She rises slowly. Eyes partially opened, encrusted with exhaustion from last night’s soccer practice, followed by hours of tedious trigonometry. She leans over to glance at the alarm clock and puts a sudden halt to “Chariots Of Fire,” or Shakira’s “Whenever Wherever” — two songs she loves until they bark at her to wake up. It’s Monday, so no late start.

Today, school begins at 7:12 AM. But it’s only 6:15, which means she has 15 more minutes, 900 precious seconds to remain curled up and keep dreaming, either about Miles Teller—and how perfect they’d be together, considering she’s an “honorary bro” like Mackenzie Davis, his on-screen soul mate in the romantic-comedy That Awkward Moment—or how she plans to prove being ginger is a race in her college essay, so her parents will have to drive eight hours to visit their only child at Stanford.

The second rude awakening comes from her dad, who emphasizes the fact that she now has a solid seven minutes to get dressed and to school on time. She grunts and throws off the covers. As she places her feet on the ground she can’t help but crack a smile as, true to form, “Let It Go,” the theme song from Disney’s Frozen pops into her head. Today’s extensive to-do list has yet to be touched, but instead of stressing, she hums.

Music is in Janet Coleman-Belin’s blood. Born into a family of violinists she finds solace in artists from Mozart to Chris Daughtry, a stylistic gap that she bridges on her own through a process of careful sonic organization. Like so many people her age, Janet is a music curator.

“I have a playlist called “StuDYING.” That one I made last year just because I wanted to have a studying playlist so if I was in a classroom and it was noisy and if I just wanted to focus, I could,” said Janet. “It has a lot of Harry Potter, Hawaii Five-O and orchestra music.”

“StuDYING” is one of the 14 playlists on Janet’s iPod, circa 2007. Among her 432 songs purchased on iTunes, are lists of songs for every mood, activity and occasion; including “Disney,” for sing-alongs at camp in North Carolina, “La Di Da,” for a quick drive to the 3rd Street Promenade, “Ratchet,” for funky dance parties with her friends and “Holly Jolliday” to get her into the Christmas spirit.

Her playlists are simple—they’re practical—they meet the musical needs of Janet and her friends.

“During the course of the 20th century, exhibitions have become the medium through which most art becomes known,’” Hans Ulrich Obirst wrote in A Brief History of Curating. “Exhibitions are the primary site of exchange in the political economy of art, where signification is constructed, maintained, and occasionally deconstructed. Part spectacle, part socio-historical event, part structuring device, exhibitions—especially exhibitions of contemporary art—establish and administer the cultural meanings of art.” And while art presentation as well as a comprehension of art history will always be essential for cultural understanding, the act of curating and title of curator is no longer limited to art professionals. Such changes have caused discrepancy between historical and modern day curators.

“MAKING A LIST IS NOT CURATING,” writes Mel Buchanan, the Hermitage Museum’s assistant curator in a caps-filled 2011 blog post titled “An Open Letter to Everyone Using the Word ‘Curate’ Incorrectly on the Internet.” “So what does it make you? A blogger? A list maker? An arbiter of taste? Sure, I’ll take any of those. Just stop calling yourself a curator,” he continued. Buchanan has a master’s degree in art history, worked as an intern, as an assistant curator at an auction house, as an art history instructor and finally as a curator.

Two years later, Mashable’s Stephanie Buck, responded with an article titled, “If You Use The Web, You Are a Curator.” Buck defines a curator as someone who ‘ingests, analyzes and contextualizes web content and information of a particular nature onto a platform or into a format we can understand.’ “It seems everywhere you look on the web, a different kind of curation is cropping up. Do you use Pinterest or Tumblr? Believe it or not, you’re a social curator—or you’re following users who are. Those social platforms are as much about repining and reblogging content from other people (curation) as they are sharing your own ideas (creation),” writes Buck. Buck neglected to discuss the other place where people have been curating for decades, but have not necessarily defined their work as such: the music industry. Disk Jockeys (DJs) and Music Supervisors are the veterans. Without them, we would be unaware of several artists, and therefore unable to be curators ourselves.

