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The pitch for home DNA testing could not be more succinct: know thyself, for a fee.The pitch for home DNA testing could not be more succinct: know thyself, for a fee.
The need to know is treated as self-evident. But what we can actually learn is much trickier. 23andMe, for example, promises to help you know “how your genetics can influence your risk for certain diseases,” including Alzheimers, which is something one might want to know, if only to not not know. That you’re a carrier for a hereditary disease is more clearly need-to-know information than, say, your “genetic weight” — an estimate of what you are predisposed to weigh, according to a supposed average — which seems like it could provide, at best, qualified relief.The need to know is treated as self-evident. But what we can actually learn is much trickier. 23andMe, for example, promises to help you know “how your genetics can influence your risk for certain diseases,” including Alzheimers, which is something one might want to know, if only to not not know. That you’re a carrier for a hereditary disease is more clearly need-to-know information than, say, your “genetic weight” — an estimate of what you are predisposed to weigh, according to a supposed average — which seems like it could provide, at best, qualified relief.
23andMe will also let you work backward, telling you “where your DNA is from,” and, for example, “how much Neanderthal DNA you inherited.” Ancestry.com, the great-great grandparent of the online genealogy industry, which can trace its lineage in part to the Granite Mountain Records Vault of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, introduced its own DNA testing service in 2012, and now claims to offer “percentages of your ethnicity estimate” and “a timeline of historical changes with expert-curated content.” Some test subjects will get “migrations tracing your ancestors’ travels,” or, jackpot, “DNA Matches to living relatives.” It’s the sort of information that can help fill out a family tree, or confirm an ancestral story.23andMe will also let you work backward, telling you “where your DNA is from,” and, for example, “how much Neanderthal DNA you inherited.” Ancestry.com, the great-great grandparent of the online genealogy industry, which can trace its lineage in part to the Granite Mountain Records Vault of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, introduced its own DNA testing service in 2012, and now claims to offer “percentages of your ethnicity estimate” and “a timeline of historical changes with expert-curated content.” Some test subjects will get “migrations tracing your ancestors’ travels,” or, jackpot, “DNA Matches to living relatives.” It’s the sort of information that can help fill out a family tree, or confirm an ancestral story.
Ancestry has now decided to answer another, less self-evident question: “What is the sound of your DNA?” It will deliver this knowledge in a Spotify playlist.Ancestry has now decided to answer another, less self-evident question: “What is the sound of your DNA?” It will deliver this knowledge in a Spotify playlist.
The question of what DNA might sound like has been approached before. In 2017, Mark Temple, a molecular biologist at Western Sydney University in Australia, released a paper on “DNA sonification” and created a tool to convert DNA sequences into songs. They are intended to “help scientists better understand how cell biology works.” They sound like children playing toy keyboards.The question of what DNA might sound like has been approached before. In 2017, Mark Temple, a molecular biologist at Western Sydney University in Australia, released a paper on “DNA sonification” and created a tool to convert DNA sequences into songs. They are intended to “help scientists better understand how cell biology works.” They sound like children playing toy keyboards.
This Spotify tool is not that. Instead, based on the “Top 5 Regions” identified in your test, you get a playlist of 20 songs called “The Unique Sound of Your Ancestry.” A combination of “Ireland and Scotland, France, England, Wales and Northwestern Europe, Germanic Europe and Finland” returned a range of modern pop, rock, hip-hop and R&B, with a stray German jazz composition and a song from a Swedish folk quartet. An input of “Polynesia, Philippines, Portugal, Spain and Basque” produced a playlist that started with OMC’s 1995 song “How Bizarre” (the band is from New Zealand), included a 2006 song by Portuguese rapper Sam The Kid, and ended with a melancholy acoustic rock song called “Zintzilik,” by the Basque artist Olatz Salvador, released in 2018. A playlist for “Africa South-Central Hunter-Gatherers, Ivory Coast/Ghana, Nigeria, China and Southeast Asia-Vietnam” was, again, a seemingly patternless selection of recently popular music, with a couple breaks for a Ghanaian praise song and 1960s Thai guitar pop.This Spotify tool is not that. Instead, based on the “Top 5 Regions” identified in your test, you get a playlist of 20 songs called “The Unique Sound of Your Ancestry.” A combination of “Ireland and Scotland, France, England, Wales and Northwestern Europe, Germanic Europe and Finland” returned a range of modern pop, rock, hip-hop and R&B, with a stray German jazz composition and a song from a Swedish folk quartet. An input of “Polynesia, Philippines, Portugal, Spain and Basque” produced a playlist that started with OMC’s 1995 song “How Bizarre” (the band is from New Zealand), included a 2006 song by Portuguese rapper Sam The Kid, and ended with a melancholy acoustic rock song called “Zintzilik,” by the Basque artist Olatz Salvador, released in 2018. A playlist for “Africa South-Central Hunter-Gatherers, Ivory Coast/Ghana, Nigeria, China and Southeast Asia-Vietnam” was, again, a seemingly patternless selection of recently popular music, with a couple breaks for a Ghanaian praise song and 1960s Thai guitar pop.
