The music of 2023 wasn’t

Of 2023. Meaning, this year I spent most of my time listening to music I already own, rather than discovering new sounds on streaming services or radio. So not that much of it was music released in 2023.

Not sure how much this was cause vs. effect, but I also had trouble settling with any particular music streaming service this year.

• Spotify: A service I’ve tried off and on over the years (whenever they offer me a discount, as I don’t like the ad version), but it was mostly off in 2023.
• YouTube Music: I did subscribe to this earlier in the year. As a previous Google Play Music user, I’d built up a pretty good music data set in there. But YouTube Music has never been as good as Google Play Music was. On the July long weekend, I tried to find some sort of Canada Day playlist there, and pretty much came up empty. (Maybe because Google was at this point fighting with the federal government over streaming service regulations?) This led me to try out…

• Amazon Music Unlimited which offered me a three-month free trial. I found that they had quite a few fun Canada Day playlists! Of course, in general they had only a fuzzy idea of my music tastes, but it still a decent enough service for when I wanted to listen to something other than “my” music. Still, when this offer ran out, we decided to switch to…
• Amazon Prime Music: Because it was included with Prime, which we already had. But I had not realized that with Prime, in most cases, you can only listen to albums or playlists in shuffle mode. And it won’t even show you in what order it’s shuffled songs into.
  While this was perfectly fine for Jean, it was overly limited for me. Sometimes I want to shuffle; sometimes I do not. Either way, I like to see what’s up next. Hence, I decided to take up another three-month offer to try…
• Apple Music: It’s pretty nice. No ads, no limitations, clean interface, good queue, embedded lyrics. Will I pay for it when the free period is done? Tbd.

No Spotify Wrapped for me

I did not use that service enough. I did find it pretty amusing that most every other digital service of any kind that I used tried to offer something similar. My Kobo erReader: What a bookish year it’s been! My Washington Post Newsprint: What’s your reader type? My Starbucks year in review? I’m not even kidding! Look back at your Starbucks routine!

I mean…

YouTube Music had enough data to cobble something together for me. Apparently the song I listened to those most on that service last year was…

“Anti-hero” by Taylor Swift!

So, I guess I did join in on the bandwagon for the most dominant music artist of last year, albeit with a song she released in 2022.

I also listened to 1989 (Taylor’s version) on Apple Music. I couldn’t tell much difference between that and the original 1989 (which I own).

Last.fm informed me that the album I listened to most in 2023 was High Drama by Adam Lambert. And it actually was released in 2023! But as I’ve previously mentioned, it’s also an album of covers, so not truly new music.

Amazon didn’t inform me of this, but I suspect what I listened to most on its service was the Barbie soundtrack, also of 2023, but also mostly remakes of older songs. Mind you, I like the originals as well: “What Was I Made for” by Billie Eilish (again!) and of course, “I’m just Ken”.

And probably the first full album I listened to on Apple Music was Dolly Parton’s Rockstar. Yep, if you were release a covers of older songs in 2023, I was listening to it. (Though Dolly did write some originals for the album, as well, and some of those are pretty good, too.)

Such as also, the TransCanada Highwaymen’s 2023 album of covers, which also doubled as a tribute to K-Tel records, Explosive Hits! And Elisapie’s lovely Inuktitut version of popular songs, also previously mentioned.

Now, I did purchase Amanda Marshall’s 2023 album, Heavy Lifting, after seeing her in concert, and also gave a listen to The Rolling Stones new Hackney Diamonds album, which is also quite good. And I no doubt caught a few other new songs here and there, but I’m unable to get specific about that.

My 2023 year in music might best be summarized as reuse and recycle.