Week 3 Post: Don't Judge a Person by their Playlist

I don’t think my iTunes library of more than 4,500 songs tells you who I am. I don’t even listen to half of the songs. Some of them are from old CDs I got when I was younger and I loaded them onto iTunes because I’m a sentimental sap. Sure, what I just said tells you something about my music collection, but I had to explain it. I think in my case Levy’s (2006) notion that a person’s playlist is a “rich personal narrative” doesn’t apply. Furthermore, I think my playlist is none of your business.

Who will win: The L train iPod wars. Read Trace Crtuchfield's encounter (from Levy's reading) here.
Image source: http://www.brooklynrail.org/article_image/image/1583/STREETS-iPodWars.jpg

My reluctance to share music stems from an incident when I was in grade 10 and had recently acquired my first iPod. I shared what I was listening to with a girl in my class and she essentially told me it was rubbish. This reflects Dr Jennifer Hartstein’s statement that sharing playlists is risky because, “It might let you learn more about me than I want you to” (quoted in Levy 2006, 37). Since then it seems I made a subconscious rule to only share music with close friends who I know have similar musical tastes and only “like” the pages of mainstream acts on Facebook.

I’m not employing “impression management” (Goffman quoted in Levy 2006, 36). I’m just trying to get by without being emotionally lynched for the tunes filling my little white ear buds. 

Reference List

Levy, Steven. 2006. “Identity” in The perfect thing: How the iPod shuffles commerce, culture and coolness, 21 – 41. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks. Accessed on March 20, 2011. https://cmd.library.qut.edu.au/KCB201/KCB201_BK_272671.pdf