On Music

October 11th, 2026

I've always enjoyed listening to music. It was never really a problem until middle school, when I was gifted an iPod nano.

Suddenly, I no longer had to wait to be in front of a computer to listen to music. I could listen anywhere. On the bus, in between class, while doing homework.

It took me until college to take a step back and realize what I was doing. Music, like any other sensory input, is some form of stimuli. Perhaps the spectrum is something like this:

<- [negative stimuli] ---- [    neutral stimuli    ] ---- [positive stimuli] ->
<- [ songs we hate  ] ---- [songs we don't care for] ---- [ songs we love  ] ->

However, I'm fairly certain the spectrum has extended in magnitude in both directions. Looking back in history, the progression of music has been something like this:

• [pre-1877] live music
• [1877-1920] Edison creates phonograph; recorded sound
• [1920-1950] radio
• [1950-1979] stereo
• [1979-1990] Sony's Walkman
  • This is a crazy jump. We can now listen to music in-ear wherever we are.
• [1990-2007] mp3-players, iPod, wired headphones
  • A gradual, but steep jump. Headphone quality and audio quality increased.
• [2007-present] on-demand streaming, algorithmic recommendations, wireless headphones
  • Another crazy jump. We can listen to any song ever recorded in history. We can listen on headphones with teams of engineers maximizing the potential for positive stimuli. And we can have an algorithm forever recommend us new songs that we'd enjoy.

So it really hasn't been that long since people started walking around playing things in their ears. This is a somewhat sobering fact. I wonder how many conversations, people, or thoughts I've neglected in favor of this slight dopaminergic boost.

I don't know if it's possible or necessary to write off music entirely, but I also don't know if "everything in moderation" is as easy as it sounds anymore. Regardless, I'd probably be better off listening to silence more often.