Why are the same songs playing everywhere?

WITHat first I thought it was a coincidence. Last summer I was sitting on the terrace of a café in Berlin-Kreuzberg. A song that I knew, a classic, boomed inside. The strange thing was that I’d been listening to it a lot lately. And the song that followed, not a classic, either. I tried to guess which one would run next. It ran as the next but one. Did someone gain access to one of my playlists?

More likely: a coincidence. The fact that music that I listen to privately is played in the cafes and bars in Berlin is ultimately one of the reasons I go to them. But for some time now the same songs have seemed to impose themselves again and again – new and old, boring and beautiful, in a similar order, always with a high frequency. I suspected it might have something to do with the app that I use to listen to music for about as long as I live in this city, with Spotify.

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