Discussion questions for episodes 5 & 6

Episode 5

1. According to Krukowski, powerful decide which music gets to the top and which is rejected. In this statement, Krukowski means by influential music corporations decide which music might be a trend. The rest, as Krukowski says “the marginal-the rejected-the repressed,” end up in dollar baskets or disappeared at all. Nowadays, there are a lot of different music platforms that include a huge number of musical works. However, it is impossible to listen to them all at once. Thus, we choose music according to personal preferences or the one that may be popular. At the same time, promoting songs to the music charts is a power of money, since the music world is just a business. Unfortunately, other music projects rejecting due to lack of demand. However, sometimes happening that the music went underground because of the anarchic spirit of the lyrics. In those cases, it is called alternative art. This happens because of the resonant situation in the internal politics of a country.

2. Music distributor Forced Exposure offers over 50,000 pieces of music. Moreover, they write a detailed description of the proposed music album; indicating the direction of the music, the release date of the album and describe the content of the songs since they listen to each release. While the Spotify corporation uses an algorithm to calculate the listener’s musical preferences and play the recordings. The main purpose of Spotify is to let the listener hear the music that they are most likely to enjoy. However, Forced Exposure surprises with its variety in which you need to dig a little to find something new and completely different from the usual.

3. The difference between being “surprising” and “discovering” music is significant. For example, for Krukowski, discovering was the Ghost album he found in the Forced Exposure catalogue. This was not a surprise, but it was a discovering, as Krukowski heard amazing sounds that he had not heard before. At the same time, surprising is something unpredictable, something that may not meet our expectations. According to Krukowski, these concepts are important to corporations such as Facebook, Google, or Spotify because their main goal is to attract and engage more and more users around the world.

Episode 6

1. According to Krukowski, noise is all the sounds we hear, these sounds surround us. While the signal is a specific sound that we are trying to pick up with the neurons of our ears. Accordingly, capturing the signal, all other sounds are converted into noise.

2. The main idea of ​​this episode is the effect of the transition of noise and sound signals from analog to digital. According to Krukowski, analog sound is always accompanied by noise from which there is no escape. However, in digital sound, noise and signals are adjustable. Accordingly, it is possible to highlight or minimize this or that noise or signal. This ability to adjust noise and signals are very important in the present world as it allows us to find our sound and space.

3. The Signal & Noise episode can be the general as it covers up the main theme of the “Ways of Hearing” podcast. This podcast originally touches on the subject the sounds of analogue time and digital time. These differences are revealed precisely in the sixth episode where Krukowski explains the concept of noise and signal. As a true musician and writer, Krukowski extraordinarily connected the two genres and created an incredible and amazing podcast about the influence and differences between analog and digital time and their sounds.