Music exposure observation

I love this post because it gets at a set of phenomena -- distraction, fragmentation, hurry -- that have had an impact on music but also on reading novels, watching movies in a single go (at home), and other things. Some of my favorite writers about technology such as Sherry Turkle discuss the implications of these trends on something which bears on empathy (in short supply) -- viz., conversation.

Daniel Boorstin’s piece "Making Experience Repeatable" documents the rise of just recorded music is very eye opening. It illustrates how the magic of the transitory experience of a musical performance was changed forever by the technology of recording. (Benjamin called this the "aura".)

So, technology has been at work a long time, changing how we experience music (and other things). When I grew up, many people did not just sit and listen to records. They put the radio on, and it jumped from song to song. Listener choice was not in command then, as it is now, but you would have favorite stations and also you could call the station and request a song.

One question I would ask the OP is what he/she thinks is lost by this "new equilibrium"? As I understand it, the artists now have a tougher time making a living, so that’s one thing. I also think the ability to stick with something longer -- even if it’s just listening to one side of an album -- benefits folks more than the dopamine hits which come from jumping from one thing to another. But hey, maybe we just like dopamine now. Evolution will sort out the survival pluses or minuses of marketers and advertisers’ use of short attention and limited memory spans, I guess.

Video killed the radio star.
Streaming killed the video star.
TikTok is killing the streaming star.
I hate the thought of being around to see who wins the shortest attention span and how they do it. Soon, we'll be back to grunting and gesturing in order to communicate. Those with ADD will end up ruling the world, which is appropriate since there'll be no memory of things past, only the immediate present, which will  be scanned and then discarded for the next best thing.

All the best,
Nonoise

@nonoise 

You are correct of course.

Whoever thought that being shallow would be a career goal.

Sometimes I am glad that I am old.

👍😄👍

Led Zeppelin I - GOOD TIMES BAD TIMES (Released March 10, 1969)

My Music Exposure Observation, at a young age. Wouldn’t live it any other time.

Sansui amplifier, 2-way speakers, turntable. Drop the needle, best of times.

Music Video on Youtube

I am in my 60s.  I had a millennial next door neighbor over the other day to take a peek at my audio system and my HAM radio / amateur radio shack.  I was mentioning to him there are not a lot of young people coming up through the ranks to fill the HAM or audio gap.  He summed it up: finances.

Young people do not have the money to pursue what many of us audio enthusiasts have chased for decades.  Many can't afford a car or a house.  They are in their 30s and 40s living with their parents trying to look after the elderly.  

Many of us are lucky.

@r042wal I'm not buying it. When I was out of college, the first thing I bought was a low-end Techics turntable, Rotel amp and KEF speakers. Nonoise has it sussed—they do not have the patience nor dedication to pay attention. 

@nonoise ​​​​@noromance 

I'm in complete agreement. Attention span is a rare commodity, and in a world where Taylor Swift is considered an artist, there is little new to pay attention to in popular American culture..

@roxy54 

American culture used to mean something. Now that the bar has been lowered to the "coarse" setting, all bets are off. It's WWF culture from now on. 

All the best,
Nonoise

@nonoise ​​​​@noromance 

I can agree with you both but I still think finances could be a factor as well.  I was getting a first-hand account from my millennial next door neighbor

@r042wal give that neighbor kid a small AM/FM radio, and see if he'll use it. 

At age 13 I was mowing lawns for people on weekends and had 2 paper routes. My  first was a Radio Shack Patrolman 6 for listening to UHF VHF CB FM AM RADIO. It sat next to my sleeping spot. I listened to it whenever possible to hear anything. 

Many kids today are handed cell phones and fancy ear buds, and for those who are not fortunate, free air radio is still available. Will they use it - if they don't worry about peer pressures or not meeting the "cool factor". Try it and see.

The destruction of human concentrated attention is the first goal of control technology...

By control technology i means the primitive methods used by corporations to impose with the methods of Bernays ANYTHING they want: breakfeast must be bacon egg taost coffee, to sell pork and smoking makes you healthier, freer, and more happy...Bernays succeeeded...

This was prehistory...

Now with the technological boom and the destruction of classical education for the masses , which began in the British Empire with the transformation about what is science itself and was completed in America for the masses, the attention span is not only short but shallow... Keeping a deep question in his mind become impossible not only for long but deeply inside us...

We live at the surface of phenomena which are only "things"....

In the last years any astute observers could see for himself the annihilation of democracy and freedom...

But the life span is so short and shallow, there is almost no universal protests... There is Truckers in Canada and some in other countries for sure...

Corporations are the enemy of humankind...

they need us with a short and shallow attention span and with an education SPECIALIZED as with slaves workers...

For example i am astounded by the numbers of people who need new stimulus all over the time in music experience...

This indicate the absence of deep links with music.... Because when a work of music struck us we come back to it....

In the reverse some are obsessed by a few set of songs and are closed mind about anytghing out the usual in musical experience...

The future is very simple and easy to predict now... Anyone can be a cheap prophet as i am...

We must choose between nature and humnan nature , an obsolete set of words by now, and between transhumanism enslavement...

The speed at which we lost our humanity is staggering...

The good news is spirit will win over matter...

To ask the OP about musical exposure, musical experience must be taught and learned...It is the same with acoustic experience...

It is not about taste it is about consciousness and self knowledge and history knowledge too  ...

There’s no question that the post WWII boom which created a vital middle class is gone. Things are objectively less affordable for younger people. Why debate it?

But isn't a more interesting question about how and why we listen? As other posters have said, it doesn’t take a lot of money to pay attention to sound quality. It’s just seems to be more rarely a habit.