It can be hard to tell if these playlists are highly specific or just completely haphazard. They certainly don’t support the more troublesome suggestions conjured by Ancestry’s claim that it will make a list of songs “out of your heritage:” It's no eldritch steam-powered blood-sussing machine rolling out personalized phonograph cylinders, all ancient lutes and drums and flutes and lyres.It can be hard to tell if these playlists are highly specific or just completely haphazard. They certainly don’t support the more troublesome suggestions conjured by Ancestry’s claim that it will make a list of songs “out of your heritage:” It's no eldritch steam-powered blood-sussing machine rolling out personalized phonograph cylinders, all ancient lutes and drums and flutes and lyres.
However the playlists come to be, the experience is less “Finding Your Roots” and more “disoriented tourist abroad, in a loud bar near the hotel.” It doesn’t help that in academic terms, the entire enterprise is suspect. “DNA is not destiny,” said Timothy Taylor, a professor of ethnomusicology and musicology at UCLA. “Every study I’ve ever seen about people’s musical choices talk about them as being related to culture and generation and cultural position.”However the playlists come to be, the experience is less “Finding Your Roots” and more “disoriented tourist abroad, in a loud bar near the hotel.” It doesn’t help that in academic terms, the entire enterprise is suspect. “DNA is not destiny,” said Timothy Taylor, a professor of ethnomusicology and musicology at UCLA. “Every study I’ve ever seen about people’s musical choices talk about them as being related to culture and generation and cultural position.”
Of the Spotify and Ancestry collaboration, he said, “it’s a kind of souvenirizing of DNA results” — an outgrowth of “heritage tourism” and a another way that “everything in the world is getting biologicalized.” Of the Spotify and Ancestry collaboration, he said, “it’s a kind of souvenirizing of DNA results” — an outgrowth of “heritage tourism” and another way that “everything in the world is getting biologicalized.”
And besides, he asked, “what about the people who are part Neanderthal?” They did not leave behind music, at least on Spotify.And besides, he asked, “what about the people who are part Neanderthal?” They did not leave behind music, at least on Spotify.
But the idea that our DNA somehow contains music — a sound, an essence of cultural identity — is certainly the suggestion. How one gets from swabbing to streaming is shrouded in, well, if not mystery, exactly, then at least ambiguity. Fleeting signs of any sort of system that may inform one playlist are obliterated by the sheer weirdness or flatness of another. It’s even weirder because Spotify is a playlist-centric service, not just encouraging its users to create and share collections, but regularly presenting them with playlists full of songs they might like, under rubrics like “Discovery Weekly.” When a Discover playlist is good, it’s uncanny. When it’s bad, it can feel like it’s your fault.But the idea that our DNA somehow contains music — a sound, an essence of cultural identity — is certainly the suggestion. How one gets from swabbing to streaming is shrouded in, well, if not mystery, exactly, then at least ambiguity. Fleeting signs of any sort of system that may inform one playlist are obliterated by the sheer weirdness or flatness of another. It’s even weirder because Spotify is a playlist-centric service, not just encouraging its users to create and share collections, but regularly presenting them with playlists full of songs they might like, under rubrics like “Discovery Weekly.” When a Discover playlist is good, it’s uncanny. When it’s bad, it can feel like it’s your fault.
Perhaps that is why the response to Ancestry’s playlists have been lukewarm at best. “I Hate My DNA Now,” wrote Ashley Reese, at Jezebel, after creating her own playlist (which mingled a hot Malian track with some very bad stuff on the “British Isles portion of the playlist.”) A colleague’s teenage son — an accomplished amateur genealogist who I was told was an instant fan of the feature — was mostly just surprised: “I’d never heard Israeli Rapping!”Perhaps that is why the response to Ancestry’s playlists have been lukewarm at best. “I Hate My DNA Now,” wrote Ashley Reese, at Jezebel, after creating her own playlist (which mingled a hot Malian track with some very bad stuff on the “British Isles portion of the playlist.”) A colleague’s teenage son — an accomplished amateur genealogist who I was told was an instant fan of the feature — was mostly just surprised: “I’d never heard Israeli Rapping!”
