Even in Our Streaming Age, James Acey Won’t Stop Curating Sound

When Spotify, TikTok songs, and algorithmic recommendations reign supreme, Eaton HK’s Music Director reminds us what a music curator can do.

When Spotify released their artificial intelligence DJ in 2023, it flopped. Wired called it ‘soulless.’ “One of the worst features in an app I've ever seen,” a Spotify community user wrote. That several faceless executives thought an algorithmic DJ was a good idea did, however, remind us all of some harsh realities of our music streaming age. Today, algorithms—not human curators—are what shape music taste. The machine will feed you your music, and you will like it.

How can music listening feel less machine-like, more human? Bring back the curator. The work of James Acey, Music Director for Eaton Hong Kong, reminds us of the power of curating sound in storytelling and in treating music as a serious art form. He’s the lead programmer of Eaton Radio HK, a community platform that spotlights music by emerging DJs and talk shows on arts and culture. His own show, Mystery Train Radio, combines playing music with personal stories and live commentary on cultural issues in a way that feels reminiscent of the personality-driven radio I grew up listening to. In the past, James also curated sound and art for underground and alternative venues in the city, and now amongst other things, he organizes Unheard, an annual festival which shines a light on overlooked sounds through different mediums. (In the past, this has included a screening on the histories of Filipino musicians in Hong Kong, and an exhibition of ceramics with sound devices like radios, speakers, and sensors embedded inside).

His curatorial practice for the globally-spanning hotel feels refreshing—necessary, even—in a world where sound is often created and listened to as clipped fodder for a TikTok or Instagram Reel. In the edited conversation below, we discuss the role of radio and music in creating community, the value of intentional listening, and what we’ve gained and lost in our age of streaming.

PATRICK KHO: Some of your podcast episodes reminded me of the radio stations I listened to growing up. They were as much about the music itself as they were about the host’s reactions to the tracks.

JAMES ACEY: I care a lot about our real-time reactions to listening to the tracks, asking questions like, how do you feel about this? Or, what does this remind you of? There used to be a Vibe magazine feature where Bobbito Garcia, a DJ and journalist, would invite guests like Aaliyah and Kobe Bryant and play tracks without telling them what the title was. And you’d get a real-time reaction to listening to a song. That’s the inspiration for playing music and just talking about it. In the playlist era, music is fed to us, and we don’t really process it. People rarely sit down and actually dissect the music that they hear.

What do you think we’ve lost in the streaming era?

We’ve gained and lost intimacy. It’s intimate to make a playlist and share it with someone. But we’ve lost connection to the artists. You can’t find liner notes on Spotify, which means you can’t read much about the ‘why,’ or the process of what inspired an artist to make the song.

Critics today talk about how music streaming platforms are more about vibe-setting rather than engaging with music as art. In a world of passive (and algorithmic) listening, what does a curator do?

In my work, curation happens on different levels. There’s the background music for different spaces—in Eaton, the food hall has a different energy than the bar. And then there’s DJ curation for weekends. But one of the coolest things that I can do is expose people to a different type of sound. So for example, school kids come into our food hall for lunch, they hear ‘90s hip-hop from before they were born (which they wouldn’t encounter otherwise). And through osmosis, they’re hearing and learning something new.

What role does sound play in shaping a space?

Every sound tells a story. Our yearly sound festival with Unheard happens once a year, and is for highlighting lesser-known sounds, like experimental synth building, sound art, or just anything that’s less represented in the collective consciousness. Our goal with a project like this is to get people to be more conscious of the sounds around them. Listening a little closer, for example, helps you understand the city in a different way. For instance, I’ve noticed that the new electric HK green buses have quieter engines. So people talk less when riding them, because they don’t want to be loud or have their conversations overheard.

There’s been pushback against infinite streaming in the form of vinyl collecting (everyone and their mother is doing this now). It’s great that people are more seriously engaging with music, but sometimes it feels cheesy and performative. What makes a real curator?

The term curator is loaded. In the art world, it’s a distinction that you go to school for. I’m less of an academic, so some would say I’m more of a programmer. But if we’re calling what I do curation, then I think it’s about vision. Curation is about having a broad knowledge base, filtering what’s valuable, and then choosing intentionally what to platform. There’s a difference between just selecting songs and crafting an experience. The best curators make you feel something. They put puzzle pieces together and marry moments in a cohesive way.

In your work in underground/community arts programming, how have you seen underground culture evolve? And what defines it today?

The availability of everything through social media makes it harder for something to stay truly underground. If it’s marketable, capitalism will find it, shine a light on it, and say, are you trying to hide over there? Then suddenly it’s mainstream. Creator Eugene Healey talks about the ‘core-ification’ of everything: everything references something else, but often without understanding the roots. People adopt aesthetics and culture without really knowing their origins. If you were a punk before, you’d actually have to listen to punk music and join an underground punk group, but now it’s just an aesthetic choice, detached from its history and real-life culture.

“Radio as Community” is written on the Eaton Radio website. Where does the idea of community come in with the medium of radio?

Radio has always been a very communal form. People once got all their news and music through it, entire communities would be listening to the same thing. Physically, too, when you’re working at a radio, community happens: people bring their friends, their crews, and hang out.

Our platform at Eaton Radio highlights artists passing through the city, podcasts on literature, environmentalism, pop culture, music, art. It’s also a place for up-and-coming DJs to share their mixes, or anyone who just wants to familiarize themselves with the equipment—twiddle knobs, figure things out—without paying rent. Adjacent to the radio booth, Eaton has a food hall, a hotel, and a restaurant. We’re creating multiple levels of community: micro, meso, macro.

Podcasts are on the rise, partially because people are craving authenticity in their media diets. Listening to your radio show, it’s mostly conversational, but it’s not about unfiltered chaos or catchy soundbites oriented around growth metrics. What’s the value of a sonic project where authenticity isn’t centered around growth?

There’s an André 3000 quote: I can’t afford not to record. It’s kind of like what you’re doing with me now—recording thoughts and expressions. Recording is always a time capsule. Whether I listen back or not, whether others do, or whether aliens do in the future, the impulse is to document something. My co-host Cheryl and I have common interests in music, travel, and culture, so we record them. It’s not a huge project, but we do have that impulse to create a recording as a time capsule.