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musical chairs

The Horn Bearer, Part 2

Apple music has an automatically generated playlist called For You that (from what we can understand by using it) is based on two things:

  • Artists whose music you’ve added to your library
  • Artists you’ve listened to as a result of search or some other non-Apple-curated function

Interestingly, it doesn’t matter whether you’ve ever listened to the music by those artists. If you add an album to listen to later, but never actually play it, this album will figure into your For You playlist at least until you remove it.

More interestingly, it doesn’t matter whether the digital entity it adds to your playlist is a song.

In my case, For You included a track called The Horn Bearer Part 2.

Melvins released the cd and digital editions of their album “The Maggot” with all songs split into two tracks.  And playing the album in entirety, it sounds continuous, and the listener hears the entire songs as intended.

Apple put a song by them from that album that I like very much – The Horn Bearer – into my playlist. But they didn’t put the whole song in.

Just the fragment called “Track 12 The Horn Bearer Part 2.”

That’s not a song, but Apple Music would never know the difference. But to the listener it’s a song that starts in the middle. An error. A glitch.

By design, because the customer is not me, and the purpose isn’t listening. The purpose is encouraging consumption, and the customer is the catalog provider and Apple.