I use Spotify primarily for listening to wordless music while I work, and it does a pretty great job of recommending things I will want to listen to.

Except that there seems to be a trend (maybe it is over now? maybe these are just sonic echoes of a thankfully bygone era?) of digital music composers ruining their music with snippets from Alan Watts admonishing us to not take things for granted, or marvel at the mystery of experience, or only do things we enjoy doing.

I’m not sure if the Spotify algorithm thinks I like the Alan Watts stuff, or if it just crops up so frequently in the type of music I do want to listen to that it is unavoiable.

When I click the button to tell Spotify “I don’t like this song” and it says “Okay, we won’t recommend things like this again” does it understand that by “things like this” I just mean “songs with Alan Watts”, literally just that?

You see my dilemma.