How the pandemic changed my music consumption for good
by Justin George
Just over a year ago, I attended the last concert I would for a long time. It was a small house show in Los Angeles, where a mosh pit of sweaty high-schoolers mobbed around a noisy amature band that was on the verge of a noise complaint. Back then, small shows were held religiously on the weekends, but were never considered a hazard to public health until the news of the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded and music venues began closing, putting everyone’s social lives on pause. Music lovers like me were confined to home to discover and listen to music alone. No longer could I drive around with friends with a pop hit blaring through the speakers, or have music discussions during passing period at school; music had become a solitary activity. The pandemic has completely revolutionized the way we consume music, and now I’m able to appreciate it better than I ever have before.
I was in my senior year at a music-centric high school before the pandemic began. Each day began on a commuter train, where I’d pop in a set of cheap earbuds and listen to “best of” playlists while I hurriedly finished assignments on my computer an hour before they were due, ignoring the beautiful mountains outside the train window. At lunch, my friends talked about popular music while a bluetooth speaker played some tunes. After the academic school day, I rushed off to my music classes where I’d learn about, listen to and play music as classwork for about two hours. By the time the day was done and I was on the train home, I was overwhelmed with my workload and didn’t want anything to do with music because it felt like work. The burnout from school had negatively influenced my feelings toward music, and as a result I reached a point where I wasn’t enjoying listening to music at all— yet I called myself a music lover.
Many people have a special encounter with music in their lifetime at one point or another: a child tapping at a piano for the first time, or a newlywed couple sharing their first dance to a special song. My first memories with music are distant, but fond. As a toddler I would dig through piles of CDs in my attic, bringing them with me on car rides so I could kick the back of my mother’s seat to the rhythms. In sixth grade, I started learning how to play music when my teacher showed me how easy playing the bass is. Once my parents trusted me to go to concerts alone, live music became a bonding activity between me and my friends. Music has the ability to inspire universal feelings of togetherness, comfort, curiosity, joy, grief and other emotions in all of us. The fact that I had reached a point in my life where I was dreading music was upsetting, and rekindling my love for it would be no easy task.
In the early days of the pandemic, the public anxiety was high and I was checking the news at all hours. Work, school and home life had been turned upside-down, and I didn’t have the capacity to process it all. It pained me to think that concerts may be a thing of the past. Rather than dwell in an abyss of dread, I decided to revert to my old listening habits, approaching music with the mindset of a first-time listener. I revisited longtime favorite albums of mine, such as Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue,” a jazz album full of recognizable improvised trumpet melodies and rich bass lines, which were some of the first I learned to play. Another album I returned to was The Beatles’ self-titled album, also known as the “White Album”: the first album I wanted to spend money on as a child. I reconnected with the special importance the music once had to me, and for a while it almost felt like traveling back to simpler times in my life. The music comforted me and alleviated some of the anxiety around the pandemic, and I’ve appreciated it better than I ever could have if I were still listening on the train ride to school.
Soon after the first weeks of the pandemic, I started to accept that I wouldn’t be going back to school for some time. As much as I missed socializing with friends, listening to music without the burnout from school was liberating. I began looking for new music to listen to, which is difficult without the help of friends but was made easier with the help of the internet. My go-tos were Spotify’s “Discover Weekly” and “Release Radar” playlists, which recommend music based on previous listening. The selections are familiar like an old favorite comfort food, but I have the most fun discovering music that’s radically different from what I’d usually appreciate.
I’ve taken to Reddit, where I can read and participate in discussions about music and discover what’s in other users’ catalogs. Some of the music I’ve come across probably would’ve remained buried in internet obscurity had nobody been inclined to post about it. Much of the music is posted on Bandcamp or SoundCloud, which allow artists to self-release their music and maintain followings. It also allows fans to stalk other fans and see what they are listening to. It’s sneaky and a bit creepy, but I’ve found some of my favorite musical treasures by digging deep. I would’ve never found music this unique through friends or at concerts due to the awkwardness of asking somebody to reveal the depths of their music catalog, but through the internet I can fearlessly probe into others’ tastes.
Like many love stories, my relationship with music grew stale after a while. It took many hours of quality time listening to music alone to rekindle my love for music— hours I never would have spent this way if it hadn’t been for the disruption of almost all other activities. As campuses open, I will likely be commuting to school again when in-person lectures resume. I will once again be listening to music, finishing work and keeping my days busy, but I will never let my appreciation for music be compromised by those things. The way I consume music has been thoroughly changed for the better.
