The Mere-Exposure Effect is a phenomenon stating that the more you are exposed to something, the more you develop an affinity for it. Lately, I’ve been using Spotify’s “Songs for You” feature, which creates a playlist of songs based on your past listening habits. I’ve noticed that it recommends earworms – catchy tunes that get stuck in my head. While these songs are somewhat similar to my usual music preferences, they’re not what I would expect to discover during my musical explorations.
This makes me wonder if there is some hidden option within Spotify’s corporate structure, or perhaps even the Illuminati, where artists can pay to have their songs promoted more frequently. As a result, listeners experience the mere exposure effect and ultimately develop a liking for the song, wanting to listen to it more.
Last night, I shared four different songs with my family that I had never heard before but now have a strange craving to listen to again. These songs all had catchy repetition in an EDM pop style genre. Is it possible that my song preferences are being dictated by someone at Spotify? If this is happening to everyone, our collective music tastes could be shifting towards specific artists based on promotional deals or even artificial intelligence involvement.
It’s a curious thought – perhaps there’s a non-sentient AI in the background choosing our music tastes and directing us all towards listening to songs by certain artists like One Direction. Whether this idea is more or less insidious depends on your perspective, but it’s certainly intriguing to consider how our musical preferences might be influenced by external forces.
