Although according to Spotify I spent the equivalent of 17 days - and then some - listening to music, no one song defined the year for me the way What A Beautiful Name It Is defined 2016, and the Nine Fridays of Summer. Of those that I listened to the most, Todd Dulaney’s Victory Belongs to Jesus, came closest for the sheer number of times I listened to it on repeat, but that lacked the personal connection that joining in with the crowd roaring the chorus to (in my opinion one of the songs of Hillsong Conference 2016) What A Beautiful Name It Is had.
Other than the amount of time I spent streaming music on Spotify, I found there was less of a sense of connection overall to the songs the data said were my songs of 2017 than there was to the playlist of songs that I had compiled over the year. Albums from Fred Hammond, Hezekiah Walker, Kurt Carr, Donald Lawrence, Tenth Avenue North, The Planetshakers, Heather Headley, Group 1 Crew and others of a similar ilk featured prominently, a nod to the way I used Spotify during the year mainly as a tool to revisit albums from the past rather than find new ones. The individual songs I did listen to, Grits and Annie William’s New Life, Lecrae and Tori Kelly’s I’ll find You and Crowder and Lecrae’s Shadows were both old and fit a template - great vocals and a rap segment. I did stumble on two new groups - The Walls Group and Livre’ again broadly similar to the sort of music I already enjoy.
A lot has been said (by the likes of Om Malik and Khoi Vinh amongst others) on how streaming media fundamentally changes our relationship with what we listen to and watch, making it less about a connection and ownership and more about consumption. There have also been controversies around Spotify’s algorithm based discovery tools and the potential for their being gamed (for profit and the promotion of ‘fake artistes’). Whilst that may be a problem for me further down the road, at the moment I am primarily using Spotify to reengage with the music of my younger years. On that basis, I still believe it represents decent value.