In Defense Of The Digital Eavesdropper

In real life, I’m an inveterate eavesdropper. Even worse, I use my Notes app like a Gen-Z Harriet the Spy, writing snippets of overheard conversations.

A few recent entries –– a woman eating a grain bowl describes how her mother intentionally gave her the wrong address to a funeral: “Virgos can be so ugly.” Points to her chest. “In here.” A guy on the F train wearing an Oura ring shows his phone to his friend: “This is me at 20 making latkes in Spain. No identity, this guy.” Swipes to another photo. “This is my mom at 30 looking stunning.” A middle-aged couple walks on the Upper East Side at night, the husband yelling: “It’s ’cause you think I’m sleeping with her!”

It’s no surprise that my eavesdropping assumed a digital form when I became a Spotify user in 2019. Spotify is, first and foremost, a music-streaming platform, but it’s also a teeming fairground. It’s an ever-spawning organism, awash with user-generated playlists and profiles awaiting discovery. Sure, there are privacy settings –– cute fences you can erect around an account. But people tend not to shield themselves from roving eyes and ears. This is where the fun begins.

The power to access the soundtracks of strangers’ lives is dizzying. When I first started listening to strangers’ music, I stuck to playlists created by friends of friends or influencers I liked. At the start of quarantine, a college friend sent me a Reggaeton playlist made by someone she knew back home in Peru. The playlist’s steward, whom I’ll likely never meet, has updated it on a near-weekly basis for the past seven years. Thanks to him, my font of Luis Fonsi and J Balvin has never run dry.

Then there’s the virtual spyglass that is Spotify friend activity. This intrusive setting allows you to monitor the real-time listening of users you follow (I feel it’s my duty to remind you your streaming is visible unless you’ve turned off this feature).

Here are some things I’ve learned through friend activity: 1) The identity of a lifestyle vlogger’s long-distance boyfriend months before she announced their relationship (she was often listening to one of his playlists suggestively titled with her first initial). 2) A shocking number of people stream sleep soundtracks all night, leading me to wonder if their top-played track ends up being “10 Hour Box Fan (No Distractions).” 3) The people you know who make music tend to listen to their own music. It’s important to be your own biggest fan.

As a beneficiary of friend activity, I think it’s only fair I keep my listening public, even when I stream things like my Romantic Country Mix or the Jack Harlow episode of “Call Her Daddy.”

Spotify’s collection of random playlists can be a straightforward tool. Need some fresh running music? There’s a stranger’s playlist for every season and tempo. With their buoyant blend of 2010s pop hits and tame remixes, “Run Fast Kick Ass” and “No pain just vibes” have powered me through some serious mileage.

Things can get weirder very quickly. If you play a little free word association with the search bar, the results are intense. When I was testing how far this can go, I was spooked by a playlist called “dog sperm” and dismayed by the candid distress of one called “my parents broke me, gave me trauma & they’re not even aware.” (These feature a lot of indie rock and Kelly Clarkson, respectively.)

On Spotify, people post their break-up playlists. They post their quinceañera playlists. They post the official rave playlist for the brothers of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity at Indiana University Bloomington. And, of course, they post their sex playlists, which you can see, too, if you’re a freak. The funniest thing about these is how easy it is to figure out whom the users are having sex with. Sometimes, the lovers appear as playlist collaborators; other times, they’re named in the playlist title (“Sex with Pam,” or somesuch).

When it comes to these wilder finds, I’m generally not listening for the quality of the music. Often, I don’t listen at all –– just browse the song titles and imagine what kind of person might pair Colbie Caillat with Nine Inch Nails. It’s like seeing the contents of someone’s medicine cabinet or rolling away with the wrong shopping cart. The playlists are like artifacts –– strange, evocative, and sometimes a little dirty. To be fair, my astonishment at accessing strangers’ music reflects my general astonishment at social media. I’ve spent the last decade staying off platforms like Instagram and Facebook (yes, I am better than you, and no, my YouTube Shorts obsession doesn’t count). Still, there’s something uniquely intimate to knowing someone’s music taste, even more than seeing their vacation photo or their crying selfie. To be enveloped in the same melody makes you feel close to someone miles away –– or to someone you’ll never meet.

Spotify’s open browsing has led me down some backroads. While researching a political article, I came across what I believe to be the actual Spotify account of the former North Carolina Congressman Madison Cawthorn. He’s a MAGA conservative, who’s been suspected of insider trading and detained for bringing guns through airports on multiple occasions. (He’s also been charged with driving with an expired license and accused of sexual misconduct by several women with whom he attended college.) The Spotify account with his name is pretty much what you’d expect: some tough-guy country tracks from people like Brantley Gilbert and (unfortunately) my beloved Eric Church. But he’s also got a Halsey-focused playlist called “strong girly songs” and another peppy mix called “BAE DANCING.” Both titles make me curious about Cawthorn’s command of irony. Regardless, the profile lends some meager perspective: in addition to being an unsavory once politician, Cawthorn is also a millennial, a Nickelback fan, and someone’s ex-husband.

As more of our music listening is dictated by algorithms (or worse, an AI DJ), I think there’s promise in submitting one’s ear to an online stranger. I won’t overstate things: most of the time, I listen to my own music library or those of people I care about. But the reserve of strangers’ tunes is a valuable resource. It’s like Borges’ “Library of Babel” or the Hall of Prophecy in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. There’s always more to discover, always something stranger than expected. Best of all, you can wear your own earbuds.