I hate the thought of being around to see who wins the shortest attention span and how they do it. Soon, we'll be back to grunting and gesturing in order to communicate. Those with ADD will end up ruling the world, which is appropriate since there'll be no memory of things past, only the immediate present, which will  be scanned and then discarded for the next best thing.

All the best,
Nonoise

@nonoise , excellent observation and well put.

Change is inevitable but not “always”  for the better.

Charles

Most of us could probably be diagnosed with some form of ADHD, especially with the acceptance of so-called multitasking. I mean. how many tabs do you have open on your computer browser at the moment?

However, to address a few of the remarks so far:

@hilde45 The term "new equilibrium" was meant to convey a sense of balance between the on-demand transience of attention and the hitherto unlimited access to a wide variety and spectra of music and entertainment. Gen Z and Millennial playlists I wager are more varied than anything Gen X or Boomers had. 

And yes, finances do indeed play a huge part; likely one of the major perpetuating causes of the narrowing niche of hi-end audio. Still, how many persons/families/couples in all three generations (B/X/M), quite content with simple bluetooth speakers and/or soundbars, gladly spend their disposable income on other luxuries? 

But to your point of WHY the habit of audiophilia is decreasing: it seems to be a perfect storm of financial, technological, physiological, and societal causes.

@roxy54 TSwift is an artist and a damn talented one at that who singlehandedly resurrected the guitar market. No, I don't own any albums nor have any of her songs on any of my TIDAL lists, but her songwriting and musicianship is as valid and talented as any pop culture artist. 

@nonoise the WWF hasn't been around since 2002, though I'm sure many on this forum, me included, happily enjoyed the wrestlers' antics and performances when it was. 

@simao 

Of course you're entitled to your opinion, and I'm entitled to disagree. If she did revive the guitar market (which I haven't heard anyone else say), does that make her someone special? She's a marketing machine, and those machines sell things.

@simao

And yes, finances do indeed play a huge part; likely one of the major perpetuating causes of the narrowing niche of hi-end audio. Still, how many persons/families/couples in all three generations (B/X/M), quite content with simple bluetooth speakers and/or soundbars, gladly spend their disposable income on other luxuries?

This is where I disagree with a number of my Audiogon colleagues. I don’t believe that financial status is a primary reason. There are more audio products available for reasonable cost than I can recall in the30 years or so I have been engaged with high end audio. Not to mention a very ample used audio marketplace.

@mahgister and other members here have given testimony of achieving terrific sounding audio systems for modest sums of money. It does require planning, effort, will and motivation but can certainty be accomplished. I believe that it more a case of other priorities for disposable income usage. Which of course is fine.

Charles

No one pay attention to the sound quality if he is not a music lover first and last...

All old audiophile or younger one here love music first....

But there is commercially "fabricated" music and music of higher craftmanship...

The frontier between these two extremes is not clear cut at all but at the two extreme musak ascensor music is not an Indian Raga or a Bach piece...😊

Most music oscillate toward these two levels of qualities : genuine craftmanship and mere fabrication...

In an era of consumerism the content of musical products declined toward varieties of usefullness and needs to be surprized or the needs to be programmed ( as robots are ) and all these three factors together...

Then because music as acoustic must be LEARNED and is not understood at birth, especially other culture music or peculiar esthetical one as Jazz or classical, we assist to a decline in the number of people invested in audio stereo system for the sake of musical content itself...

It is not about money, there is an offerings of low cost high quality products right now in amplification and dac in particular as there is never been so much in the past ...

People are overstimulated ( tv,computer and cell  phone and the rythm of life and work i hate so much cell phone i dont own one new but a prehistoric one with no usable computer screen , it is a foldable one and smaller than the usual everyone own now ) and over stimulation is like a drug , they need the drug, and the changes, and the novelties...They consume...They dont seat to listen in a concentrated directed attentive way for hours the art of the fugue and compare it to many versions... They dont meditate on the time perception in Indian raga...😊

Then they dont need a sophisticated audio system , acoustically sophisticated, not necessarily very costly, because they consume varieties of short pleasures and stimuli in short span EVERYWHERE....

Listening music is a sacred event.... In ONE place.... Because we need to contentrate...Ectasy is a sacred experience in a way a repetitive annoying masturbation is not...And music may be an ectasy for those of us who are so much moved toward it that we try hard to create an acoustic corner around it with even costly gear...

Multitasking is for robots by the way....No genius multitask... They focus in the opposite without end on specific problem ... Multitasking is the first sign of a desintegrating attention or the sign of a well integrated ROUTINE and set of habits at some work... But there is no multitasking in martial arts for example...In multitasking we lost the larger attention field behind the focus centered attention and we lost the focus attention to some extent too ...In multitasking with are in a RYTHM.... Like robots... And the rythm does not emerge freely from the body and metabolism as in African dance for example but is IMPOSED on the body and metabolism by the different tasks we must do at the same time...

Slaves multitask .... Free man think....

Our corporate master want us to multitask in the mean time they will think for us...

The OP seems to be stating that the more work that is required to get obtain a playing of pre recorded music, the more serious the effort on the part of the listener.

Certainly vinylistas have long argued this.  The work involved with setting up and maintaining a turntable, the effort to keep records clean, static free, and flattened out mitigates against the urge to change it after 1 song.  Streaming otoh seems to facilitate jumping around.

  I think audiophiles tend to listen differently than most people.  My wife can listen to the radio all day and be really into what is playing although she didn’t actively choose it.  Normal People just love music without obsessing about how it gets served up or what quality it is reproduced at.