Music Used To Unite Us... Now It Sorts Us - Undividing #26
Streamers, music as a coping tool, genre police, and headphones.
Welcome to Undividing where we are reconnecting a divided world
Hey there all,
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Like I wrote last week, I swapped my gym visits to classes instead of the weights room. I found weights a pretty lonely experience. Yesterday, I had to pop back in the room to do an exercise on a machine in there and the thing that struck me was this: 50% of the room had headphones on.
Everyone working out in their own little audio worlds.
But also last week I wrote a Note about a concert I went to in LA ten years ago. When it was over and the lights came up, they played the song “Africa” by Toto. What shocked the room was that everyone there knew the words. We all sang it to each other full voice, every generation, every walk of life. It turned into a spontaneous choir moment of everyone singing and dancing together. Even the band came back out, jumped into the crowd, and joined in.
These two extremes got me thinking: in a divided world, is music connecting us? Or just helping us escape each other?
Let’s get undividing!
Music is our first language
Before we had alphabets, we had rhythms. Before we had borders, we had songs. Music was our way to gather and celebrate. To connect.
In ancient societies, music was an intrinsic part of ritual. Drums echoed through initiation rites. Chants and song accompanied birth, harvest, and burial. Even solo players or singers were lifted by the group clapping in rhythm or stamping their feet. These rituals were the culture. Every village in every society had a musical heartbeat.
The collective power of music is in our DNA. Every great movement and era has had a soundtrack that defined its mood and mission.
Fast forward to now, and music still brings us together, but mostly at scale. People gather at music festivals like they are pilgrimages: Glastonbury in the UK, Coachella in California, Primavera in Spain. People cry. They rejoice. They leave saying, “It felt like church.” The concert has become like the modern day cathedral and the act of singing along together is the communion.
But the sheer costs of concert tickets and festival burn-out mean less of us are able to commune together under a groove. When I see a favourite artist touring Berlin with ticket prices that start at €79 for standing, I’m often leaving tickets in the basket.
So for most of us in 2025, music is no longer a communal act. It’s a private one. We listen through earbuds. We curate playlists in isolation. The glow of the fire that we all used to dance around together as the music played is now the glow of a screen that we silently scroll through.
The algorithmic soundtrack of our lives
Way back when iTunes first launched, a friend of mine was working at Apple. He said he couldn’t wait to see what happened when a new generation grows up with every song in the world available to them.
He was thinking about how there would be less of a hierarchy around good and bad music based on when it came out. He thought it would mean that quality music of every era would rise to the surface. It actually caused a non-ironic revival of the career of Phil Collins like this Guardian article from 16 years ago talks about.
Streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube Music have fundamentally changed how we consume music; mostly not in the way my friend imagined. These platforms offer unprecedented access and the illusion of infinite choice. But in reality, our choices are filtered by algorithms trained on our preferences, habits, and moods.
Discover Weekly, Release Radar, and personalized “Made for You” mixes feed us a constant diet of what we already like. Convenient, yes, but also isolating. We’re building musical echo chambers—unintentionally walling ourselves off from surprise, friction, and the tastes of others.
Where we once bonded over the same songs on the radio or MTV, or had listening parties for a new album by a favourite band, now our listening lives are pretty fragmented.
Even global megahits are algorithmically invisible; I’d never heard of Bad Bunny till he turned up in the Brad Pitt movie Bullet train. When I googled him, I discovered he was the most streamed artist on Spotify. I clearly lived in a very different Spotify neighbourhood.
We’re streaming more than ever. But are we feeling more?
For most of human history, music was something you did—not something you downloaded. And it’s created a world where we have fewer shared cultural references.
In fact, music’s main role for most of us has become personal mood regulation. In one way it always has been. I’d put on The Cure in my bedroom as a kid when I wanted to be all emo in the corner. Or I’d hand a CD I’d burned of road trip tracks to the driver to slide into the player when we hit the highway with friends.
But the way that streaming has altered music use is to create a new music industry of mood creation/coping tools—background noise for productivity, sleep, anxiety. And almost always consumed alone. I totally get the use of these. When I write, I alternate between Coffee Shop Sounds (literally a recording of the noise in a coffee shop) and a Focus Beats playlist. The music itself is nothing that you’d would have rushed out to buy the album of.
This, by far, is the majority of my music diet. And I don’t love that that’s true. However, at the end of the work day, and while I”m cooking dinner, I always put on vinyl. The intentionality of this is something that always gives me a thrill. It’s on in the background but now is something I’m connecting to and communing with even while I do other things.
We seem to have misplaced what music was. Music, once an action, feels mostly now like a product.
Headphones as the new Do Not Disturb sign
Like I mentioned in the intro, wearing large over-ear headphones like so many at my gym has become increasingly prevalent in recent years. This phenomenon isn't just about audio quality or fashion. It reflects deeper societal shifts toward personal space and social non-interaction.
Wearing large headphones sends a message; the wearer is not open to social engagement. Public spaces, once hubs of spontaneous interaction, are now filled with individuals immersed in their private audio worlds.
It’s given rise to a new term “audio bubbles”- the personal soundscapes people create using headphones, especially with the advent of noise-canceling technology, allowing folks to curate their own audio landscapes that have very little connection to the real world.
And maybe a way to not connect at all. Whole genres of music are even catering for this now. Play Lo-fi please Mr DJ.
The Lo-Fi Liferaft
Lo-fi beats. Ambient soundscapes. Rainfall with jazz chords. These genres dominate YouTube, Spotify, and TikTok in quiet, omnipresent ways. The playlists often feature anime loops, pixel art, or cozy rooms in perpetual dusk.