Music has been a common thread through Dana Rosenthal’s life. A classically trained trombonist—who made a couple appearances at Carnegie Hall—she is better known as New York City’s DJ Whitney Day. Discovering and sharing new notable music isn’t just a hobby, it’s her job. “I download songs every day throughout the week. I like to see what’s trending so I check out what’s playing on the radio and different blogs. When it’s time to make a mix or to play a gig I create a folder and then spend a few hours going through my library and hand selecting—let’s say if I have a 3 hour set to play I’ll probably pull about 20 hours worth of music that I think will be appropriate for the event,” she explained.

A pre-recorded mix vastly differs from a playlist; it’s much more advanced. Emphasis is placed on the mixing of the songs. There’s a storyline—attention is paid to the beats per minute (BPMs), although they don’t always have to match, ebbs and flows and different yet mashable genres—so the mix is entertaining but also cohesive. And while Day has produced award-wining mixes for publications like NEXT Magazine, the pre-recording process isn’t her favorite. “Honestly I hate creating mixes because…I always think ‘Oh man, I don’t want this person to hear my mix and judge my style and think I’m not appropriate for a certain job because I can probably play to their crowd as well if I had recorded a different mix,” she said.

Day prefers to play on the fly. She gets a feel for the crowd, simultaneously taps into her library and spins accordingly. She’s a professional, and often bewildered by aspiring DJs who strictly perform from their iPads and iPods. But Day focuses on what she considers to be the bigger picture—not how, but what moves people to the dance floor. “I think there is an ultimate goal to being a DJ outside of just creating a list of music and playing it in whatever order. I think it does have to do with the live performance. It does have to do with having knowledge. It does have to do with wanting to or having the desire to expose music that you think is worthy to your crowd. I mean I think there’s a lot of things that go into it that are more than someone standing at an iPod hitting ‘next, next, next’ but I guess, at the end of the day what translates on the dance floor is that they hear music” she said.

Matt Mugford, is a Music Supervisor at Disney Pictures. He spends his days listening to music both old, but mostly new, considering what songs instrumentally and lyrically would perfectly accompany a scene. “From project to project, it’s up to me and the people I work with to set the tone musically for what you’re going to see, what you’re gonna feel when you watch a movie, or a TV show or ads,” he explained.

It’s not always about the newest and hottest music. It all depends on the plot of the project, and that’s where exercising his music knowledge and library is critical. Mugford’s latest job is to find music to fit a time and place that’s quite unfamiliar to him.“We have a movie right now, that takes place in central California in a low social economic area of that region,” said Mugford. “We have to go, research and think ‘Ok what was playing on the radio in this region at this time period? What would the people that lived there actually listen to?’ You kind of have to crawl into somebody’s skin. It’s almost like when an actor takes on a role and becomes that person. For us it’s like we have to become experts on what 1987 Hispanic radio in Bakersfield was.” Once he’s assigned a project, and dives into the location and time period in which the film is taking place, it’s time for Mugford to start selecting songs. Budget is always a determining factor, as several songs—especially popular ones like American Authors “Best Day Of My Life”—are expensive to use. In such cases it’s Mugford’s job to find the next best affordable tune. From there he filters through possible songs.

The selection process follows a funnel format. Depending on the difficulty of the job, sometimes Mugford will contact outside sources like publishers who control music licensing—although more often than not it’s them, artists, managers and publicists who will contact Mugford to share new

music he might like to use. He gives the publishers a general idea of what he needs and then waits for the song choices to start flooding his inbox. “Let’s say I get 200 songs, I immediately whittle it down to half that. From there I can get a little pickier with ‘Ok this is the kind of tempo we need, this is the kind of lyric we need, this is the kind of style or instrumentations we need,’ explained Mugford. “The 100 then turns into 20, and that 20 usually goes to our music editor [if it’s film] who will cut the list down to the best 5 options that will then go to the director who will either say ‘I hate all of them’ or ‘I like this, let’s see some more!’”

Sometimes the lyrics of the songs don’t always match the tone of the scene. But the songs evoke emotion, and the best of them stay with viewers for years after they’ve watched the film or TV show. The classic example of music supervision’s rise to legitimacy, and market potency, was 2004’s Garden State. The comedy-drama written and directed by Zach Braff —starring Natalie Portman and Braff himself—included an eclectic mix of classic pop, rock and folk. Coldplay makes an appearance on the album, along with Iron & Wine, Zero 7, and the beloved Simon & Garfunkel among others.

