If you scroll through Instagram and find yourself a similar algorithm as mine — the booming couple’s gift merchandise business might take you by surprise. And 90 percent of these items are Spotify merch. Music, love, heartbreak, algorithm, and capitalism — Gen Z has concocted yet another strange mixture for the waiting market.
Even though Gen Z gets a lot of things wrong, I have a sneaking suspicion that love might not be one of them. Our methods may be strange, a little outlandish, perhaps rather odd but we do try to find the right words, even if they are not ours. We’ll give you a bouquet of QR codes in place of sunflowers, and a link in your chat box instead of a box of chocolates — and while you hum “Mubaarakein tumhe ke tum kisi ke noor ho gaye” (I wish you well, now that you have become someone’s light), we might just be blasting “And when I’m back in Chicago, I feel it” along with you.
Gen Z is turning everything into a dating app. This time, it’s Spotify.
Romance of borrowed words
There are about one and a half things that make us shiver in our FabIndia prints at the end of a year: the impending doom of the next 365 days and our Spotify Wrapped exposing the pitfall of a situationship the entire cosmos had warned us about. Well, can you explain why that obscure Talat Mahmood cryfest is sitting cross-legged among the Jay-Zs and Sabrina Carpenters in your top-songs list?
If communication is our generation’s Achilles heel, then the Rs 59 Spotify student subscription is pretty much our healing crystal bracelet. We might not drop even the tiniest of breadcrumbs for the person we have already adopted an imaginary dog with; but be warned! A seven-hour ballad is being curated on the other side of the algorithm.
I was 15 when I first read Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower — Charlie made a mixtape for his friend Patrick. “One Winter”, Charlie’s mixtape, starts with The Smiths’ Asleep. While mixtapes might have gone out of fashion, love, if one were to believe my outrageous predictions, is here to stay. We have gone from cassettes to 2 am Spotify link-sharing, but the ultimate aim seems to be the same: emotions are complicated, borrow words. Let Morrissey sing you to sleep while you make notes for the next therapy session.
Also read: A crush doesn’t have to be lonely. Stalk Insta stories, like your way into DMs
Finding the music-match
Remember sharing social media handles in class groups before starting college? That’s so yesterday. Gen Z wants quirk, they want more and they really, really want to see your Spotify account. What are you listening to? Are you in love? Do you like the golden Bollywood 90s? Are you single? Oh no, do you listen to Justin Bieber unironically? Do you like Hozier? Can we get married?
It’s safe to say that the most foolproof (or should I say overused) strategy to slide into the DMs of that boy who has you delusional enough to think that you’re in a Hugh Grant live-action movie is to praise the attention-seeking playlist on his account. From one Gen Z to the next, not one of us dislikes a little validation for what is, quite literally, our life’s work.
Now imagine the sadistic pleasure of the square-coded green and black app, when it realises that we run to it for both the initial over-excited butterflies in our system and, just a few months later, to bury their butterfly coffins. My longest playlist on Spotify is a record 12 hours 12 minutes, added over eight years — every time a soul-crushing, earth-shattering low-key love unsurprisingly turned out to be a rather limp thud in the matrix.
Very strategically, Spotify has changed the way we listen to music. The idea of listening to genres or entire albums is now shifting to shuffling curated playlists. Enter Spotify’s mood mixes — love mix, sad mix, and even better, Spotify blends — a personalised playlist for you and a person of your choice, created by the algorithm that also shows you the percentage of your music match with them.
And that’s exactly how you get a love-sick populace wrapped around your tappy little finger. Why was I listening to an unhealthy number of Blues— all day all night — frantically checking if the percentage points were slowly edging toward a 98…99…100? Some mysteries shall remain unsolved to protect the little grit the writer has left.
Views are personal.