Here's What's Working: Athena Yasaman

Athena Yasaman history of curating music is showing up in the numbers. With 15 out of 21 submissions have a co-sign Athena is sitting at a 70% hit rate. Her taste is wildly eclectic with many artists in her profile just starting out. With acts as upstart as SuperJazzClub to more established artists like Juls, the range is evident.

Phlote: In true Nardwaur fashion, Who are you?

Athena Yasaman - I’m Athena, Iranian-Cypriot-American human, extroverted introvert, friend of all cats, avid gardener, bus u-turn critic, pressure washing enthusiast, dormant violinist/producer… but most people just know me for being an artist advocate, music curator and head of music discovery at Catalog.

Phlote: You have a history of sharing music over the past few years, I love your sets on the Lot Radio. Each set feels like you preparing a meal for us. How do you decide which songs to co-sign? Do you think about place/setting for where you’d listen to or play the music?

Athena: My sets on The Lot Radio are the latest iteration of sharing music I enjoy. It started shortly after leaving Spotify. People kept asking what new music I was listening to since they couldn’t listen to the playlists I was making there anymore, so I started doing Signal Boost at The Lot. Since the selections in those sets are intended to showcase all kinds of sounds catching my ears at the moment, they are a bit more wide-ranging, and their place/setting a bit more intentional than what I’d do at a gig at night where i’d play music intended for dancing 100% of the time. Signal Boost is definitely like preparing a meal - I live for pairings where the energy transfer is unexpected but delightful, especially when weaving through a number of styles in an hour.

Phlote: What’s your process for finding music? Also what are the go-to headphones/speakers that you use?

Athena: I am always looking for new music, I can’t help it. Honestly, I find some of the most fire music through playlists made by artists that I enjoy. Artists have some of the best ears out there. I also have a lot of luck with independent curators - no, I don’t mean the ‘curators’ that take money to promote music - but actual curators with integrity like NOT 97 and the guests they bring on. My wife is also a constant source of musical joy; she’s not in the music industry but has great taste effortlessly and is always putting me on to new stuff. Other usual suspects include DJ mixes, browsing Bandcamp, DMs/email, going down rabbit holes checking out artists and producers featured on compilations, and the Spotify New Releases by Genre interface on Every Noise At Once which is essentially a firehose of endless new releases to explore. Last but not least, I've also been finding great stuff on Future Tape, not to mention Phlote as of late.

As for headphones, people that have seen this Buzzfeed video will know I am not a headphone snob. One of the top comments there is spot on in that I prefer to hear the music close to how most people will experience it, especially when curating. That and the pure fact that when your job is literally to listen to music five, six, seven or eight hours every single day, every pair of over-the-ear headphones will start to make your head feel like a crushed egg. For everyday use, i'm currently using a pair of JLab Go Air Pros, and for DJing i’ve had the same pair of Audio Technica M40Xs for the last four or five years. I feel elitism over headphones is a bit silly - If it's great music, you shouldn't have to use high-end gear to tell. It should still hit in a 10 year old car stereo. My position on this is similar to my stance when people debate DJ equipment - If you're connecting with listeners, who cares what gear you're using.

Phlote: As one of the people behind "Fresh Finds" on Spotify, can you give us a little insight on the creation of the playlist and ultimately what made it successful?

Athena: I think what makes it successful is that it goes against the grain of what is assumed to be “best practices” in the curation field, and the outcome deeply appeals to music fans that truly value discovery. First, the songs featured are always from independent artists and labels - a quality that no other official Spotify playlist franchise has, and something I advocated very hard to establish and maintain. The artists featured typically have zero to very little official playlist support prior to being on Fresh Finds, a quality originating from a frustration with many Spotify playlists featuring the same artists over and over again. It is also one of the few playlists made in-house where the entire playlist has completely new songs in it every single week, as it’s intended to shine a light on as many great songs as possible. This is night and day compared to the traditional, default approach where a DSP curator/editor typically changes out a very small amount of songs in a playlist each week — maybe no more than 10% of the entire list — and very slowly works in newly added songs by less recognized artists, starting them towards the bottom and graduating them up bit by bit as they start performing well. There is a reason for this style of curating in that when it comes to optimizing for session time and low skips, the average music fan prefers familiarity. But for the true music fanatics, Fresh Finds offers a completely opposite and refreshing approach with its treasure trove of music discovery goodness.

Phlote: How do you see music curation at Catalog evolving and in Web3?

Athena: I don’t have a crystal ball but I think it’s safe to say Catalog will continue on our journey in further distributing curatorial voice, starting with our recent move towards rotating cycles of contributing curators. As for curation in Web3 as a whole, i’m really excited about the opportunity to curate collaboratively with other great ears. Imagine if one day the most influential playlists driving music discovery were curated not by a select few individuals, but via a dynamic network of curators that build their track records in supporting talent early on, on chain. To me it feels like just a matter of time.

Phlote: What are the last 5 songs you liked on Spotify?

Athena:

Hearing Voices by Contour

Money Music by Surprise Chef

Collateral Damage by BXKS

Termínelo by Ivohé

Omoke by European 305 & Jimmy Curtis

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