The College Years Music List and the Digital Age

Derek Powazek recently wrote about his college years playlist:

My playlist turned out to be 9 gigs of awesome and embarrassing musical throwbacks, heavy on the early hiphop and flannel rock. It’s kept me smiling all week.

I went through the steps he listed, and weirdly, the vast majority of the music I found was not my “college years” music. Most of my college music was electronica from the early 90s and gothy rock music from the late 90s, both genres I really got into in college. A lot of the music unearthed by Powazek’s idea was indy rock and hip hop that I got into after I graduated.

Some of this can be attributed to my tastes in music, which swing wildly through genres and eras every year or so. But a lot of this can be attributed to the changes in music acquisition that were already occurring when I was in college: what I could discover and get into wasn’t remotely restricted to what was popular more broadly.

This isn’t remotely profound; it is however moderately interesting.