CREAM: Listen Beyond the Algorithm

Today, virtually all the music ever made is within reach. Music from Lagos and Tokyo, from the 1960s and from last week; obscure jazz, Arabic pop, electronic music, chansons, punk and Bach, everything is available within seconds. And yet our musical world risks becoming smaller. Streaming services have become remarkably good at knowing what we like. Algorithms analyse what we listen to and give us more of the same. If you like this, you will probably like that. Convenient, certainly. But discovery works differently.

The interesting part often begins with something you didn’t know you would like. A voice in a language you don’t understand. A song from fifty years ago that suddenly sounds completely contemporary. An unknown artist from South America next to a European classic or experimental electronics. Not because a computer calculated that they belong together, but because someone heard a connection.

That is precisely the idea behind CREAM, the independent radio station I founded together with Leon Ramakers.

It began with my own playlist: an enormous collection of music in which everything existed side by side — different countries, periods, languages and genres, the familiar and the unknown. There was no logic behind it other than that I thought the music was good. In retrospect, that playlist already contained the idea of what CREAM should become.

Music curator Merijn Tiemissen has since refined and vastly expanded that foundation. He is constantly searching for new music and making combinations you would not necessarily expect. The principle remains the same: no boundaries between genres, countries, languages or generations.

CREAM does not want to predict what you want to hear. We want to play something you didn’t yet know you wanted to hear. A familiar song can sit effortlessly beside an obscure discovery from another part of the world; music from fifty years ago beside something released last month. Sometimes the transition feels inevitable, sometimes it rubs. That friction is part of what makes listening interesting.

Dutch radio icon Frits Spits is involved with CREAM as an ambassador and advisor. Throughout his career, he has demonstrated what radio can be when music is selected and presented with knowledge, attention and curiosity.

Luister Verder (Listen Further) is our motto. It does not simply mean to listen longer. It means: listen beyond what you know. Beyond your generation, your language, your country and perhaps even your own taste. For me, this is also where radio can once again play an interesting role. Not as an endless stream of hits determined by market research. Nor as background music designed above all not to disturb.

Radio can be a curator. Someone who says: listen to this. And now listen to this. Perhaps you won’t like it. Perhaps you will discover something you never forget. I am not saying we should abolish the algorithm. But we should be careful not to outsource our curiosity to it. Taste does not develop simply by receiving more and more of what we already like. It develops through encounters with the unknown.

The whole world is already there.

Luister verder.

Renny Ramakers