Sarah Zhang, writing in The Atlantic, pointed out that the project exists within a broader, growing marketing strategy intended to “tap into the idea that DNA is deterministic, that genetic differences are meaningful.” She wrote: “Listening to ‘99 Luftballons’ or rooting for Germany in the World Cup is fairly trivial as these things go.” But genetic ancestry tests have become extraordinarily popular in recent years, and they’re freighted with powerful suggestions about identity, race and history. “They trade in the prestige of genomic science, making DNA out to be far more important in our cultural identities than it is, in order to sell more stuff,” she wrote.Sarah Zhang, writing in The Atlantic, pointed out that the project exists within a broader, growing marketing strategy intended to “tap into the idea that DNA is deterministic, that genetic differences are meaningful.” She wrote: “Listening to ‘99 Luftballons’ or rooting for Germany in the World Cup is fairly trivial as these things go.” But genetic ancestry tests have become extraordinarily popular in recent years, and they’re freighted with powerful suggestions about identity, race and history. “They trade in the prestige of genomic science, making DNA out to be far more important in our cultural identities than it is, in order to sell more stuff,” she wrote.
Spotify already knows a great deal about who its listeners are, in musical terms. It also knows something about music, insofar as music can be understood as data. In 2014, it purchased the Echo Nest, a music intelligence company spun out of a project started at M.I.T., which had developed systems for categorizing music with extreme granularity. “Out of genres, artists, and their cheerfully imprecise relationships, we can build a more accurate view of the world,” the company said in a blog post in 2013, describing something like DNA analysis. (Pandora, another music service built around recommendations, calls its similar recommendation framework the Music Genome Project.)Spotify already knows a great deal about who its listeners are, in musical terms. It also knows something about music, insofar as music can be understood as data. In 2014, it purchased the Echo Nest, a music intelligence company spun out of a project started at M.I.T., which had developed systems for categorizing music with extreme granularity. “Out of genres, artists, and their cheerfully imprecise relationships, we can build a more accurate view of the world,” the company said in a blog post in 2013, describing something like DNA analysis. (Pandora, another music service built around recommendations, calls its similar recommendation framework the Music Genome Project.)
This hunch — that maybe genes and genres share more than some etymological roots — resulted in a number of strange and illuminating projects, mostly for demonstration purposes, including one that created playlists of songs that are unusually popular in a given country relative to the rest of the world, called “The Sounds of Places.” There is no sign of this in the Spotify and Ancestry collaboration, either. (Although, to be fair, as part of the promotion, Ancestry does ask users to “Connect to Spotify to explore the diversity in your listening history and discover music from around the world.” This will give you a list of your five most-listened genres, drawn from the massive list generated by the Echo Nest, with entries as broad as “hip-hop” and as narrow as “compositional ambient” and “indie Quebecois.” Ancestry and Spotify call this your “Musical DNA.” It is not, however, connected in any way to the playlist allegedly created from your actual, material DNA.)This hunch — that maybe genes and genres share more than some etymological roots — resulted in a number of strange and illuminating projects, mostly for demonstration purposes, including one that created playlists of songs that are unusually popular in a given country relative to the rest of the world, called “The Sounds of Places.” There is no sign of this in the Spotify and Ancestry collaboration, either. (Although, to be fair, as part of the promotion, Ancestry does ask users to “Connect to Spotify to explore the diversity in your listening history and discover music from around the world.” This will give you a list of your five most-listened genres, drawn from the massive list generated by the Echo Nest, with entries as broad as “hip-hop” and as narrow as “compositional ambient” and “indie Quebecois.” Ancestry and Spotify call this your “Musical DNA.” It is not, however, connected in any way to the playlist allegedly created from your actual, material DNA.)
This is all to say, contrary to “What is the sound of you?” messaging, Spotify does not engage with your genetic material in any sort of comprehensive way, but instead depends solely on a top-five list of countries or regions gleaned from your results. Users’ playlists, it turns out, are simple combinations of a set of playlists created to represent each of the regions that can show up in an Ancestry DNA test. They do not draw from previous data projects like “The Sounds of Places.” They appear to have been made by hand. They do not factor in a given Spotify user’s profile. Nor do they build on a user’s listening history. They are mixtapes, shuffled to order.This is all to say, contrary to “What is the sound of you?” messaging, Spotify does not engage with your genetic material in any sort of comprehensive way, but instead depends solely on a top-five list of countries or regions gleaned from your results. Users’ playlists, it turns out, are simple combinations of a set of playlists created to represent each of the regions that can show up in an Ancestry DNA test. They do not draw from previous data projects like “The Sounds of Places.” They appear to have been made by hand. They do not factor in a given Spotify user’s profile. Nor do they build on a user’s listening history. They are mixtapes, shuffled to order.
