Lee
Quotes that stood out to me the most in this Orwellian deconstruction of Spotify.
- Ch. 3: “Unsurprisingly by the mid-2010s as the increasingly passive listening environment commanded less and less attention of its users, sleep playlists were absolutely crushing it on sootify. One former employee recalled a specific all hands meeting that reflected and celebrated in the success of these sleep playlists. ‘They were very proud of this,’ the former employee recalled, ‘it proved to them that they're not a music company, they're a time filler for boredom.’ ‘There was a moment where it all started to feel Orwellian,’ the employee continued reflecting on a different later meeting. In his estimation based on data observed while at the company, there was only a tiny percentage of lean-in listeners, the vast majority of music listeners, they're not really interested in listening to music per se, they just need a soundtrack to a moment in their day. ‘I think Daniel Eck was the first person to really exploit that, I honestly think that the core to the company’s success was recognizing that the company wasn't selling music; they weren't providing music, theyre filling peoples time. And he said at a company meeting, I remember, ‘he was like, Apple music, Amazon, these aren't our competitors, our only competitor is silence. I definitely think people are afraid of silence’.”
- Ch. 4 talks about how Thomas Edison essentially monatized mood/vibe music to consumers with curated phonogram playlists.
- Ch. 4: “If a musician decides to protest over unfair royalties, its not hard to imagine a situation where a streaming service might just replace them with somebody else, or better yet maybe just a ghost artist who doesn't actually exist.”
- Ch. 9: “If we're willingly letting corporations create culture ir determine culture for their own financial gain, that's unequivocally bad, she said. And what makes it so much worse, is that it's coached in all this language if individualism that people buy into and believe. It's an era where we can't agree on basic facts of history in general, and then we're giving corporations the power to create their own version of culture, and therefore their own versions of history. And then they make a lot of money off of it, while the people who are actually creating the work and art that make it possible for them to even do this whole scam, don't get paid anything.”
- Ch. 10: “Fandom is data.”
- Ch. 10: “Over time in the group, he started to observe the broader tendency to describing music through micro-genres: like Cottage Core, a pastoral countryside aesthetic that flourished in tiktok during the pandemic. And Dark Academia: moodboard, poetry books, dusty libraries, dark coffee, classical music. And he also started seeing a lot request for liminal space type vibes. Referring to an internet aesthetic fixation that had pictures of abandoned eerie old backrooms. But that's not a genre of music but a lot of people keep asking for it. Usually it ends up being like vaporwave.”
Ch. 10: “It seemed like any random word or phrase could be cast as a description signifier by adding ‘core’ to its ending. Everything has become an aesthetic or vibe. You lose depth when you out everything into a box or category, but we live in a capitalist world where everything is a cliche. It's just consumerism.”
- Ch. 10: “The philosopher Frederick Jameson described the concept of auto-surveillance, under which the capital and the state no longer have to do anything to you because you have learned to do it to yourself. This was fan culture reshaped by algorithmic ubiquitousness, which is to say by tools of surveillance.”
- Ch. 11: “If there was any running theme from table to table, it seems to just be rich people seeking to get more rich, with little regard to the impact they may have on working musicians.”
- Ch. 12: “It might seem like just music, but streaming services are susceptible to what's called ‘surveillance creep’ or ‘function creep’. A surveillance system might start off with one purpose, but over time it's purpose might shift and expand beyond its original use case. We might know that a streaming app is watching our every move, but it's just to recommend us more music we think, and so we're conditioned to think it's low stakes. So much so that when for example a music app starts monitoring and mapping our voices or tracking down our search history off app, maybe we don't even notice. Or when it takes the most basic facts of our listening behavior and sells them to date brokers for mood data, which then they sell to assemble more complex profiles on us.”
- Ch. 13: “At a music conference in 2019, Spotify executive Jim Anderson appeared on a panel, after which a concerned musician stood up during the Q&A to ask about the financial model and whether it was fair to artists. A disgruntled Anderson replied, ‘the platform is to distribute music not to give you money, okay.’”
Quotes that stood out to me the most in this Orwellian deconstruction of Spotify.