Braff hand-picked all of the music played in the film. “Essentially, I made a mix CD with all of the music that I felt was scoring my life at the time I was writing the screenplay,” he said in an interview with IGN Music. Braff was awarded a Grammy in 2005 for Best Compilation Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media. In addition, 10 years later, it still has a chilling affect on fans like University of Southern California (USC) graduate student Kacey Dreamer.

A music curator may be critiqued for their taste and stylistic choices, but ultimately they don’t answer to anyone. A Music Supervisor, on the other hand, does not make the final decision on what music will be used in the final project, the director does. Certainly some supervisors build a rapport with directors that ultimately means their choices are highly regarded, as their opinions and taste are well respected.

“A music supervisor is to do a very special thing,” says Jonathan Taplin, a writer, film producer, and clinical professor at USC, “Which is at a creation point in a movie or TV show, you need a feeling and it has to help you get form one place to another between or behind dialogue. And that feeling could be cheesy, a feeling that’s completely manipulative, and maybe you need a completely manipulative cheesy tune to do that. But that doesn't mean that tune will be important in 2 or 3 years. It was just important that one moment, because those artists happened to be popular at the moment.”

But when it comes to music curation in 2014, the height of Taplin’s focus is elsewhere, on the business side of what the process can add to the music industry. Curating is the foundation of the many music streaming platforms currently transforming the music industry landscape.

While streaming allows users access to millions of songs that are hard to find or simply unable to physically get ahold of, it has also caused financial woes for artists (particularly those who are independent) and their record labels alike.

Referencing the Long Tail theory—published by Chris Anderson of WIRED Magazine in 2004, Taplin explains that our culture and economy are increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of “hits” (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve toward a huge number of niches in the tail—Taplin’s main concern is the lack of interest and eventually the declining value of older music, will be a result of music streaming. “It’s a big issue. It’s a financial issue. But is also a cultural issue. I call it cultural amnesia. I’m worried that your generation is completely ignoring the 75 years or so of recorded music or even video or film that’s come before you, said Taplin.”

On the contrary, the simplicity of searching on music streaming platforms has enabled several artists—specifically within Hip Hop—to solidify the importance and further encourage the resurfacing of older records. Music streaming services makes a century’s worth of recorded music easy to find, organize, and re-contextualize for artists and listeners alike.

In 1992, for example, Sisters With Voices (SWV), a female R&B, Grammy nominated trio from New York City released their first single, “Right Here” from their album It’s About Time.

A playlist called “10 Years of Hits from Dope R&B Divas” might include the catchy tune and continue with:

TLC “Baby Baby Baby,”
Mary J Blige “Real Love”
Whitney Huston “I Will Always Love You”
En Vogue “Free Your Mind”
Xscape “Just Kickin’ It”
Brandy “I Wanna Be Down”
Faith Evans “Soon As I Get Home”
Lauryn Hill’s “Ex-Factor”
Aaliyah “One In A Million”
Kelly Price “Secret Love,”
Jill Scott “A Long Walk”
Angie Stone “Brotha”
Erykah Badu “Bag Lady”
Alicia Key “Fallin”
Beyonce “Crazy In Love”

Two years later they released The Remixes, which included a new version of the single called “Right Here/Human Nature,” that sampled Michael Jackson’s 1983 hit “Human Nature.”

A “90s Bass Bangin’ Hip Hop and R&B Mixes” playlist featuring the tune you might also include:

Mariah Carey “Honey (Remix)
Craig Mack “Flava In Ya Ear (Remix)”
Dru Hill “Sleeping In My Bed (So So Def Remix)”
Brandy “I Wanna Be Down (Remix)”
Destiny’s Child “No No No Part II”
Mary J. Blige “Love No Limit (Remix)”
Janet Jackson “I Get So Lonely (Remix)”
112 “Only You (Remix)”
Aaliyah “ Hot Like Fire (Remix)”

The song spent seven weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot R&B Singles charts and became one of the longest running number-one singles of 1993. In 2011, R&B singer Chris Brown released “She Ain’t You,” the second single from his fourth studio album, F.A.M.E.

