Photo by Raphael Lovaski on Unsplash

Pop Music in the Attention Economy

There’s a good reason why that song you heard at the mall is now stuck in your head. Pop music has changed significantly from the physical era and is being engineered to suit the needs of a perpetually distracted listener.

When digital music services started offering listeners millions of songs on demand, it became really easy to get lost in the chaos induced by this abundance of choice. Labels realized this, and molded the creative process to better suit the nature of the medium, reducing pop music to short, easily digestible bits of information, offering listeners instant gratification with no complexity, enabling an “easy listening experience”.

Canadian philosopher Marshal Mcluhan famously said “The medium is the message” and nowhere is this more evident than in the music business. Due to the democratized access to music through streaming services, the abundance of choice enabled by the medium has had a lasting impact on its message: the music.

In 2017, Hubert Léveillé Gauvin from the Ohio State University published a paper titled: Drawing listener attention in popular music: Testing five musical features arising from the theory of attention economy . In the paper, the author attempted to find out whether the composition of pop music has changed due to the attention economy.

Sample: Gauvin chose Billboard’s Top 10 Singles from 1986 to 2015 forming a total sample size of 303 songs. He then analyzed the songs based on the five parameters mentioned below:

1. Number of words in the title: A consistent decreasing trend was observed when it came to the number of words in the title of songs. Clearly, songs with shorter names were easier to recall, consequently leading listeners to come back for more. (By which I mean stream multiple times).
2. Main Tempo: Studies have indicated that songs with higher tempos are more effective at capturing a listener’s attention. The tempo of the 303 songs analyzed indicated a clear incremental trend . The music was about 90 bpm (Beats per Minute) in 1986 whereas in 2015 it was just around 100 bpm.
3. Time before the voice enters: Labels are now catering to impatient listeners who can easily skip to the next song if they are not instantly engaged. Playlist curators are constantly monitoring skip rates to determine which songs have been skipped and which songs have been added by users. Gauvin’s research shows that the time before the voice enters has decreased over the years. This further reinforces our theory: To achieve popularity in the attention economy, a song has to please an impatient listener.
4. Time before the title is mentioned: Since many listeners are drawn by the title of a song when they select it, they are instinctively waiting for the title to appear once they hit play. Similar to the aforementioned parameter, a decreasing trend was observed in the time taken before the title is mentioned. Listeners want songs to “Get to the point”.
5. Self-focus in lyrical content: The most intriguing parameter tested was the presence of self focused lyrical content.The songs were run through a software which tracked the number of first person singular pronouns used in them. Even though the author did not find an increasing trend, research conducted by DeWall et al in a similar study conducted in 2011 with a similar sample (top singles from 1980 to 2007) observed a clear incremental trend in the use of self focused lyrical content. This indicated the need for a listener to relate to a particular song and the importance of making listeners feel a sense of closeness with the artist.

(In a more philosophical sense, any product or service that coaxes an individual’s heightened sense of self is well rewarded by those who feel increasingly alienated in the digital world.)

At this point its important to note that a few outliers were observed, such as Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used To Know”, where listeners have to wait for a long time before the vocalist’s voice enters, as well as a whole two minutes before the title is mentioned in the chorus. However, these observations were exceptions and not the norm.

Photo by Mohammad Metri on Unsplash

I don’t wish to make a subjective claim stating simple music is not “good” music. I simply wish to highlight what credible research indicates:

The composition of popular music has changed to better suit the attention economy, i.e. it has become objectively attention seeking.

Something to think about the next time you find “Girls Like You” stuck in your head during an important meeting.