Ways of Hearing, a six-part series from Damon Krukowski (Galaxie 500, Damon and Naomi), explores “the nature of listening in our digital world”. While I recommend the entire series, episode five is especially interesting. Jump to 8:30 to hear Damon and Paul Lamere (Spotify) talk about music recommendation methods and the pitfalls of each.

The thesis of this segment is that current algorithms are designed to help us find things that are similar to things they know we like, but what they don’t do is help us find things that are unlike (and perhaps better than) anything we’ve experienced before.