The music video for the song began with a written dedication that read:

“Dedicated to my biggest inspiration of all time…
I Love You
R.I.P. Michael Jackson
08/29/58 — 06/25/09”

While Brown pays homage to Michael Jackson, the song incorporates samples of both Jackson and SWV’s tunes. He did, however, release a remix of “She Ain’t You” featuring SWV online three months after it was released. The song gained great popularity and stellar critical reception. It was nominated for Top R&B Song at the 2012 Billboard Music Awards.

A playlist featuring that song, may kick off with:

Snoop Dogg’s “Nuthin’ But A ‘G’ Thang”
Sugar Hill Gang “Rapper’s Delight”
The Notorius B.I.G. “Juicy”
Jay-Z’s “99 Problems”
M.I.A “Paper Planes”
The Verve “Bittersweet Symphony”
Gnarls Barkly “Crazy”
The Beatles’ “Come Together”

All are hits that sample tracks popularized way before their time.

Most recently, Hip Hop star Kanye West, reminded billions of listeners about monumental artists like Billie Holiday, Nina Simone and the Ponderosa Twins Plus One on his critically acclaimed album, Yeezus (2013). His song “Bound 2” samples the old soul song “Bound” by Panderosa Twins Plus One. And while singer Ricky Spicer filed a suit against West for use without permission, “Blood On the Leaves,” another track on the album simply received praise. The riveting tune samples Billie Holiday’s “Strangefruit,” sung by Nina Simone.

“It’s ironic, then, that Yeezus’ best track is classic soul, and vintage Kanye; “Blood on the Leaves” is a buzzing, bluesy, static-y track that flips a chipmunk-soul sample of Nina Simone doing ”Strange Fruit” into a fevered tell-all about a pregnancy with another woman (“We coulda been somebody,” he laments in a pained sing-yell),” wrote Jon Dolan in a Rolling Stone album review. “Only Kanye West would take an American masterpiece about a lynching and use it back to a song about what a drag it is to have to attend basketball games with a girl you knocked up sitting across the court,” he continued.

Music streaming is divided into two categories; non-interactive, where the music is chosen for the listener based on their personal interests, and on-demand, where the listener chooses music to listen to. The accessibility and low cost of music streaming has lead it to be the most popular way to listen to music today.

Pandora, launched in 2000, is an Internet radio service that uses an algorithmic formula to create a personalized stream of music that is designed to keep listeners tuned in. When a user submits the name of an artist, they are presented with an extensive playlist with artists who share that genre. Pandora has 70 million active monthly users and a music catalog of nearly 1 million songs. Users can access the streaming service from multiple platforms including their MAC, PC or Smartphone application. Pandora offers two payment options; free with intermittent advertisements or commercial free for $3.99 per month.

Songza is a non-interactive service that’s gaining more popularity, cuts commercials in half and surpasses Pandora’s catalog, with 20 million songs. Launched in 2007, Songza also offers the free to $3.99 per month payment option. The service differs vastly from Pandora. Users are solely provided with themed playlists. Co-founder of Songza, Eric Davich (CCO), and his team, sought to make listening to music more enjoyable. That includes the concierge feature, where the user describes what they’re doing and/or how they’re feeling and then are presented with music to accompany such activity and emotions. “We asked people, ‘If you could change one thing about your music experience what would it be?’ They said, ‘It takes too much work. It’s too hard for me to think of an artist that will make my workday better.’ We wanted to figure out the best way to help people choose,” said Davich. “Concierge was created to guide you, hold your hand and to take away the mental math.” Songza is the first music service based on contextual curation. Rather than an algorithm, Songza concentrates on ambient data points, such as the day and time of the week; device usage, IP address, weather, listening history and popular songs. Songza curators use this information to accurately predict what the listener is feeling or doing.

Spotify, currently the most popular on-demand music streaming service, was brought to the US (from Sweden) in 2011. The service allows over 24 million users to have control over what they listen to. Similar to Pandora, Spotify offers a radio option as well. Users can also create and share (through the platform and social media) playlists they create.

