I've changed... but the world has changed as well

 I've been trying to get back into listening to five albums a week like I did in my teen years, and today I started to compare what that was like then and what it's like today...

Back then, I'd go to my local library once a week and loan 5 CDs. It was a small town, the library collection had maybe one or two thousand CDs, if that. I listened to every single one of their metal, rock and punk CDs, and from other genres the artists that I'd heard of before. I'd listen to one album each morning while doing my makeup, before going to school. There was no one to talk to about music, none of my friends were into metal, so I didn't talk to anyone about it. There was a radio host I liked, Klaus Flaming, and he had a radio show that aired each Saturday and Sunday from 10am to noon on Radio Rock, a Finnish radio channel, where he'd have a theme and then he'd talk about songs and albums around that theme, how they connected and interconnected, and that filled the void of having no one to talk to about music. I'd listen to him and learn from him. He retired two years ago and I just found out this week. Later, my brothers took after me and started listening to metal as well, and we started having evenings, where we'd take turns playing songs to each other. We still do that at least twice a year, when we visit mom in the Christmas time / the summer. From Radio Rock and music magazines and TV I'd also learn about new albums coming out from artists I listen to, and I'd go to the nearest town that selled records about once a month - once three months. I'd buy new records from a department store, because it was cheaper, and then go to a record store that had a constant 3 CDs for 10€ "sale" and pick out three older CDs. 

Nowadays, I often hear opinions about music, any media really - tv shows, movies, books, podcasts, you name it, before actually having a chance to check them out by myself. I don't like it. I've tried to avoid it, but it's impossible without being disconnected from the rest of the world entirely. I tried doing that and missed important news. Now I'm trying to keep up with the media in the bubble that I live in, but I don't know how long I can do that... It's very time-consuming, and I'm not interested in all of the media I consume, I just listen to or watch it because it's trending or critics liked it or a certain YouTuber I follow won't stop talking about it... I miss the simpler times. When an album was 60min give or take, released in CD form, and I listened to it because I was interested in listening to it.

Mainly, the world has gotten faster, with the internet that we have. Back then, it was completely fine to hear an album within a month or even a year from it's release. It was still relevant. Nowadays, no one remembers an album in two weeks time, without actively looking back at "the best albums of March" or "the best albums of 2024"... 

The new Netflix movie The Electric State was intentionally made to play on one screen while you do something on another screen, like messaging a friend or shopping or playing mobile games or scroll social media or whatever you do on your phone while you watch something. I do do this, don't get me wrong, Today, I listened to five albums, and while I did so, I did some planning for next week, read a magazine, etc etc. Right now, I'm listening to The Vibe playlist, writing this and eating dinner that the same. When I was a teen, I'd listen to most of the albums while doing my makeup, but sometimes I knew the music required more attention than that and I'd put it on and then lie on the floor of a dark room while listening to it. Sometimes bringing a flashlight, to read the lyrics from the CD leaflet while doing so. I don't do that anymore. I can't do that anymore.

I am an adult now. Life is too busy, there's too many things to do to spend an entire evening on an album. Or I have to actively make the time, which is a tedious job on it's own, and I am so stressed about the other nights that week that I'm still not actually focusing on the album... I also live in an actual town now, one of the 10 biggest towns in Finland, in an apartment building. I live with my fiancé, there's traffic outside the window on the street, there's a kid and a dog living right above us, often playing in the evening. When I was a teen, my room was in the attic level of the building. I had so much peace and solitude. It felt lonely and crushing back then, but that feeling still persists, when I'm actually not alone, so...

Not just The Electric State, but also that a bunch of actors and actresses apparently won Oscars for performances that were AI-enhanced (my sources for The Electric State thing is a The Take YT video I saw earlier this week and for the Oscars thing it's the FunkyFrogBait video where they hate AI, I listened to it today while dying my hair). I hate this.
Art should be art. You do it because you love doing it, not because you think you're good at it, or want other people to think you're good at it, or to have a lot of people see it, or to make money out of it. You wanna make "AI art" - sure. Go ahead. Replace the human touch completely. But keep human art awards away from it. Lets make an international law that makes it illegal to post anything without addressing if it's made with AI or enhanced using AI. Like they did with advertising, how people have to disclose if something is an ad or sponsored content.
If a person makes an AI to make movies or images or books or music. Sure. But lets make it separate from human-made art. And lets NOT make "second screen" content or background elevator music, thank you. I think especially movies... I WANT IT TO be so engaging I forget the second screen because this first one is so immersing! That's the point of having it! The 2nd screen comes into play because I'm either 1) too bored to focus on the 1st screen without the 2nd or 2) too busy, I have to multitask. MAKE ME NOT WANT TO MULTITASK, make me abandon whatever the 2nd thing I was going to do to be done, because YOUR thing engages me so much!

My life has changed, and I've changed. It's busier and my attention span it worse than it was. I have more life experience, I've been desensitized to a lot of things, including music and movies... The typically follow patterns my brain already knows and then my brain gets bored and I need a second partially-engaging thing like a mobile game to be able to focus on that exact piece of music or cinema I'm currently listening/watching. When I listen to or watch something, I already think about how it's going to be received by certain content creators of critics or the general public or fans of the artist. And I hate that. I want to form my opinion separate from them. And if I manage to listen to something without having those thoughts, then I'll have the thoughts of "what am I going to write about this on my blog?". I do and don't like that. This is my space, I don't care if anyone reads this. So it's whatever. But I am aware that this is publicly available on the internet for anyone to see and it might shape their opinion about me as a person. That shouldn't matter, either, now that I think about it. I should just be me and be able to say what I think and if someone fucks with that, they can read more. If you like what my brain produces, there's more of that. You're welcome. If you don't, you can click away. 

But the world has also changed. It's more hectic and everyone has a platform to share their opinions on. Including me.

How I choose the albums has also changed. I used to have piles of it, one for library CDs and one for CDs I bought, and then I'd just listen to one a day from either pile, without thinking which one other people will be talking about in the upcoming week more likely. Without thinking what I might write about it later. I'd go through the library collections alphabetically, give or take (they got new ones while I was going through the collection, and other people loaned and returned CDs as well simultaneously). Now I read at least five different sources - Loudwire's list of new releases, which I schedule in my phone's calendar, the 2025 in Hiphop Wikipedia article, which I read once a week to see what performed well and listen to that the next week (I'm just trying to listen to a lot of hiphop for the sake of it, to familiarize myself with the genre, and I don't know how else to go about it), Metacritic's Upcoming Album Releases to stay up to date about pop releases, Spotify's own listing of the new releases from the artists I follow, because they're generally speaking small, independent ones, and sites like Loudwire, Wikipedia or Metacritic don't feature them, and Suomen Virallinen Lista (Official List of Finland) to see what's up with the music scene of my own country, now that I only hear radio music on trips to the grocery store and because the big international sites don't follow them either. Occasionally Knox Hill or Nik Nocturnal manage to "sell" me an album = I listen to it because they spoke so highly of it and I respect their opinions. That's a lot. And it's active work, for the most part. I need to remember to read them. It hasn't become a routine yet, like listening to CDs was or how listening to Release Radar is for example. 

Anyway, I think this ramble is over. While I was writing, a small portion of my brain was like "I need to edit this tomorrow before posting", but you know what? Fuck that. Lets be unfiltered, lets be human and fuck all this algorithm and AI and social media crap where everything needs to be perfect and polished. Lets be real. If I have more thoughts or I want to clarify something, I'll write more. These are the thoughts my brain produced right now, culmination of my thoughts from this day and week.