In the age of TikTok, YouTube, and subscriptions, our encounters with music have become faster.

You encounter an unfamiliar song.
You search for it if it catches your interest.
Related songs appear.
You add it to a playlist.
You move on to the next track.

It is incredibly convenient.

Songs that we never would have encountered in the past are now just seconds away.
Even unknown artists from overseas, vintage tracks, and sounds created in someone's bedroom can be heard with virtually no distance between us.

Yet, as things have sped up, there is also a sense that something has worn thin.

Perhaps it is the time required for the body to physically move toward and encounter music.

In the past, there was a physical body involved before the encounter with music took place.

You take the train to Shibuya.
You exit the station.
You walk through the streets.
You enter a clothing store.
You enter a cafe.
An unfamiliar song is playing.
There is a rack of CDs in the corner of the shop.
You pick up a jacket.
You are not quite sure what it is, but it captures your curiosity.
You purchase it.
You place it in a bag and bring it home.
You listen to it at home.

Music was never just the sound alone.

The weather of that day.
The scent of the shop.
The lighting.
The atmosphere of the shop staff.
The clothes you were wearing.
Your feet, tired from walking.
The time spent wondering whether to buy it.
The train ride home.

Such things clung to the periphery of the song.

Therefore, when you listen to the song later, it is not just the sound that returns, but the entirety of that physical space.

Walking from Shibuya to Harajuku.
Walking through the night streets with headphones on.
Listening while looking out the window on a rainy day.
Being inexplicably caught by something in the corner of a cafe that was not a CD shop.

Within our memory, music was preserved alongside the city streets and our physical bodies.

Through subscriptions, songs are found instantly.
However, the physical journey of the body leading up to the encounter is brief.

You touch with a finger.
You play.
You like it.
You save it.
You move to the next.

Of course, even so, music remains.
Today's youth have their own ways of encountering it.
A song discovered on TikTok is explored more deeply on YouTube.
They jump to older songs from the comments section.
They encounter sounds from unfamiliar countries through playlists.
That, in its own right, is remarkable.

Yet, where does one let that song pass through the physical body?

I believe that is where the significance lies.

Listening to a song discovered on TikTok on a night walk.
Listening to a song found on YouTube on a rainy day.
Taking a subscription playlist out onto the path of a commute to work or school.
Listening to the same song in a different season, at a different time, in a different physical state.

When one does so, music ceases to be mere content.

It becomes an experience.

Music is not information.

It is time that the physical body has passed through.

That is why a song you have not listened to for ten years can suddenly make sense to you now.

A song you listened to only as a melody when you were young now reaches you through its lyrics.
A track you once thought was merely stylish reveals itself to be, in truth, the urban solitude.
A pop song you dismissed as light is recognized as the wisdom needed to live without becoming too serious.

It is not that the song has changed.

It is the listening body that has passed through time.

Music does not immediately translate into meaning.

The body walks, grows weary, loses its way, parts with someone, loses something, and returns once more.
Only after this process is there a song that finally goldens into translation, finding its meaning.

Therefore, music that the physical body does not pass through finds it difficult to become a lasting memory.

Consuming a song is different from a song remaining within you.

Listening to music, perhaps, is not the act of playing an audio source.
It is the act of letting some part of your physical body pass through that sound.

When I was walking from Shibuya to Harajuku, I was not thinking of such things.

I was simply walking the streets, listening to music through my headphones.
Looking at clothes, looking at billboards, looking at people, looking at the lights of shops.

Yet, looking back now, I realize.

That time was what transformed the music into memory.

To return music from content back into experience, I believe we need the physical body once more.

© SHIRO & Co.

First published: 2026-05-21