- Ch. 3: “Unsurprisingly by the mid-2010s as the increasingly passive listening environment commanded less and less attention of its users, sleep playlists were absolutely crushing it on sootify. One former employee recalled a specific all hands meeting that reflected and celebrated in the success of these sleep playlists. ‘They were very proud of this,’ the former employee recalled, ‘it proved to them that they're not a music company, they're a time filler for boredom.’ ‘There was a moment where it all started to feel Orwellian,’ the employee continued reflecting on a different later meeting. In his estimation based on data observed while at the company, there was only a tiny percentage of lean-in listeners, the vast majority of music listeners, they're not really interested in listening to music per se, they just need a soundtrack to a moment in their day. ‘I think Daniel Eck was the first person to really exploit that, I honestly think that the core to the company’s success was recognizing that the company wasn't selling music; they weren't providing music, theyre filling peoples time. And he said at a company meeting, I remember, ‘he was like, Apple music, Amazon, these aren't our competitors, our only competitor is silence. I definitely think people are afraid of silence’.”
- Ch. 4 talks about how Thomas Edison essentially monatized mood/vibe music to consumers with curated phonogram playlists.
- Ch. 4: “If a musician decides to protest over unfair royalties, its not hard to imagine a situation where a streaming service might just replace them with somebody else, or better yet maybe just a ghost artist who doesn't actually exist.”
- Ch. 9: “If we're willingly letting corporations create culture ir determine culture for their own financial gain, that's unequivocally bad, she said. And what makes it so much worse, is that it's coached in all this language if individualism that people buy into and believe. It's an era where we can't agree on basic facts of history in general, and then we're giving corporations the power to create their own version of culture, and therefore their own versions of history. And then they make a lot of money off of it, while the people who are actually creating the work and art that make it possible for them to even do this whole scam, don't get paid anything.”
- Ch. 10: “Fandom is data.”
- Ch. 10: “Over time in the group, he started to observe the broader tendency to describing music through micro-genres: like Cottage Core, a pastoral countryside aesthetic that flourished in tiktok during the pandemic. And Dark Academia: moodboard, poetry books, dusty libraries, dark coffee, classical music. And he also started seeing a lot request for liminal space type vibes. Referring to an internet aesthetic fixation that had pictures of abandoned eerie old backrooms. But that's not a genre of music but a lot of people keep asking for it. Usually it ends up being like vaporwave.”
Ch. 10: “It seemed like any random word or phrase could be cast as a description signifier by adding ‘core’ to its ending. Everything has become an aesthetic or vibe. You lose depth when you out everything into a box or category, but we live in a capitalist world where everything is a cliche. It's just consumerism.”
- Ch. 10: “The philosopher Frederick Jameson described the concept of auto-surveillance, under which the capital and the state no longer have to do anything to you because you have learned to do it to yourself. This was fan culture reshaped by algorithmic ubiquitousness, which is to say by tools of surveillance.”
- Ch. 11: “If there was any running theme from table to table, it seems to just be rich people seeking to get more rich, with little regard to the impact they may have on working musicians.”
- Ch. 12: “It might seem like just music, but streaming services are susceptible to what's called ‘surveillance creep’ or ‘function creep’. A surveillance system might start off with one purpose, but over time it's purpose might shift and expand beyond its original use case. We might know that a streaming app is watching our every move, but it's just to recommend us more music we think, and so we're conditioned to think it's low stakes. So much so that when for example a music app starts monitoring and mapping our voices or tracking down our search history off app, maybe we don't even notice. Or when it takes the most basic facts of our listening behavior and sells them to date brokers for mood data, which then they sell to assemble more complex profiles on us.”
- Ch. 13: “At a music conference in 2019, Spotify executive Jim Anderson appeared on a panel, after which a concerned musician stood up during the Q&A to ask about the financial model and whether it was fair to artists. A disgruntled Anderson replied, ‘the platform is to distribute music not to give you money, okay.’”
Updated a reading goal:
Read 50 books in 2025
Progress so far: 75 / 50 150%
Added to listPrescient Parableswith 10 books.
Despite calling just about everything that escalated out of the COVID-19 pandemic years prior, Severance disappointingly has nothing to say. And yes, I see your raised hands, but no, this book has nothing to do with the hit Apple show of the same name. The book was rather disappointing and filled with a a whole lot of filler flashback that did not really add any depth to the characters you couldn't piece already. It could just be because I recently rewatched it, but while reading this version of a strange infectious virus (from China), I thought of the Canadian indie horror, Pontypool. There was a resemblance with how the infected acted, and how our protagonists are mostly placed in a single location. But don’t confuse that comparison with quality or horror, as the worst Severance gets, is a casual observation of a woman missing a jaw.