Beats Music, the latest music streaming service, is banking on curation as its prime attraction for its users. Beats Music is a hybrid, combining features from Spotify and Songza. This music service was launched in January 2014 by chairman of Universal label group Interscope Geffen A&M, Jimmy Lovine, and rapper/producer, Andre “Dr. Dre” Young. Users can listen to any artist in their 20 million-plus catalog on demand, or have a playlist curated for them through ‘The Sentence’. The sentence format is

as follows: “I’m (at my computer), and feel like (working), with (robots), to (electronic).” Their $9.99 per month requirement is enforced to change the history of minuscule payments artists and songwriters have received from other music-streaming services.

Taplin and his team at USC’s Innovation Lab are working towards developing the surprise factor, rather than popularity. He finds that whether focusing on how machines and computer algorithms or music curators can present listeners with music they’re in the mood for; popularity is too large of a focal point in that equation. Not only does that hurt legendary artists, labels and the music industry as an entity, but it’s also, according to Taplin, not the job of a curator. “The original use of the term [curate] implies taste-- what’s good and what’s not good. It implies being a filter. Someone has to make the decision of what will last, what’s important, what’s worth carrying on in the tradition,” he said.” But Taplin is hopeful. He believes necessary changes can be made, if music streaming sites are willing to put in the work, revitalize the historical meaning of the word curate and redirect interest to what’s good—no matter when it was recorded or released—what we should listen to. He thinks that’s what Beats Music is seeking to do.

“The people at Beats believe, if Dr. Dre says ‘here’s my 50 favorite R&B tunes from the 1950s that changed my life,’ you might go and listen to those. That’s one theory, which is the notion of the curator,” said Taplin. “And in that sense the curator probably has to have some standing with you to get you to do that—but that isn’t to say that only Dr. Dre can be a curator.” In this case Dr. Dre is what Beats Music would call a trusted source. At Beats Music it’s not just about curation, but curation by trusted sources. “I really think we’re solving a problem that people don’t know they have, said Julie Pilat, Head of Curation and Artist Development at Beats Music.” “Right now they have unlimited access to music but we’re the only ones saying what songs come next. Most people know what song or what band they want to listen to but when you’re running or when you’re driving and you don’t want to constantly be making playlists that’s where we come in. So our goal is every time you open your phone you can hit play and there’s something great.”

Great can include both old and new music. The key, however, is that Beats Music listeners know the music they’re listening to is not only based on their taste, but has been hand picked by professionals, also known as music curators. Along with changing the listeners experience by curating, Beats Music is trying to rejuvenate the business plan of music subscription services. Beats is the only music streaming service that requires a monthly payment. “Before Beats came along every other music service, their marketing message was ‘FREE’,” said Pilat. “We’re raising our hands and saying that, ‘We think music’s worth paying for and we think all artists should be paid the same.’ Other services, major label artists make more than indie artists.”

In July 2013, musician Thom Yorke, of the band Radiohead, announced on Twitter that they were pulling three albums from Spotify in protest of the streaming service’s small royalty payments.

Spotify claims to pay 70% of all the revenues they receive back to rights holders, or the owners of the music, such as labels, publishers, and distributors. In a recent blog post, Spotify broke down their royalty payment plan. The Spotify monthly revenue, like Pandora and Songza, is divided into two tiers: Free and Premium. Advertisers pay Spotify for exposure to users on their free tiers and in-turn fund the royalties that Spotify pays out for listening that occurs in those tiers. The rest of their revenue comes from the $10 a month subscription users agree to pay—about $4 comes from Pandora and Songza users.

The amount artists and songwriters get from royalties differs by the contract that is maintained with their record labels or publishers. Artists typically get 15-20%. The number fluctuates depending on how many times their songs are played. Recently, an average “per stream” payout to rights holders of music on Spotify is between $0.006 and $0.0084. More often than not, the lack of money artists receive via streaming doesn’t stop music lovers and connoisseurs alike from curating. It can, however, cause some moral conflict.

