The music streaming model is essentially an attempt to archive every single song that’s ever been recorded - from triple-platinum BTS hits to staticky demos from your cousin’s garage band - into one accessible repository. My “Danger Zone” experience is only the tip of the iceberg. Truly, there is no euphoria like stumbling into a weird Spotify cover. I had reached deep into the benthic regions of the global pop music database and dredged up an incredible artifact that somehow fit the keywords I was searching for. I typically seek out “Danger Zone” out of curdled mordancy or two-beer sincerity, so when I was first blindsided by the Bodom death-growl instead of the Kenny Loggins tenor one particularly wistful Friday night, I laughed so hard I almost fell out of my chair. Children of Bodom was a power metal institution out in Finland, which is to say that every one of the band’s albums features a Grim Reaper on the sleeve. That cover, one of the many “Danger Zone” takes on Spotify, is one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard. However, there is still one way Spotify manages to recreate the wondrous unpredictability of mid-2000s music consumption, and it can be found when you accidentally double-click on, say, the Children of Bodom cover of “Danger Zone.”
You never really knew what you were downloading at the zenith of the MP3 revolution, which is a lost tradition when music corporations have shaved down our taste into a constellation of sterile data points. The record business wasn’t exactly known for its morals in the pre-Cloud age, but the feral desperation unleashed by the streaming overlords has brought us into uncharted territory - a world where labels must jostle for position on curations called “Ultimate Indie.”Īll of this makes me miss the days of scrolling through the trenches of Limewire, risking the basic integrity of the family PC with every alleged Eminem file. Welcome to Net Positive, a series about nice places and things on the world wide web.Įveryone agrees that Spotify has had an apocalyptic impact on the music industry: the 12-cent royalty checks, the two-hour Drake albums, the fact that “Heat Waves” is still somehow in the Billboard Top 10 due to the gluttonous power of algorithm-weaned playlists that pump the song directly into the speakers of countless H&Ms across the country.
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