has been a part of my work as a filmmaker, and Iâve had to devise various ways to find new music. It led me to some music Iâd never heard before. I know someone who reads interviews with artistes they like, and listens to their influences. I followed this method, and itâs how I found some recent favourites. Hanging out around people whose music taste you like and listening to what theyâre listening to has also worked for me.
Recommendations are my favourite way to discover new music. However, more than just sharing a playlist titled âChillâ with twenty random songs or an onslaught of recommendations - which is also my issue with a lot of newsletters - itâs always nice to know why someone liked something. Or how it made them feel. Or what thoughts it sparked. Or what it lead to. What it reminded them of. âThis band sounds kind of cool but also shy like theyâre hiding their feelings but they also want to expose to the world how they feelâ. Passion is infectious, and I think youâre more likely to love something when you can see why someone else loves it.
Casual Plug
One of my favourite reads this year was George Saundersâ A Swim In The Pond In The Rain. I feel very enriched by the generous insights on his Substack newsletter. Quoting from one of them, which was more an advice column about mentorship:
Rejection can teach us, acceptance can; an indifferent teacher can, as can a teacher who loves what weâre doing. A dry spell can teach us, a personal loss can, a brilliant, beautiful period can, a new love, a lost love â you name it.Â
âŠ. and maybe we could apply a similar idea to our mentors; they donât need to be perfect; they donât need to be designated mentors; they donât have to even know that theyâre mentors of ours.  Rather, itâs our insistence on making progress that converts someone into a mentor.Â
I like this advice, but I also felt like I needed some more intentional life and career advice, having felt the lack of a structured manner of getting guidance while making decisions in a creative profession. This is a plug for a podcast that my friend Iti and I started. In The Real Talk podcast we talk to people from different industries and gather life/work philosophies that listeners from various fields can take away from. So although there is no instruction manual to how to navigate your career, this is our attempt to create the hitchhikerâs guide to professional growth! đ©âđ
The first episode is with Irfan Nooruddin, a professor of political science at Georgetown University. I took away so much from our conversation, and my new favourite saying is #NoMoFOMO.
Please do listen, share, subscribe, and follow us on Twitter!
A Few Random Things
A people/conversation hack from here (I dislike the tone of the piece, but I love the tip) - saying âwow, thatâs hardâ when someone tells you about their work⊠âBecause nearly everyone in the world believes their job to be difficultâ
Thereâs a restaurant in Goa where instead of regular songs, they perform popular ad jingles; recommended by a friend who thought it would find a good fit in this newsletter.
âIf my grandmother had wheels she would have been a bikeâ - recommended by another friend, this had me in splits:
Hurry Slower
I had been cursing the speed breakers around my neighbourhood because of their sheer volume and size. It was extremely frustrating to have to slow down and change gears every time I encountered one. That is, until I realised:
the fuel inefficiency of driving that way.
that youâre SUPPOSED to stick to a certain speed limit, which is why speed breakers exist - pretty obvious, I know.
âThatâs how everyone drives here, right?!â, I initially thought, but then I tried to develop a bit of patience, and go slower while driving through the neighbourhood. Me being me, I had to apply it to a larger life learning, which is this:
Speeding up the in-between is just the inability to sit with the discomfort of not going at the pace you think you should be going, and overall doesn't save you too much time.
Very profound, I know. Itâs very informed by the last thing I read - Oliver Burkeman.
Thank you for being here and reading my newsletter. When asked why the editions are so erratic, I respond, insufferable enough to quote some Nietzsche:
Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself.
Okay, thatâs untrue. I rarely have a fitting reply - those usually hit me two months later than useful. But if you asked me now, this is what I would say.
Parting Thoughts
What did you change your mind about this year? What were you wrong about? What threw you off? Whom did you wrongly judge?
A few things I changed my mind about, among many others -
gyms, pushups, and protein
asking for help
aspect ratios
bamboo toothbrushes as the saviours of the climate crisis
diet chivda
As It Was by Harry Styles
Iâd love it if you replied to this newsletter with some recommendations of things you love, and importantly - why you love them.
Wishing you a happy end of year,
Nitya