LA Times music critic, Randall Roberts, uses both Beats Music and Spotify, but his conscience gives him a hard time when it comes to how

much the artists and songwriters of the music he streams will get paid. “I love Beats and Spotify but the artists don’t make that much at all on those platforms. It’s conflicting. I still buy music too, but now the decision is ‘Am I really going to listen to this enough to warrant buying the iTunes files for this when I could just as easily without that much difference in the sound quality listen to the stream,’ he explained. “And that’s a huge shift. That kills a lot of artists.” Roberts has been writing about music for over 30 years, and he’s recently added making playlists to his repertoire. “I’m working on a list of all the “Thank You” tracks on Hip-Hop albums. It’s usually the last track where the rapper gives a shout out to a handful of people like their family and others who helped with the album. I know they’re kind of tedious after a while, but it’s fun,” said Randall. “And that’s something that you couldn’t do twenty years ago. You’d have to have this huge volume of records to find all of that stuff. Today they’re all on Spotify.” But when it comes to discovering new music to critique or present to his readers, Roberts likes to do it the old fashioned way. Like Beats Music he relies on trusted sources, including fellow journalists, bloggers and publicists.

“There are certain publicists who are very in demand and have very good taste in music and you can trust their judgment on what they decide to publicize who they hire. Kathryn Fraizer of Biz 3 in Chicago is one of those people. I don’t use Spotify or Beats for discovery all that much. I may be doing that more, but right now for me, discovering music is still difficult through them as far as trusting who is telling me what to check out,” he said.

Monday she could be at the Pacific Museum buying new artwork and reviewing budgets. Her Wednesday might begin on campus, teaching an early morning class or two, and then makes a beeline to the Fischer Museum to spend the rest of the afternoon overseeing the construction of a new exhibit. Friday might be a little more laid back, but chances are if a show is scheduled to launch the following week she’s chatting away with curators and show installers to discuss final touches. She’s the boss, the head honcho, and as a result unbelievably busy. But things haven’t always been this way.

Although seasoned in the art world, Holo used to be on the opposite end of the spectrum. She used to spend her days curating—planning and executing captivating, provocative, and stunning exhibits like Drawn To Language, a showcase featuring five artists who had a unique relationship with language, held September 3 to December 7, 2013. Her extensive experience and adoration for compelling and culturally constructive pieces has deemed her an expert of art, curating and everything in between.

In a day and age where unlimited information is easily accessible, it’s difficult to choose. It’s easy to get lost. That’s why the music curator is important. Someone needs to do the digging, filtering and finally present it all. And while the action of curating is vital to understand, Holo, believes the fact that language is fluid is just as important to consider. “Language is changing. Language always changes,” said Holo. “We have words that are totally devalued, for example friend—how you become a friend on Facebook. In a way it’s ridiculous because there’s no real relationship there. There can be, but there doesn’t have to be. We can’t make the changing

language and the devaluating and cheapening of terms stop.”

Curate falls into that category. According to Holo, the meaning of the word is missing two key words—authority and quality. Each is necessary to define curating. “For me, curating used to mean bringing authority to deciding what had meaning within the world of let’s say art or visual arts and creating a narrative that somehow or another made some sense. There was a story. There was value judgment made by people who had value. That’s gone. The word does not connote authority anymore,” she said.And while Beats Music might be trying to bring authority and quality back through their trusted sources, curating has always been a part of the music industry, the word [curate] was simply not apart of the industry’s vocabulary.

Radio and albums were all curated. Music in film and television are curated. The individuals doing this so called curating, however, fell under different titles. In essence to curate an art gallery, or an album might involve different mental and physical processes, but the idea—for tastemakers to share valuable art forms, worthy of recognition—has always been there. “The word exists. All things from mixtapes to shows to DJs to old Lps are all curation. The word wasn’t in the language in respect to music,” said Holo.

One word, that has changed drastically, however, is the mixtape—once a prime product of music curating. For decades the mixtape was the primary product for music curating throughout the world.

The tape was the first device that allowed various individuals to be curators. They were called mixtapes. In addition to its physical format, the mixtape differed in emotional value than some might believe the playlist has today. Author David Byrne reflected on what the significance of the mixtape in his book, How Music Works. “The mixtapes we made for ourselves were musical mirrors. The sadness, anger, or frustration you might be feeling at a given time could be encapsulated in the song selection. You made mixtapes that corresponded to emotional states, and they’d be available to pop into the deck when each feeling needed reinforcing or soothing. The mixtape was your friend, your psychiatrist, and your solace,” he said.