Lo-fi Girl is a massive channel on YouTube. Again, not music in the traditional sense but mood companions, and she is without doubt the biggest in the genre—to the tune of 14.9 million subscribers and now a record label. The explosion of lo-fi reflects a desire not for connection, but for soothing. A buffer. A balm. Something to accompany solitude without demanding anything in return.
It’s beautiful in its way. But it raises the question: are we listening to avoid silence, or to avoid each other?
Because Lo-fi isn’t inherently isolating, but the solo way we consume it is and it mirrors a broader trend. We’re using music not to connect, but to cope.
And this is where I think there’s a fundamental shift in music—it’s about not having a reaction to it.
Music, identity, lines, and bridges
Belonging is another way we cope with the world. So often, the group we belong to and the opinions we therefore hold are how people construct their entire idea of identity. Music is deeply tied to identity. And identity in 2025, as we know so well, is often divisive.
Studies have shown that musical preferences in the U.S. can reliably predict political leanings. Country music tends to skew conservative. Hip-hop and R&B lean progressive. Even classical and jazz show different affinities across class and region.
But these genre boundaries don’t just reflect identity, they reinforce it. They wall it off. They dictate who “belongs” where. Case in point, the controversy over Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road”—the song became a lightning rod for race, genre, and country music itself. Lil Nas X is a Black artist whose song blended trap and country and it topped the Country Billboard charts for a week… before Billboard quietly removed it from the country category after an outpouring of complaints from Nashville.
But it brought up a lot of interesting questions.
What constitutes country music? (Or any genre of music?)
Who decides that?
Who enforces it and how?
Even the last Grammys where Beyoncé won the Country Album of the Year caused similar ripples. How “country” the album was, was debated. One thing I read about the reaction against it, was that she wasn’t a country artist. Which again brings up questions of how much time do you have to serve, and even where do you have to come from to be legit in a genre?
And what is genre anyway? One of the most vital trends in music is genre-blending. Artists like Rosalia, Burna Boy, BTS, and Bad Bunny are mixing languages, traditions, and rhythms in ways that aren’t just defying borders but injecting a whole new life into the musical landscape.
Rosalia fuses flamenco with trap. Burna Boy merges Afrobeat with global pop. BTS layers Korean lyrics over EDM and R&B beats that echo the American '90s. These artists have built global fanbases not despite their cultural complexity, but because of it.
It’s evolution. And also shows that music doesn’t have to affirm our tribes. It can rewire them, expand them, and bring different peoples together to sing one song.
Everybody, sing!
Despite the isolation of streaming, divisions around genres, and the mass prevalence of headphones, a counter-movement is emerging—one that seeks to bring people back into the act of making music, not just consuming it.
Community choirs are surging in popularity. Groups like “Everybody Sing” in New York, or “The Choir with No Name” in the UK, create no-audition spaces where joy is far more important than talent. People join to perform, but bigger than that, to belong.
The Gaia Music Collective is another great example - a non denominational singing group in NYC. In Undividing #22 where we all wrote together about peace making processes, music came up often.
So to wrap up this week, let’s talk about ways we can use music to start reconnecting us again.
Five ways to undivide with music
Host a listening party: Pick a theme. Invite people to bring one song/album. Share why it moves you. Discuss, reflect, connect. If you’ve got vinyl, read the liner notes.
Take a musical holiday: Spend one week listening only to music from a country you want to visit.
Join a community choir: Don’t worry about being “good.” The act of making music together is the point.
Send a song instead of a text: Next time you want to check on someone, send them a track that says what words can’t.
Create a collaborative playlist: Build a shared soundtrack with a friend, partner, or team. Pick the vibe/theme and let everyone drop their faves in.
Share a playlist
This week, I’ve got a thread going where you can drop in a personally created playlist. I’ve put one in that I stretch to in the morning. 147 songs compiled over five years. Share your playlist here:
Play me a song
Music is still one of the few things we feel in our bodies, share without needing language, and remember long after memory fades.
Music doesn’t just entertain us. It organizes us. Moves us. Undivides us—if we let it.
Streamers aren’t going anywhere, they have become the way that millions of us consume music. But it’s how we do it that can turn music into a wall or a bridge.
So while we need music to buck us up, to speak for us, to cope with the world, we can choose for music to also connect us, find common dialogue, and get in touch with that bigger part of our humanity that we all share.
And have shared since as long as we could make music.
Let me know your thoughts on this week in the comments. And your favourite artists! And also any points about music and how we use it today that I didn’t cover here.
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And that brings us to the end of Undividing #26.
Till Thursday when we do the next Emotions Diary, let’s move through this world undividing, and see what this planet can do.
Karl
Interesting thoughts. In my teenage years, I connected a lot with music, as if someone out there understood me and knew how I felt via my interpretation of their music. I also actively play the guitar, even writing my own songs. When I consume something a lot, I also need to create and output with it.
Luckily, nowadays, I still have the connection (and output) via reading and writing.
As for the headphones to tune out the outside world, sometimes we need them. I use earplugs for it. Immersing ourselves fully in the environment noise, sound and chatter are not necessarily connection; one may feel even more isolated by it—language barriers, sound pollution, trauma-triggering noises.
But of course, having huge earphones around your head might keep people away. Discreet earplugs or earbuds could be better. When someone engages with me, I just need to pop one out, smile, and say, "Sorry, what did you say, again?" And that might be the start of a connection.
In the country where I live, you see Bad Bunny even in soup... And it doesn't matter if you bring a paper bag or headphones... there will always be someone who will talk to you :) :D I always look for music from other languages and countries...