Spotify and Ancestry, in other words, have not located the hidden headphone jacks in our bodies or brain. (The sci-fi consensus places them somewhere along the spine, in case you were wondering.) Understood as mix-and-match human-curated compilations of popular music and genres, then, “The Unique Sound of Your Ancestry” provides a free and easily accessible way to experience the limits of DNA testing in the pursuit of self-knowledge.Spotify and Ancestry, in other words, have not located the hidden headphone jacks in our bodies or brain. (The sci-fi consensus places them somewhere along the spine, in case you were wondering.) Understood as mix-and-match human-curated compilations of popular music and genres, then, “The Unique Sound of Your Ancestry” provides a free and easily accessible way to experience the limits of DNA testing in the pursuit of self-knowledge.
“They could have done something cool,” said Gigi Johnson, Mr. Taylor’s colleague, and the head of the UCLA Center for Music Innovation, and not just by leaning on research into music and genre. “Advertisers get extremely granular data about the people they’re advertising to,” she said. Ostensibly, Spotify could have mined a ton of data and created a unique collaboration based on Spotify-linked social accounts, including Facebook. After all, like any big internet platform, Spotify is part surveillance operation, and part whatever it says it is.“They could have done something cool,” said Gigi Johnson, Mr. Taylor’s colleague, and the head of the UCLA Center for Music Innovation, and not just by leaning on research into music and genre. “Advertisers get extremely granular data about the people they’re advertising to,” she said. Ostensibly, Spotify could have mined a ton of data and created a unique collaboration based on Spotify-linked social accounts, including Facebook. After all, like any big internet platform, Spotify is part surveillance operation, and part whatever it says it is.
Instead, in their reduced form, the playlists tell a tidy if obvious story about just how globalized music has become, how quickly it evolves and borrows and moves, and how destructive this is to various forms of essentialism that might be applied to it. Tell the DNA machine that you have “French” genes, and it may return music by an artist from the 9th arrondissement, who sings about being in love and being young, and also about his Ivorian roots, in his native French. Not bad! If only half on purpose.Instead, in their reduced form, the playlists tell a tidy if obvious story about just how globalized music has become, how quickly it evolves and borrows and moves, and how destructive this is to various forms of essentialism that might be applied to it. Tell the DNA machine that you have “French” genes, and it may return music by an artist from the 9th arrondissement, who sings about being in love and being young, and also about his Ivorian roots, in his native French. Not bad! If only half on purpose.
The darker, more cynical view is to see this as a classic American heritage tourism experience: going to a country for the first time and noticing how different the McDonald’s menus are, but also how it is mostly the same as those in the United States, and finding this all very interesting, but not thinking too much about why.The darker, more cynical view is to see this as a classic American heritage tourism experience: going to a country for the first time and noticing how different the McDonald’s menus are, but also how it is mostly the same as those in the United States, and finding this all very interesting, but not thinking too much about why.
In personal genealogy, data begets data; breakthroughs on sites like Ancestry result from documents, memories, and human connections, and tend to take the those same forms. The Spotify and Ancestry project, on the other hand, falls apart when you imagine it in reverse: It would be impossible to try to work back from songs to a historical self. DNA is less central to this partnership between Spotify and Ancestry than it is a distraction from it. (A representative from Spotify did not respond to a question about whether there was a financial element to the partnership but Danielle Lee, VP, Global Head of Partner Solutions at Spotify said, “We are thrilled to partner with Ancestry as they encourage their audience to explore the soundtrack of their heritage.”) In personal genealogy, data begets data; breakthroughs on sites like Ancestry result from documents, memories, and human connections, and tend to take those same forms. The Spotify and Ancestry project, on the other hand, falls apart when you imagine it in reverse: It would be impossible to try to work back from songs to a historical self. DNA is less central to this partnership between Spotify and Ancestry than it is a distraction from it. (A representative from Spotify did not respond to a question about whether there was a financial element to the partnership but Danielle Lee, VP, Global Head of Partner Solutions at Spotify said, “We are thrilled to partner with Ancestry as they encourage their audience to explore the soundtrack of their heritage.”)
The good news is this: There is already a system for investigating and processing a trove of externally illegible data, all coded and stored and constantly tested and updated, into musical preferences that then be extracted and put into action, for a fee. It’s called Spotify.The good news is this: There is already a system for investigating and processing a trove of externally illegible data, all coded and stored and constantly tested and updated, into musical preferences that then be extracted and put into action, for a fee. It’s called Spotify.