Amongst my outside interests, I’m a proud member of the Monday Night Album Club, a fortnightly music club in which opinionated members of my family take turns sharing provocative and unfamiliar album selections for the rest of the group to experience or endure.

Through MNAC, we discover that we like artists we had no idea we’d like or styles of music that we didn’t even know existed. Even if I hate the latest musical selection, I enjoy discovering that I hate it.

Why? Because discovery is great. Learning is great!

Every fortnight I learn something about music and something about myself.

Another interesting thing about Monday Night Album Club is the tension that exists between sharing and receiving, broadcasting and listening. There’s an adrenaline rush when your turn comes around, when it’s your musical choice under the spotlight. It’s simultaneously exciting and nerve-shredding. But then things tend to get rather dull, because the following fortnight is the only moment in the schedule when you’re not discovering anything new.

There’s an episode of Theme Time Radio Hour on which Bob Dylan shares the following words of wisdom about his listeners:

“Sometimes I get the feeling people are requesting records that they already own. I don’t get that. If you already own the record, why are you requesting it? If you want to hear your record collection, play your records. And if you want to hear your record collection on the radio, get yourself a radio show.”

Dylan was speaking pre-social media revolution, but he describes a problem that seems highly appropriate in the age of the digital algorithm.

Today everyone is a broadcaster, pushing out their views, thoughts and opinions into the digital realm (just as I’m doing right now!). The more we broadcast, the more the algorithms learn about us – and these digital services that have a vested interest in serving us content that they know we will like, rather than taking a punt on something we don’t know and have never come across before.

The danger is that our social channels, music and TV subscriptions, search engines, and the myriad other digital services we enjoy, all become echo chambers, narrowing the parameters of discovery. And then, eventually, this becomes the culture – millions of people endlessly requesting records they already own.

Photo by Nacho Carretero Molero on Unsplash