If you read this article at a fairly average speed it'll take you around three and a half minutes to finish, including this sentence. (And this one :) At a normal breathing rate, that's forty-two breaths. It's not much time is it? I can tell you want to be away though - perhaps you've got email waiting, or a friend might have updated their Facebook page, or maybe a tweetdeck notification's just popped up. (If you're like me you probably speed-read your tweets - after all, who's got time to give their full attention to all 140 characters?)
I know it's hardly a new idea to say that a short attention span is one of the characteristics of the modern world; I just want to say I think music is particularly affected by this. I don't think people base their decisions about films or books or plays or exhibitions on the first couple of seconds of the experience, but many people's judgements about music are based on exactly that. I think this has negative effects on us both as listeners and as musicians.
As listeners we aren't generally speaking prepared to spend a lot of time finding new music. We want our friends (both actual and virtual) to recommend it to us; we want social media sites to suggest it; we want tastemakers to filter it. We listen to fragments of tunes, then move on in case we're missing something better.
We gain in some ways, but part of what we lose is what it's like to be a person who pays attention. We feel better when we give something our full attention, don't we? Finishing "War and Peace" is a satisfying and rewarding experience, even if parts of it are a struggle.
As musicians we have to work very hard to grab even a small part of these flighty listeners' attention. These days most of us know that we have to make our music as good as possible, to utilise social media to engage in conversations with potential listeners, to be interesting and to tell a good story to frame our music, to get people to like us and therefore take a chance on our tunes. The problem is, even though we're all trying to be as interesting and engaging as possible there are still a vast number of us out here clamouring for attention.
Which brings me to an idea for a different type of music-centred social media network. (I know, I know, just what the world needs, but bear with me for a second :) This is only a thought experiment, but for experimental purposes I'll speak of it as though it exists.
In this network a listener doesn't pay any money to join the group, to stream or to download tracks and a musician doesn't pay any money to submit their tracks, but neither do they receive any money from streams or downloads. There's no advertising, there's no "monetizing". In this network all transactions are money-less. Attention is the currency - you pay it and you receive it.
Out of necessity, the first members of this network are musicians, as they're the ones providing the content. Let's say ten musicians like the idea and set up the network. They each submit as many tracks as they like, but it's a condition of membership that they have to listen to twice as many tracks on the network as they submit. Listen means listen to the track in full, and pay it full attention (no keyboard action of any kind while the track's playing :) There's no need to give feedback - we don't want a "dope jointz" myspace vibe, do we? So even at this stage, before there are any further listeners involved, a musician submitting tracks knows it's likely that someone is going to be listening, (really, properly listening), to their music.
Each member then promotes the network to their musician and non-musician friends, in all the usual ways. Any new musician who wants to join can do so, based on the listening-to-twice-as-much-as-you-submit principle. I think new musicians will want to join because they'll be attracted by the rarity of a place where their music will really be listened to.
Any non-musician listener wanting to join the network has to guarantee to listen to a certain number of tunes within a certain time of joining. Let's say they have to listen to 10 full tracks within the first day. They can't select these tunes by listening to the first couple of seconds of 50 tracks before finding the 10 they like - whichever track they start to play, they must listen to in full, and pay it their full attention.
This way of listening is the defining principle of the site. No skipping tracks, no cutting them short - every time you start a track, you listen to it in full, with full attention.
Why would listeners do this when there are so many places where they can listen more easily?
To be honest, I think a lot of listeners wouldn't, but I think there are enough of them who would to make the network an interesting place. I think enough people would get the idea that this is a place where you listen in a different way, and by doing so not only get pleasure from a more intense and focused appreciation of new music, but also get pleasure from being the kind of person who pays attention in a social media setting, even if just for a couple of hours a week.
There's also another incentive for listeners - after a certain number of listens on the site they're able to download one track from any musician member for free (a proper, high quality version, no email registration, just free.) So maybe after every 20 full listens they get a free track. The musician gets paid in the currency of the network - listeners pay them attention.
Tracking the tunes musicians and non-musicians listen to isn't based on technology - that can always be worked around by the devious, for example they can just turn the sound down! People just send emails or post notices to the network saying what they've listened to, and other people take their word for it. There are no particular social media-type friendships - every member is a member of the group, and can interact freely with any other.
I know what I've said above is far from a fully formulated design for a new site, bit I think there's something in the idea at least.
If you've got any feedback on this give me a shout, and if there's a network out there already working on this principle, please let me know about that too, as it's something I'd be very interested in being a part of!
Finally, as a way of putting my attention where my mouth is, so to speak, if you want to send me a track I promise I'll listen to it in full, and pay it my full attention.
I'm not saying I'll review it, because I'm not implying that my opinion of your music should be important to you. I'm just saying that in me you have a guaranteed, focused listener - and who doesn't want one more of those?
So drop it in the dropbox on my contacts page or send me a link.
Cheers for now,
Chris
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