Spotify: There finally is a generation gap

I get to work early in the morning, at 6:30 am, before most employees get here. While processing emails, capturing metrics about Autodesk Labs feedback, and writing blog posts, I listen to music. Yesterday I decided to listen to the United States Top 50 according to Spotify. Though I have my longtime favorites, I used to pride myself on being rather current with music. Well I have to admit that given the state of music today as reflected by the list, there finally is a generation gap. I was dismayed by how many times Justin Bieber appeared in the Top 50. In fact, grabbing the HTML and using a pivot table in Excel, I graphed the results of all artists whose name appeared more than once:

How can Justin Bieber appear 12 times in the Top 50? The world no longer makes sense.

Of these 50 songs, I only liked 3 of them.

• "Hello" by Adele
• "Can't Feel My Face" by The Weeknd
• "Ex's  & Oh's" by Elle King

Through the miracle of online delivery of music, I can experience this new music without having to make a bad purchase. In the olden says, we'd hear one song on the radio, most often, the hit, and buy the album only to be disappointed by the other songs on the album. The online process leaves me open to giving an entire album at least one listen before recognizing what most of the albums containing songs on this list are — emotionless vocals without even a hint of musical instrument proficiency. The beauty of online music is that in addition to the new, it also lets me listen to the old standards.

Becoming an old fart is alive in the lab.