Despite calling just about everything that escalated out of the COVID-19 pandemic years prior, Severance disappointingly has nothing to say. And yes, I see your raised hands, but no, this book has nothing to do with the hit Apple show of the same name. The book was rather disappointing and filled with a a whole lot of filler flashback that did not really add any depth to the characters you couldn't piece already. It could just be because I recently rewatched it, but while reading this version of a strange infectious virus (from China), I thought of the Canadian indie horror, Pontypool. There was a resemblance with how the infected acted, and how our protagonists are mostly placed in a single location. But don’t confuse that comparison with quality or horror, as the worst Severance gets, is a casual observation of a woman missing a jaw.
The Present Age
Prescient in Kierkegaard’s thoughts and social critiques from start to finish, but I did feel like the first half was loaded with heavy hitting quotes. It’s said plenty of time for various authors and philosophers, but I’m always baffled when a sentiment from nearly 200 years ago, still stand the test of time and human error.
- “Our age is essentially one of understanding and reflection, without passion, momentarily bursting into enthusiasm, and shrewdly relapsing into repose.” (pg. 3)
- "Nowadays not even a suicide kills himself in desperation. Before taking the step he deliberates so long and so carefully that he literally chokes with thought. It is even questionable whether he ought to be called a suicide, since it is really thought which takes his life He does not die with deliberation but from deliberation.” (pg. 3)
- "But the present generation, wearied by its chimerical efforts, relapses into complete in-dolence. Its condition is that of a man who has only fallen asleep towards morning: first of all come great dreams, then a feeling of laziness, and finally a witty or clever excuse for remaining in bed." (pg. 4)
- “However well-meaning and strong the individual man may be (if he could only use his strength), he still has not the passion to be able to tear himself from the coils and seductive uncertainty of reflection. Nor do his surroundings supply the events or produce the general enthusiasm necessary in order to free him.” (pg. 4-5)
- "A revolutionary age is an age of action; ours is the age of advertisement and publicity. Nothing ever happens but there is immediate publicity everywhere." (pg. 6)
- "The age of great and good actions is past, the present is the age of anticipation when even recognition is received in advance. No one is satisfied with doing something definite, every one wants to feel flattered by reflection with the illusion of having discovered at the very least a new continent.” (pg. 7)
- “Briefly, instead of being strengthened in their discernment and encouraged to do good, the guests would more probably go home with an even stronger predisposition to the most dangerous, if also the most respectable, of all diseases; to admire in public what is considered unimportant in private-since everything is made into a joke.” (pg. 9)
- "Formerly it was agreed that a man stood or fell by his actions; nowadays, on the contrary, every one idles about and comes off brilliantly with the help of a little reflection, Knowing perfectly well what ought to be done.” (pg. 9-10)
- “The present age with its sudden enthusiasms followed by apathy and indolence is very near the comic; but those who understand the comic see quite clearly that the comic is not where the present age imagines.” (pg. 10)
- "To be witty without possessing the riches of inwardness is like squandering money upon luxuries and dispensing with necessities, or, as the proverb says, like selling one's breeches to buy a wig. But an age without passion has no values, and everything is transformed into representational ideas. Thus there are certain remarks and expressions current which, though true and reasonable up to a point, are lifeless." (pg. 11)
Prescient in Kierkegaard’s thoughts and social critiques from start to finish, but I did feel like the first half was loaded with heavy hitting quotes. It’s said plenty of time for various authors and philosophers, but I’m always baffled when a sentiment from nearly 200 years ago, still stand the test of time and human error.
- “Our age is essentially one of understanding and reflection, without passion, momentarily bursting into enthusiasm, and shrewdly relapsing into repose.” (pg. 3)
- "Nowadays not even a suicide kills himself in desperation. Before taking the step he deliberates so long and so carefully that he literally chokes with thought. It is even questionable whether he ought to be called a suicide, since it is really thought which takes his life He does not die with deliberation but from deliberation.” (pg. 3)
- "But the present generation, wearied by its chimerical efforts, relapses into complete in-dolence. Its condition is that of a man who has only fallen asleep towards morning: first of all come great dreams, then a feeling of laziness, and finally a witty or clever excuse for remaining in bed." (pg. 4)
- “However well-meaning and strong the individual man may be (if he could only use his strength), he still has not the passion to be able to tear himself from the coils and seductive uncertainty of reflection. Nor do his surroundings supply the events or produce the general enthusiasm necessary in order to free him.” (pg. 4-5)
- "A revolutionary age is an age of action; ours is the age of advertisement and publicity. Nothing ever happens but there is immediate publicity everywhere." (pg. 6)
- "The age of great and good actions is past, the present is the age of anticipation when even recognition is received in advance. No one is satisfied with doing something definite, every one wants to feel flattered by reflection with the illusion of having discovered at the very least a new continent.” (pg. 7)
- “Briefly, instead of being strengthened in their discernment and encouraged to do good, the guests would more probably go home with an even stronger predisposition to the most dangerous, if also the most respectable, of all diseases; to admire in public what is considered unimportant in private-since everything is made into a joke.” (pg. 9)
- "Formerly it was agreed that a man stood or fell by his actions; nowadays, on the contrary, every one idles about and comes off brilliantly with the help of a little reflection, Knowing perfectly well what ought to be done.” (pg. 9-10)
- “The present age with its sudden enthusiasms followed by apathy and indolence is very near the comic; but those who understand the comic see quite clearly that the comic is not where the present age imagines.” (pg. 10)
- "To be witty without possessing the riches of inwardness is like squandering money upon luxuries and dispensing with necessities, or, as the proverb says, like selling one's breeches to buy a wig. But an age without passion has no values, and everything is transformed into representational ideas. Thus there are certain remarks and expressions current which, though true and reasonable up to a point, are lifeless." (pg. 11)
Added to listPrescient Parableswith 9 books.
