Spotify Doesn’t Know Who You Are
It’s okay if you’ve listened to Steely Dan 42,031 times this year. Really.
Updated at 4:40 p.m. ET on November 30, 2023
When I think of last year, I hear “Northeast Texas Women,” by Willis Alan Ramsey. I’ve carried it with me since my father played it in the car in January 2022, him drumming the steering wheel and me the dashboard. Our windows were open to the desert outside, the air all sagebrush and sunburnt dirt. I was nostalgic for the moment even as I lived it, five minutes and 51 seconds of country music in the Mojave.
But to Spotify, my favored music-streaming app, this was nothing more than a single “play,” just one data point among countless others. When
