Instagram is a great way to socialise with the least amount of effort.
Or sometimes, no effort at all.
I think I am one of those marketers who hates social media for being used exactly the way it is intended to be used. Trending audio, trending formats, trending everything. A weird algorithm telling you what people are watching, liking, saving, copying, repeating.
But what about the other side of it?
What about following the people, voices, moods, songs, scenes, and little corners of the internet that you actually like?
Maybe that is the real algorithm.
Finding something that was already there, something you somehow knew existed, but not in what form.
Instagram is for finding music
My favourite part of Instagram is finding new music.
Not always the popular songs. Sometimes it is an audio with only a few hundred reels on it, hidden somewhere between a movie edit, a rainy-window quote, or someone’s very dramatic aesthetic post.
And honestly, I like it more when those songs are still hidden gems.
I don’t want all of them to become popular, because then maybe they stop feeling personal.
If something becomes relatable to everyone, does it still feel relatable to one person?
I don’t know.
Maybe that sounds a bit narcissistic. Or maybe that is just how art works.
Art is specific. It reaches different people in different ways. Take songs, for example. Some people understand the lyrics. Some understand the emotion. Some notice the didgeridoo in Jaane Kyun from Dil Chahta Hai. Some get stuck on Alka Yagnik’s vocals. Some remember where they were when they first heard a song.
And some people don’t even know why they like it.
They just do.
About You by The 1975
Take About You by The 1975.
Some people connect it with edits of a beautiful movie like 18×2 Beyond Youthful Days. Some connect it with a memory they want to erase. Some listen to it and feel as if one of their many parallel lives is quietly playing in the background.
And some…
like me…
just happen to experience all of these at once when this song plays.
That is the strange thing about music. A song is never just a song after a point. It becomes a small place. A small room. A memory you may or may not have lived.
And then one day, Instagram casually throws it in front of you.
Like it knew.
This is what I call accidental playlists
You might have seen those reels where a beautiful movie scene plays in the background. Or there is a quote on screen. Or someone has stitched together a few seconds of silence, nostalgia, heartbreak, and magical background music.
You do not search for the song.
You do not plan to like it.
You do not even know what you are looking for.
And then suddenly, there it is.
That is what I call an accidental playlist.
It is not a playlist you created intentionally. It is a playlist life keeps building for you in small, random, passive ways. One reel at a time. One song at a time. One strange feeling at a time.
And somehow, this passive discovery has become part of my day-to-day life.
I guess.
How unique is my music taste?
Hahaha.
Well, asking that question could be narcissistic.
But what can we do? We are all the protagonists of our own lives. So, of course, at some point, I wanted to know: how good is my music taste?
Not bad.
Good.
How good is it?
There are websites like musictaste.space that try to judge your music taste through Spotify. But I use YouTube Music, so I was left with my own self-assessment, which is obviously very reliable and not biased at all.
Maybe I should switch to something more retro now.
CDs. Cassettes. Maybe even a Walkman.
I still remember listening to Adnan Sami songs on a CD Walkman while riding my cycle. That memory has a sound of its own. Slightly dusty roads, earphones that probably did not fit properly, and a song that made the world feel more cinematic than it actually was.
Maybe that is why I still like finding music accidentally.
Because sometimes a song does not only play.
It returns something.
