Paralyzed by too much choice
Sunday, May 20, 2012 at 4:28 PM The Internet has given us many great things, but it's also overwhelmed our senses. When given the opportunity to dive deep into uncharted territory, many of us prefer to stick to our comfort zones.
This comes to mind after reading Eamonn Forde's excellent Word magazine story "The Tyranny of Music Choice" (no link because it's print-only). The gist of Forde's piece is that given a wealth of music online, we tend to keep going back to very popular songs. There's a reason Top 20 and classic-rock stations are a staple in every city.
Case in point is Spotify, the brilliant music-streaming service that makes it easy to stream and share millions of songs. Despite this rich archive of music in front of us, Forde notes that a recent study of Spotify usage indicated that roughly one-third of the 4.5 million songs in its database were never played over a six-month period. And when he says "never," he means zero, nada, zilch, nil.
More alarming is that 100,000 songs accounted for about 80 percent of Spotify's streams.
I guess I shouldn't be surprises. Just as restaurant experts will tell you too many menu items overwhelm customers and erode their overall experience, the thought of diving into a morass of unknown talents can be intimidating. Discovering memorable music can be work, and for many of us, we're either too starved for time or just simply too lazy.
With that in mind, I'll share a few shortcuts on new music that's captured my attention. I'm in no way on the cutting edge of music like I once was, but I do like to stay up on trends.
