Tech is changing how we think, and that’s not cool

The technology we use every day is changing what we listen to. I think we’ve all accepted that. But it’s also changing how we express our ideas, and that was never part of the deal. By shining a light on some of the ugly truths of streaming, we see how it’s changed our relationship with music - and what personal changes we need to make to prevent it from subtly stealing our creative freedom.

The economics of streaming

On Spotify or Apple Music, 35% of songs are skipped before the 30 second mark. Maybe that’s not surprising in this age of shrinking attention spans. Basically, if you don’t recognize the song, you skip it. Or if it’s new and you don’t love it right away, you skip it. When Spotify tries to sneak a Steve Miller song into my Tom Petty radio, you’ll see exactly how fast this can happen.

But it turns out this is really bad news for artists. They only get paid if the listener listens for at least 30 seconds. So if you’re skipping a song from your favorite artist at 25 secs, they don’t get paid. Play it for 35 secs, and they do. Of course, they don’t get paid much - between $0.003 - $0.005 per stream, but it’s something.

While the Bruce Springsteen’s and T Swift’s of the world still make plenty, the picture is far less rosy for others. This is especially true for artists trying to break into the music biz. But that’s not even the worst part. Because this economic model is changing how people write songs. It’s changing the art of music.

If you only get paid when people stick around for 30 seconds, you don’t have time for long intro’s. You don’t have time for nuance. You need to hook people with sugary riffs and catchy lyrics right away. As more and more artists try to make a living in this new world, all our music starts to sound the same.

The end of the classics

Stairway to Heaven is one of the most popular and influential songs ever written. You don’t have to be a Led Zeppelin fan to recognize the impact that song had on music, and the hundreds of other artists and songs it inspired. It was so different than anything people had heard at the time.

But would Stairway be written today? If it was, would anyone hear it? “There’s a lady who’s sure…” doesn’t show up until 0:53. Do you think new listeners would have made it through the quiet guitar and flute before skipping on to something more familiar? Would Plant and Page have been tempted to shorten the intro? Would Stairway be the same? What about every song that came after it?

What about Hotel California? Coincidentally, it also takes Don Henley 0:53 to get to “On a dark desert highway…”. Can you imagine the song without Glen Frey’s beautiful guitar intro, with every note in exactly the right place?

Phil doesn’t start singing, “I can feel it coming in the air tonight” until 0:51. Is a world without that iconic drum solo one we even want to live in?

I could spend an afternoon doing this, but the point is that technology is changing the art we make. And it begs the question how many future iconic songs will never be heard, or never be made, because of how we listen today. For music fans everywhere, that’s a soul-crushing question.

And it’s not happening in just music.

From listening to creating

I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. It’s where my customers hang out, so that’s where I hang out. Until launching this newsletter, it was the only place I shared my ideas. It has been great for me. I’ve found the courage to talk about very personal things and painful experiences even some of my best friends don’t know about me. But just like Spotify is changing what we hear, LinkedIn is changing what I say.

I don’t care what anyone says, you can’t say what you want to say on LinkedIn. Or at least, you can’t say it the way you want to say it. If you want people to hear you, you have to play by the algorithm’s rules. That means catchy titles and weird formatting because that’s what drives impressions. Stick to your artistic principles if you insist, but you’ll end up writing to yourself. That might be ok for your gratitude journal, but you’re on LinkedIn for a reason. And whether it’s building a brand, finding leads or creating a network, nothing works if you shout into a void.

The same is true for whatever your social media platform of choice is. Where you express your ideas has its own rules, and those rules change what you create.

So now what?

The lesson, for me - I need somewhere else to share my ideas. Up until now, LinkedIn has been it. I’m grateful - I would never have gotten this far without it. I wouldn’t be writing ‘whatever this is’ right now if I hadn’t got comfortable sharing my ideas on LinkedIn first. But it feels stifling to have that as the only place for me to think. So now, I’ll use this space to explore my ideas the way I want, and I’ll LinkedInify some of those ideas to see what the algorithm thinks. Maybe I can have my cake and eat it too.

So if sharing your ideas is important to you, and I hope it is, find somewhere other than social media to do it. Maybe that sounds obvious, but it wasn’t for me. Your ideas deserve space and freedom to grow without having to conform to rules that distort your soul. As Austin Kleon says, “We don’t write because we have something to say. We write to find something to say.”

Maybe I don’t have a Hotel California or Stairway in me. That’s quite possible.

I’m ready to find out.