Track 10: Charli xcx
If the algorithm autoplayed Charli xcx’s “Track 10,” I probably would have skipped it. It opens with an unpleasant, garbled, distorted screech. At 5:27, it flouts the platforms’ incentive to keep songs short (a 30-second stream is enough to earn a royalty).
Thankfully, I discovered it during an embodied, real-life experience: in a sweaty arena show, following the breakout success of her album Brat which painted summer 2024 neon green. The song now reminds me of the joy of that moment. How I came across the song gives it meaning.
In a way, “Track 10″‘s futuristic, auto-tuned sound also points to the question at the core of my journey to go beyond the algorithm: what role should technology play in how we discover and listen to music? And who gets to design, control and own that technology?
To navigate that tension, I draw inspiration from people like tech writer Brian Merchant and artist Molly Crabapple who are reclaiming the Luddite label. They are not against technology or progress itself, but against corporate giants foisting harmful technology onto us. As the original Luddites argued, we need to evaluate whether a technology is “harmful to community” and resist it if it is.
I feel that the current model of corporate algorithmic streaming — built on the surveillance of its users, designed to maximize listening at all costs and paying pennies to artists — is something we ought to resist. By trading the convenience of the algorithm for a little friction, I found myself opening up space to develop a different relationship to music. One that is more anchored in community, where I feel more agency, where music has context that gives it meaning.
At the same time, the point of my foray into legacy media is not to advocate for a full-scale return to the past. CDs and vinyls still have their place, as a recent rise in sales shows. But we don’t need to limit ourselves to them.
Rather, I think that there is space between those two extremes for librarians, together with musicians and listeners, to radically reimagine the future of music.
Of course, they already are. We need more digital public spaces like Edmonton Public Library’s Capital City Records, built together with communities they serve. We need more physical spaces like the Grande bibliothèque’s vinyl listening room. We need to develop digital lending models that are fair to libraries. We need to train librarians to help patrons discover new music based on their desires, not their data. We need to cultivate human curation anchored in our communities.
What comes next is up to us. It always was.
