Stir Crazy!

Let me know if you can relate to this...

You throw on your Spotify playlist before you get into whatever it is you got to do. As the music plays in the background, you realize that your playlist is kind of tired. You’re hearing the same few songs over-and-over again. You might have a bunch of artists on your playlist, but your player seems limited to just a few of the same songs from a tired catalog.

How about this one?

You add an artist to your playlist, and suddenly you start hearing songs and getting suggestions for music genres and styles that have NOTHING to do with your real music tastes. It’s almost like they’re trying to shove some of that stuff into your ears, like it or not.

So, we’ve been told how this works right? These music services are supposed to be working on these “algorithms,” that operate off of some sort of AI, where the music gods try to figure us out and offer all the things we like. Does that really happen though?

Check this out: Did you know that Apple Music just celebrated a major milestone in October of 2022, where they have streamed 100 MILLION SONGS!!!

Okay, I know a lot of those songs are songs that most of us would never want to hear. BUT, if our playlists are only cycling through the same 40 songs or so, doesn’t it seem like there’s some sort of weakness in this service? Think about how much NEW music your playlists offer to you, that you actually like. And I mean like, new music, from new artists, where their stuff is fire that you’re actually excited about.

You might not think about these things very often. We’ve learned that music is REALLY important to some people, but not so much to others; and that’s okay. Well, for those of us who obsess over this – whether that’s right or wrong isn’t really the issue – we’ve started to really put some thought into this, because we’re starting to get a little stir crazy!

The music distributors we rely on to get new music for our DJ sets, tend to push the same artists, the same labels, and even sometimes, the same songs on their top charts, “hidden gems” charts, and so forth. These guys are getting HUNDREDS of songs uploaded a day. Some from new artists. Some from new labels. Yet, we see the same faces and names on the marketing emails, IG feeds, and website home pages. There are just too many people out there, a lot of them making REALLY good music, for these guys to take the lazy approach in how they expose us to new jams. We’re fiends for change and variety. If you’re anything like us, you might be getting a tad bit frustrated with how music is curated to us, wondering how to access more variety. While we can’t fix the problem altogether, we can do as much as we can – and that’s what we’re all about here…

The truth is, it’s hard to search through the volumes of music that’s out there, and weed through to find the good stuff. While Apple was proud to announce their feat of 100 million songs, I think we all know that a lot of that music was probably pretty wack compared to our personal tastes. Yes, a lot of people are making music, but they’re not all making good music. Even the dope producers miss every now and then. Knowing that, it takes time, and a WHOLE LOT of patience to get through all of the music that’s released to the world daily, and find new stuff, or even discover some good old stuff you missed.

Well, we’re here to try and help you out in that regard. We’re obviously not going to be able to get through “everything.” While we love music of all kinds, we’re also trying to lean into our real favorites, and share. We used to rely on radio to let us know about new artists, new music, and hoped they’d offer the variety that we dig. We used to rely on college stations and websites back in the day. If you’re like us and came from old school rave culture, we relied on DJs and record stores (I miss Melrose on Saturday mornings) to expose us to new and exciting things. Yeah, we had to manually switch out our cassettes and CD’s, but the stuff that we went through was legitimately diverse. We’re going to do the best we can to bring that back here.

If we just complained about how all these music services act a lot like the radio stations in different ways, we’d just be whining. So, we’re trying to respond and be productive. We’re trying to recognize how some people like us get a little stir crazy with the same stuff over-and-over, and we need change. We like new. We like variety. If you do too, get ready! We’re putting in a lot of time, a lot of energy, a lot of money, into diving WAY DEEP into the databases of electronic music, to share the diverse styles of music that move us. Hopefully this is helpful, not only to scratch your music-itch, but also helpful to some of these artists. A lot of us indie musicians get lost in the mix of abundant releases. We’re not the ones whose faces and names get pumped out constantly to your feeds. But we don’t suck either. So, hopefully we can all benefit as we – Bread & Beats Music – try to do our part. We’re talking BIG changes to the format of the Mixshow. More Vibe Time and Soundcloud DJ sets. More…

THEN, when you take that into account while also considering that we’re specifically curating legitimately-clean music, this could be a good thing for all of us. Clean music doesn’t just have to be the few songs that Christian radio feeds to us. Clean music certainly isn’t the “radio edit” of a vulgar song. We’re really hoping to serve y’all with variety of the good kind in our own little way. So please tune in with us. Share the music you hear if you dig it. Buy the music that moves you so folks can keep making it. And hey, if you know of some peeps that create music like the stuff you hear here, let us know who they are. Music should be a community in this sense, so let’s use what we got, to make this part of our lives a little better. Music matters.

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