KCRW Radio DJ Jason Kramer, also remembers making mixtapes. He finds it more interesting, however, how the word itself has lost its meaning. “A mixtape was a compilation tape you made for somebody. A mixtape wasn’t unauthorized music from individuals like a lot of electronica and hip-hop artists call them mixtapes now. They’re works but they’re not actual mixtapes. So, when mixtapes first came out or tapes that you would make for somebody, it was done more as a personal one-on-one thing. So, you kind of spoke to that person—if you weren’t a writer, or a poet or a painter that you could give a gift to somebody or make something for somebody—the next best creative way was to create these little mixtapes for individuals,” he explained.

Following the tape was the CD. Once the CD became the primary way for people to listen to music instead of making a mixtape many would create a mixed CD. It would follow the same format of the mixtape; the curation was just executed differently. Rather than having to hold the rewind button to hear song number 4 again, you could (and still can) press the reverse arrows to hear the tune.

After the CD came the mp3 player, also know as the early version of the iPod. The mp3 player was groundbreaking, as it allowed people to download music from the Internet and put it onto their new, improved, and quite miniscule—at that time—device.

Today the iPod is the popular device used for music curation. Individuals can purchase songs in iTunes and transfer those songs to their iPod. They can also load their CDs into their iTunes and transfer those songs onto their iPod. The tape, however is rarely used, unless the person still owns a tape player or has an older car that includes a tape deck.

As technology has progressed the way we listen to music has changed. So has the quality of music we listen. Both have improved. Some believe, however, that our relationship with music has suffered.

Buzzfeed writer, Summer Anne Burton, recently reflected on the art of creating a mixtape in an article titled, “The Fine Art of Mixtape Seduction.” “These days, finding someone who actually listens to a cassette is a white whale, so I have switched to Spotify and gift-wrapped CDs. It’s fun but now quite the same. Making someone a cassette was so personal because of the time you had to spend with the songs, siting in front of a cassette player pushing buttons and obsessing over whether the song you wanted would fit on what was left on a side. It was a different for the listener too

— cassettes don’t make it easy to skip tracks, so they’re forced to sit and listen to what you have to say,” writes Burton.

Jason doesn’t like the term curate, although he considers himself to be a curator. He finds the word to be an unnecessary and overused title. He also believes, in today’s social media age, its frequent use is a result of narcissism. “I’m still trying to figure out the point of saying you’re a curator. Is it for everybody to show what they like musically? I don’t know…I honestly don’t know. I kind of believe that today’s folks are a little narcissistic, so it [the music] goes to everybody and everybody can be a DJ and be a writer, but not really get to the crux of why they’re doing it,” he said.

Today’s generation, obsessed with social media, is being pulled in several directions—most often to their smartphones, desktops, laptops or iPads. Social media has allowed today’s culture to communicate, find and share information faster. It’s also encouraged the publicizing of such information, even if it’s personal. “I don’t care what you ate today, I don’t care that you’re grabbing a beer with your friends,” Jason said sarcastically. He’s referring to Instagram, a social media platform that allows people to take photos and share them with friends or the general public. One of many, people have become more inclined to share every aspect of their lives with the world. That now includes their music through music streaming services. So, along with butting heads with each other, music-streaming services compete with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and other apps. It’s a battle for time.

The devices on which we can listen to, curate and consume music have changed, but they not always been used for presentation. The same way that music can be curated privately, curated music can be listened to confidentially as well.

Meghan Hinmam is a music therapist based in New York City.

She spends part of her at her private practice and the rest in Lennox Hill hospital, vising patients suffering from terminal illnesses. At the hospital, her job isn’t necessarily to heal, but to ease the patients’ pain, worry and frustrations through song. It’s not just a performance of their favorite song. It’s a connection. It’s a musical connection that personally affects both Hinman and her patients.

“Music therapy is more about relationships—we’re having a relationship in and through the music. We can feel how it affects both of us and how our relationship is developing through that,” she explained. In Hinmans practice, it’s all about the patient. When she walks into a room with a guitar on her back she says, “I’m the musical therapist and the doctor told

me to come see you, would like some music?” That’s the first choice the patient makes—whether or not they’d like to hear music.

