Music Curation vs. Algorithm: Which is Better?
Algorithms find music you’ll like. Curators find music you’ll feel. A music curator on why depth needs a human, and where the algorithm still earns its spot.
SELECTOR'S NOTES
Dakota Nash
10/28/20265 min read
The Short Answer
The algorithm is great at finding music you’ll like. A curator is how you find music you’ll feel. If all you want is a steady stream of songs that fit your taste, the algorithm will do the job. If you want depth, the kind of listening that stays with you, changes your taste, and connects you to other people, you need a human.
I run The Listening Room, a music club and curated music newsletter that’s really about the people you share it with. I’ve spent a lot of time on both sides of this question, as someone who leans on streaming apps every week and as someone who hand-builds playlists for people.
Here’s what I’ve learned.
The Song My Algorithm Would Never Have Sent Me
My Friend Was Sitting on Her Taste
One of my favorite songs ever was sent to me by my really good friend Bri: “Hush” by Magic City Hippies.
I’ll be honest. My algorithm would never have served me that song. I’m obsessive about pop music, and my streaming app knows it, so it keeps feeding me more of what I already love. Then Bri sent “Hush,” and it took me on a whirlwind. The way Magic City Hippies blend different music styles cracked my taste wide open.
It was one of the first times someone shared a song with me and my reaction was: wait, my friend has been sitting on this taste the whole time?
Why hasn’t she been sharing it with me?
A Song That Comes With a Person
Now, every time “Hush” plays, I think of Bri. She didn’t just recommend a track. She made a fan out of me.
That’s the difference in one moment. An algorithm gives you a song. A person gives you a song plus a memory of who handed it to you. That memory is what makes a song stick, and it’s what turns music into a relationship instead of a soundtrack.
Where the Algorithm Actually Wins
My Real Listening Workflow
Let’s be fair to the algorithm. I use it every week, and it’s genuinely useful.
My workflow looks like this:
I hear a song out in the wild, in a cafe, in a movie, or in a random moment where a lyric, melody, or a drop stops me in my tracks.
I Shazam it right away. Those songs live on what I call my “5 Second Moment” playlist.
I take that track into my streaming app and build a station or radio off it to find more music like it.
Sometimes that pays off, and there are real surprises. If you want an endless supply of likeable music in a genre you already enjoy, the algorithm is fast, convenient, and never runs out.
Where the Algorithm Falls Short
It Sorts by Genre, Not Feeling
Here’s the catch. The station I built off my Shazam find almost always drifts back toward artists with bigger stream counts. It doesn’t chase the feeling that song gave me. It chases the genre, and whatever is performing best statistically inside that genre.
The algorithm is built to give you what it thinks you’ll like, filtered through what’s already popular. It reads genre well. It doesn’t read mood, emotion, or the specific moment that made you reach for your phone.
It Keeps You in Your Bubble
The longer you let the algorithm drive, the smaller your musical world gets. My pop obsession is a perfect example: left alone, my streaming app would have kept me there forever.
It Turns Music Into Background Noise
When I start hearing the same songs over and over, that’s where it really loses me. There’s no intentional discovery and no story. It’s just a song playing while you do the dishes or answer emails, never really listened to and sat with.
How a Curator Listens Differently
Feeling and Storytelling Come First
When I build a TLR Session, I’m not just picking five songs. I’m listening for feeling and storytelling, the two things an algorithm can’t measure.
Sometimes there’s a theme that flows through all five songs, and sometimes there isn’t. More importantly, every song has a story behind why I chose it. Each one has an intentional place, and that’s what makes it feel special.
What I Weigh Every Time I Curate
Order matters. Five songs can carry a full emotional arc. I sequence them almost like a DJ set, where each track sets up the next.
Some songs are the supporting cast. A track might make the cut because it vibes with the main song, the one that inspired the whole Session.
Some songs deserve their own moment. Not every great track belongs in an arc. Some are meant to be shared in a different way, on their own.
Album tracks are a real tension. I love album listening, so I’m often tempted to pull a song straight from an album I’m obsessed with. But a Session needs songs that stand on their own and still tell a concise story.
Pushing Listeners Out of Their Comfort Zone
I deliberately choose songs that might feel outside a listener’s comfort zone. My favorite example is I Hate Models, an artist with a reputation for hard techno.
Instead of dropping that track in cold, I placed it inside TLR Session No. 005 and that arc moved through house, groovy techno, and hard house before landing in bass.
In that context, it didn’t feel like a jump scare. It felt like the natural next step.
An algorithm is designed to avoid songs you might skip. A curator can put that exact song right where it will land the hardest.
Proof From the Listening Room
A Roomie’s Delightful Surprise
I don’t just believe this works. My subscribers, who we call Roomies, have told me.
After that I Hate Models Session, one Roomie replied to say she didn’t expect that from them, and it was a delightful surprise. That’s exactly the reaction I curate for. Not “I already knew this,” but “I didn’t know I’d love this.”
When a Guest Curator Stretched Me
Session No. 010 was our first guest-curated Session, put together by my homegirl Naomi. She told me how hard it was to narrow everything down to only five songs. She also wanted to surprise me as a guest curator by pulling music from her own library that would make me think differently.
She did. Hip hop isn’t one of my favorite genres, but being exposed to it through her picks is helping me develop my own personal taste. It was the Bri moment all over again, in a totally different genre.
Curation Runs Both Directions
This is something an algorithm can’t replicate. Human curation is a two-way street. The curator stretches the listener, and the listener can turn around and stretch the curator. Every song shared becomes a small act of connection between two people.
The Verdict: Curation or Algorithm?
For Depth, You Need the Human
For depth, the answer is human curation. The essence of the curator is to create resonance. A curator slows people down and brings feeling, emotion, intuition, and the finesse no recommendation engine can fake.
The Algorithm as a Tool, Not a Guide
The algorithm still has a role. It’s good at finding likeable music that matches a genre. Used as a tool alongside your own curation, it might even be the sweet spot: let the algorithm widen the pool, and let your taste decide what’s worth sitting with.
Where Can You Actually Go Deep?
As more people push back on AI and automated everything, the real question isn’t which tool finds more songs. It’s where you can actually go deep. Not wide. Deep. That’s the space a curator holds, and it’s the space I built The Listening Room to protect.
My Dare to You
If you want to stop listening passively starting tonight, here’s my dare.
Sign up for TLR Sessions, or browse the Sessions archive, and listen to just one Session. Do it uninterrupted and with intention. No scrolling, no multitasking, no background noise.
Each Session is a micro playlist. It isn’t asking for hours of your day. It’s short, sweet, and to the point, with a specific feeling and a story to tell.
Press play. Turn the volume up. Listen like you mean it. Then notice who comes to mind, and send them a song.