For me, there’s nothing better than revisiting specific albums that I haven’t sat down with for a long time. Music means a heck of a lot to me, so being able to listen to things that used to mean something to me is an extremely nostalgic experience. What’s great is that it always seems to transport me back to a place and time in my life when I had that music on repeat.

Sometimes this involves me searching through my closet storage and getting out cheap moving boxes filled with old albums; then, I pop it on the record player and sit back. Other times, I just know where to find the music on Spotify, so I’ll queue it up on my soundbar or headphones and dive in. No matter what it means to me now or used to mean to me back then, I am reconnected with an older version of myself, and oftentimes old memories will come back, or I’ll remember things I used to enjoy.

I feel not enough people choose to look at music from this perspective, as a sort of “experiential” process. Instead, music is something that you hear on the radio to and from work, and that’s it. I view this as such a limited way of looking at music, and sometimes I feel bad for those who don’t know any better. They don’t know that there’s music out there that speaks to their soul and experiences and emotions. After all, this is what music is all about. It’s about baring your soul, being real, talking about things that matter, sharing experiences, and making meaning out of life. Unfortunately, a lot of popular music anymore is stripped of these aspects and ends up just being repetitive lyrics that hold very little meaning.

I think if everyone had their own little cheap moving boxes filled with records like me, there would be a lot more love and understanding in the world. If everyone gave music a chance and journeyed through the human experience from one artist to the next, people would begin to understand what makes the world work, what makes us all tick, and what actually matters in life. Like all things, though, everyone has their preferences and hobbies and interests, and they’ll never all overlap for the better.

I’m glad apps like Spotify have become so normalized if only to make music more widely accessible to people around the world. While artists may not be compensated fairly because of this model, I still think reaching more ears is more important than artists making buku bucks off of their music. The musicians who understand the impact that their music has on people are probably fine with the model anyway, because they understand what matters.