What were you doing on Oct. 7, 2008?

I was probably sitting at the kitchen table after a long day at school, doing my math homework while listening to Pandora Radio. With the Jonas Brothers and Hilary Duff at the tip of my fingers, I felt like the coolest fifth grader on the block.

Little did I know, a new music streaming service called Spotify had been released to the public that very day, and 10 years later, 83 million paying subscribers worldwide would become avid users of the application and throw Pandora to the curb, including myself.

Having recently celebrated 10 years as a successful company, Spotify created a playlist of their most streamed songs from the past decade, bringing back hits such as “Somebody That I Used To Know” by Gotye and Kimbra, “Take Me To Church” by Hozier, and my sixth grade favorite, “Fireflies” by Owl City.

The playlist is called “Decade of Discovery” and as the description states, it’s “in no particular order. Just great songs.”

It’s no surprise that Spotify can be spotted on numerous screens as college students walk from class to class, trying to escape the reality of midterms. DJ’s use the platform at parties, friends follow each other in hopes of sharing their latest favorites, and small town musicians from all over use the app to discover new songs to sing in the shower or play at the next open mic night.   

As for me, I use Spotify as a time capsule. The songs I listened to 10 years ago define my early teen years and remind me of the musically passionate person I grew to be. More than three dozen playlists later, I tend to stray away from my “indie middle school feel good” phase and go for something a little different. From grad parties to road trips and everything in between, each song from each playlist brings back a memory, good or bad. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I think a song is worth more.