Your online music stream is like a fresh breeze, bringing you new content, keeping you chill, and nudging your tastes forward. The ads we hear are bits of corporate bird branding that fall on us with a nice breeze. The occasional droppings on your arm may be a sign of good luck, but when the birds are following you around and crapping on command— that’s what we at Claypot call Dark Listening.
Claypot’s take on Dark Listening is a musical game where the object is to figure out who is targeting you with manipulative advertising and what the real story behind the algorithm is. Our OpenQueue tool within the game allows listeners to connect their listening behaviours with the type of advertising they receive and raises awareness of algorithms’ power to shape our perspectives.
In February, Claypot musicians and producers were hard at work recording the musical world of the Dark Listening game in Brighton, England, Graz, Austria and Amsterdam, Netherlands. After over fifty recording sessions with singers and instrumentalists, we are testing different approaches to visualizing musical data to give users even deeper insights into the music they listen to and how it influences the types of ads they receive on a daily basis. Look out for the launch of the first chapter of Dark Listening and the OpenQueue music tool in June, 2023.