Announcing "Hear Me Out", an IRL Music Discovery Club!

In our increasingly algorithm-driven world, we often define smooth experiences as those which give us what we’ll like without us having to search. It’s nice that you can open Netflix, and find something to watch without leaving the landing page. Nice that we now rarely venture past the first page of search results page on Google. Nice that your “For You” page really and truly does feel like it’s for You. The same goes for music discovery. Spotify seems to always know the right song to queue up next. We all subscribe to the same music newsletters and IG accounts. We’re all excited about the same artists blowing up on TikTok.

Algorithms are fine when looking for things we’ll like, but we still venture out into the real world to discover things to love. We line up outside new restaurants and coffee shops to try new foods, and clear our evenings to go to movie premieres. We go to mixers, try speed dating and join run clubs to find romance. We travel to new places where few look like us and fewer can understand us, to find new parts of ourselves. We do these things while assuming the risk of failure, challenge and disappointment, because deep down we know that the things we love will not come find us; that true discovery, and growth comes when we’re active participants, and not passengers in our discovery. Why shouldn’t music discovery be the same?

We often laud our algorithms for guessing right about us and what we’ll like, but what we don’t realize is that the algorithms we’ve “built brick by brick” have walled us into a comfort zone. In the interest of keeping our scrolls endless, our algorithms will please, but never surprise or challenge us. We know that true discovery is a journey. How do we wrest the reins from the algorithms, reclaiming the joy that only a detour can bring?

This is a longwinded way to say that it’s time to take music discovery back from the bots. So I’m starting Hear Me Out, an irl music discovery club that facilitates being challenged, being surprised. I’m asking each participant to pull up with a single song to share. It can be any genre, but it has to be by someone you think more people need to know about, whether they’re on some kind of come up, or were overlooked by history. We’ll experience all this music together, and talk about it. No guarantees you’ll hear something you like, but you will definitely leave challenged, and maybe even surprised once or twice.

Come through to Vowels (76 Bowery) this Thursday, November 6th for the first meeting! As per usual, it’s completely free, just bring yourself, some music to share, and an open mind!

RSVP here! I hope to see you there!

I’m Ebrima, and this has been Edited for Brevity.