"I swore before this head that for all future I would cast my lot with the solitary and free rather than with the triumphant and servile."
A dark prescient parable to the rise of Fascism or outright barbarity, Einst Jüngers topical—and to some controversial—Gestapo banned On the Marble Cliffs totally rings relevant today as it did on publishing in 1939. It's worth noting Jünger was a German himself, and ever fought in Why, and served in occupled Paris during WWII, but was ardently against Nazism and Communism. Certainly a contradictory figure, Jünger was against liberal utopian ideals, just as he also despised tyranny and the myriad “isms” webbing out of the pre-WWII national socialism power. While not comparing them as human beings, I'd argue there's crossover in thought and cautionary warnings with the likes of Orwell and Huxley.
His novella paints quite a contrasting narrative between the titular beauty of the Edenic marble cliffs versus the grimey, anarchic, and barbaric forest dwellers below. It's clearly an allegorical tale that can be attached to various moments in human history—the time relevant WWII and rise of the Nazi regime being most topical on release—such as the current unprecedented and shameful state of authoritarianism in the United States.
French director, poet, and all around renaissance man Jean Cocteau said about Junger, “Some people had dirty hands, some had clean hands, but Jünger had no hands." While surely to be taken as a white-gloved indictment, it's worth noting Cocteu himself was also not too dissimilar to Junger in their mutual apolitical contradictions during such a radically political time. And in this collegial criticism lays one of the biggest thematic points to take from On the Marble Cliffs: inaction and turning a blind eye just because something doesn't affect you, leads to a worsening condition of the human state. Stated better by the quite of debated origin, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Jünger’s prescient cautionary tale released on the cusp of WWII has far too many similarities to today’s world than comfortable, and I highly recommend reading this lesser-known classic.
"I swore before this head that for all future I would cast my lot with the solitary and free rather than with the triumphant and servile."
A dark prescient parable to the rise of Fascism or outright barbarity, Einst Jüngers topical—and to some controversial—Gestapo banned On the Marble Cliffs totally rings relevant today as it did on publishing in 1939. It's worth noting Jünger was a German himself, and ever fought in Why, and served in occupled Paris during WWII, but was ardently against Nazism and Communism. Certainly a contradictory figure, Jünger was against liberal utopian ideals, just as he also despised tyranny and the myriad “isms” webbing out of the pre-WWII national socialism power. While not comparing them as human beings, I'd argue there's crossover in thought and cautionary warnings with the likes of Orwell and Huxley.
His novella paints quite a contrasting narrative between the titular beauty of the Edenic marble cliffs versus the grimey, anarchic, and barbaric forest dwellers below. It's clearly an allegorical tale that can be attached to various moments in human history—the time relevant WWII and rise of the Nazi regime being most topical on release—such as the current unprecedented and shameful state of authoritarianism in the United States.
French director, poet, and all around renaissance man Jean Cocteau said about Junger, “Some people had dirty hands, some had clean hands, but Jünger had no hands." While surely to be taken as a white-gloved indictment, it's worth noting Cocteu himself was also not too dissimilar to Junger in their mutual apolitical contradictions during such a radically political time. And in this collegial criticism lays one of the biggest thematic points to take from On the Marble Cliffs: inaction and turning a blind eye just because something doesn't affect you, leads to a worsening condition of the human state. Stated better by the quite of debated origin, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Jünger’s prescient cautionary tale released on the cusp of WWII has far too many similarities to today’s world than comfortable, and I highly recommend reading this lesser-known classic.
Added to listPrescient Parableswith 8 books.