Most often, they do, and will request her to play their favorite songs. Throughout Hinman’s experience, patients often ask to hear songs that describe what they’re going through. Songs they undoubtedly relate to. “The musical choices, where we go thematically, comes from the patients.

When people are willing to ask for songs, those songs will usually say something about what the person’s experiencing. I used to work at a hospital down in Greenwich Village and the song I got asked for so often was “The Boxer” by Paul Simon, which is a song about fighting. It makes perfect sense,” Hinman shared.

Hinman has over 700 songs in her repertoire. The songs vary in genre so it’s easy to identify a tune that’s important or familiar and meaningful to the patient or their family. Sometimes, when the patient is stuck on what they’d like to hear, Hinman helps them—during those times, it’s her turn to be the curator. Similar to Pandora’s algorithm, she is able to identify what genre of music, or artist a patient likes and from there makes successful recommendations. “People like Bob Dylan, they may also like Paul Simon, and they’re probably into the Beatles. People like Frank Sinatra, then there’s a whole group of standards that they’re probably into. People that ask for Gladis Knight or Otis Redding, then there’s an entire group of artists that are within a genre that are meaningful and that can fit and tend to work. If they like Gospel then there’s a certain type of song that I’ll go to in certain tempos and moods determining where the patient is,” Hinman explained. Although shorter than a DJ set, film or television shows, Hinman’s playlists still represent the curation of experience—a private experience, nonetheless equally impactful.

The presentation factor (or lack there of) is perhaps the biggest change when it comes to music curation today. As more devices on which to curate have become readily available, the way we curate and listen to curated music has changed. The change has encouraged everyone to take note and advantage of their curatorial abilities. LA Times Pop Music Critic Mikael Wood is guided by music. He’s consistently aware of and discusses what’s happening within the industry. Rather than focusing on discovering the next Beyoncé or Miley Cyrus, he’ll critique Beyoncé’s surprise self-titled album, and review Miley’s stop at The Staples Center on her Bangerz tour.

“Certainly I’m seeking out things that appear to be of interest but I feel like what I’m most interested in is responding to what’s already happening. I’m

pretty uninterested in finding the next big thing, that’s kind of the most boring things ever to me,” he said. At the same time, Wood doesn’t make playlists. He understands why others (even fellow journalists) might, but doesn’t see the purpose, as listening to songs repetitively is the furthest thing from his job description, let alone his goals. “I suppose there are utilitarian uses of the playlist that might appeal or might come in handy,” said Mikael. “Let’s say there was a playlist pulling songs throughout history, by a specific word or something, where it’s less about ‘you like this, you might like this,’ and more about ‘here’s a way to organize 100 songs from the past 100 years. That might be kind of interesting’.”

More importantly, Wood sees the drastic changes happening within the music industry, specifically in regards to curating. In agreement with Holo, he thinks the word is changing. “I think there used to be a perception of professionalism, expertise, but I think now someone who just puts up a Tumblr page has a legitimate claim on the act of curation as someone who works at the Getty. I think anybody who fancies him or herself a curator is,” said Wood. “I think it just means pulling exciting things and the presenting them in someone. Maybe present is say synonym now. Putting them in some sort of context and then presenting them to others. Or maybe even not to others. Maybe if you do a Tumblr and no one reads it, you’re still a curator. That kind of doesn’t matter that anyone isn’t looking at it.”

There was once a perception that you have to have some sort of audience in order to be a curator, but that no longer exists. Thanks to new technology and encouragement from businesses like Beats Music that shed light on music curating and thus open the door for every to do so.  “What are iPods if not, you know, your own little curated universe or whatever and that’s not necessarily for anyone else,” Wood continued.

Janet is dragging her feet. A full day of classes and a string of meetings (Student Task Force Human Rights Watch, Better World, The National Science Honor Society meetings,) has left her brain fried. Not to mention two hours of foot and ball work before her club soccer practice at 7pm.

She finishes her homework, sets the alarm on her nightstand, and then heads to her desktop. She logs into iTunes, double clicks her ‘Camp Camp Camp’ playlist and allows the 153 songs like Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida,” Matisyahu’s “One Day,” and Five for Fighting’s “Superman,” to carry her into sleep.