Spotify killed the thrill of the hunt

Neil Degrasse Tyson said on a Joe Rogan Experience episode that he has an issue with targeted advertising because, to quote the title of this submission, it kills the thrill of the hunt when it comes to discovering products that he might like.

I think this translates to a few different mediums. I'm thinking about modern matchmaking in video games today.

I used to play a game called SOCOM II back on the PS2 and it was all lobby based. You had to jump around to find the right lobby with the game mode you liked, find people to play with and build community. There was time between games for banter.

Now everything is automatic and instantaneous. It has its advantages, just like with music, but something was definitely lost.

For many people's experience of music Spotify is probably alright. I don't use it as it doesn't appeal to me. I was a vinyl dj and then cds when those came along.

I get excellent suggestions from Youtube on old tracks after spending 20+ years liking music tracks on there. I go on there and get suggestions for a youtube video with 4 likes posted five hours ago for a track released 15-25 years ago and they're almost always good if not great music. I still go on bandcamp and soundcloud and other places and buy tracks, eps, full albums in mp3s and flac and wavs and download them for djing purposes. As far as I'm concerned I'm still crate digging whether it's in an actual crate of records and cds or sans-Spotify. New music is not hard to find and if you like something you can easily search other releases by the artist or label or even partial producers. People have it better than they know in 2026 but it takes some involvement too.

This year I have been using spotify more. I do like being able to create custom playlists, but I don't always like the suggested songs after the playlist ends. I'll make a playlist like "Upbeat dance music that includes popular hits from the last 10 years and newer hits that I haven't heard yet. No country. Keep it positive and upbeat." And it will mostly abide the instructions, though I can never escape having a few songs about wanting to kill a b*tch for being a ho, or some such thing, but as soon the initial playlist ends it's all country and country light even though I never listen to country.

I have qualms with Spotify as well, but not sure I entirely agree with the premise of the article. It still takes effort to find good music. There's a LOT of music being produced nowadays, and wading through all of that and finding niche stuff you like can still be a "hunt" - it's just a different kind.