It’s a thing. The next level of streaming music - curated. Taste-making. Hipsters curating their kids’ exposure to Mozart and Pollock.
What do you think?
Oh, and style-mongering stores are now “curated” as well. Biggity-big concept in the kewl kids korral these days.
Bump bump bump… another word bites the dust… bump bump bump…
Yeah, museum curators are MAD that their word is being co-opted by hipsters. The Word ‘Curate’ No Longer Belongs to the Museum Crowd - The New York Times
Well, they’re not so much co-opting the definition of the word, but rather diluting the prestige of the professional position by using the word (albeit properly) to describe things like a curated music collection, or curated collections of foodstuffs, or liquor or whatever, even websites, I suppose.
I meanthe definitions from the Oxford Dictionaries for "Curate"are:
[ul]
[li]Select, organize, and look after the items in (a collection or exhibition)[/li]
[li]Select the performers or performances that will feature in (an arts event or program)[/li]
[li]Select, organize, and present (online content, merchandise, information, etc.), typically using professional or expert knowledge[/li][/ul]
It’s pretentious as all hell, but technically not wrong. I mean, a business saying they have a carefully curated selection of food trucks in their parking lot is correct, although idiotic.
OTOH, I think there’s some merit in say… a specialty food store selling a carefully curated wine collection, or cheeses or something along those lines that actually require serious knowledge and discernment to select and properly care for.
Yeah, that’s probably not going to work out well.
Unless they’re trying to lay out and organize what their kids are going to rebel against, which is doubtful. 
When my children were young I curated their exposure to Mozart and Pollack, although in those days it was called “listening to classical music” and “going to the museum.”
I didn’t think Hipsters even had kids. Too conformist.
What does this even mean?
It’s a legitimate use of the word.
“Curator: a person who selects content for presentation, as on a website.”
So while it’s pretentious, a person who’s selecting what music is being played is technically a curator.
I find it to be entirely valid, in a new sort of way, but retaining a snooty feel. The fact that the Internet makes EVERYTHING available, figuring out how and what to expose folks to becomes an even more influential choice.
And with specific POV’s being questioned - the White Male POV is joined more fully by other POV’s for a share of the mainstream POV - the definition of “best” or “important to be exposed to” is up for debate more than ever.
It is kind of like the word Artisanal - invoked to make a specific point and speak to a newly-old retro approach to making stuff. But, like Artisanal, can be abused in so many ways. Hearing that young folks / hipsters might plan out their kid’s exposure sounds like a Baby Mozart DVD on steroids.
So I have no personal ownership of the concept. I mean, I blasted the Ramones, the Beatles, Monk, Bach’s Cello Suites and Marvin Gaye, etc. in the kitchen while I cooked. It totally influenced my kids’ (obviously excellent ;)) tastes in music to this day - but I wasn’t freakin’ curating them, you know? I was enjoying good music with them.
I get it. On the one hand, I think it’s pretentious and silly to use an elite word like “curated” when referring to your Pinterest board of “cute summer outfits!!!” or whatever. But on the other hand, I can understand that a “curated” board or playlist signifies that someone chose and arranged all these images or songs with care, and reviews and edits the arrangement from time to time.
Like, there’s a difference between creating a Spotify playlist of the Rolling Stones by dropping every song from every album into the playlist and calling it a day…and thoughtfully going through each album and selecting specific songs which you then arrange in a particular order so that the playlist has a theme that evolves as you listen through it.
A lot of us did this when we created mix tapes; we just didn’t call them curated mix tapes.
And for good reason, because that sounds pretentious and silly, but eh.
I get it too. And while I never had any hand in what I didn’t want my kid exposed to (save the Kardashians), I damn well did make sure she got her share of both Becks, Miles Davis, ZZ Top, Handel, lots of Jimmy Page, etc. Not that we had written tests, :), but she soon discovered she could answer Beethoven or Led Zeppelin to most inquiries and she’d be correct as often as answering pine or oak as we drove through the forest.
I like the concept and the word choice. It could obviously take a douchebaggy turn, but it seems to me that wider use of a word like curate is a generally good thing. The word actually does mean what they think it means.
I think it already has taken a turn for… well, douchebaggery is maybe a bit sweeping, but it’s been watered down and co-opted into uses well outside “carefully selecting a collection of things that deserve careful selection and presentation.” It’s almost down to Collector-with-a-capital-C, and by Xmas I expect to see it in every clothing, jewelry and fashion ad spread from haute couturiers like Target.
At which point hipsters will gnail and wäsh their teeth and find another word to be their super-exclusive, Humpty-Dumpty token for six weeks.
I’ve seen it for some time now. On the one hand I don’t especially like art curators. I’ve worked with a few helpful ones, but they have been active artists themselves. Whenever I’ve worked with a curator(only) who had a real budget, I’ve never seen any help or any money. My impression is that the more money, the less freedom you get in how to put up your own exhibition, until you reach that point where you’d have no problem getting a really well-payed exhibition anyway. So in a ‘screw curators’ I should like it. At least they use it proper. But it is a bit unnecessary.
The online Apple stores were being “curated” out their yin yangs. But the usage seems to be lessening of late, which gives me hope that “curate” is being curated into the dusty vogue-word department, where it will be shoved behind the ancient and cob-webby “two strings to his bow.”
Would it would happen to “grow” the business.
Only if it’s incentivized to proactively leverage the effort.