Clarification: This is not a discussion between the features of Spotify or Blogger as content hosting services, but rather a comparison between the activities that they facilitate, namely music-making and blogging respectively.
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relativity
/rɛləˈtɪvɪti/
noun
the absence of standards of absolute and universal application
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Recently I had come to know of a good friend doing very well on Spotify with his music (which are in their own right very well-written and produced), where he found his pieces featured on the homepage queues. I personally enjoy his work.
In an isolated incident, I had also seen another counterpart promote the work of another person whom I did not know prior, which I then checked out. It is quite a feat when the work one produces is able to raise awareness for itself through word of mouth and genuine recommendations by peers, than if such promotion were to be undertaken oneself.
Temporarily stripping away the distinct differences between music-making and my blogging, both endeavours are in essence of seemingly identical natures: content creation. However, it is evident that one mode of content creation is receiving a better response with audiences than the other.
Notwithstanding infinitely different methods of execution that could result in drastically different outcomes for different people, a conclusion on the disparity in outcomes of music-making and my blogging necessitates a discussion of the characteristic differences between the two endeavours, to which I have a few preliminary realisations.
Factor 1: Music elicits desirable emotions whereas blogging often does not
In general, people seek that which they value. Conversely, they would not seek that which they do not value.
People do not value animosity, anger and disagreement.
Music is able to elicit emotions such as a temporary blissful happiness, a sad longing or a wistful hopefulness. It is capable of inspiring the listener, possibly even driving them to action (upon which characteristic rests the entire genre of workout music). Music is able to touch the heart and one's empathetic tendencies, and coupled with powerful visuals, is able to greatly impact a person's emotions and mental state. Even if the music or associated lyrics are sad and deal with tragedy, a moving melody ensures that a lasting impression is left on every listener who isn't an absolute psychopath. Most music-listening experiences are thus positive experiences; few encounters with music are encounters that people regret for they invariably see value in the music, or see how it could appeal to the tastes of other people, justifying its existence and possible popularity.
Music universally appeals.
Juxtapose this with the (hopefully usually) deeply thoughtful content of my pieces, and the impact of this first factor starts to become apparent.
Pieces that catalyse growth usually do not inspire happiness. On the contrary, even as some pieces might provide food for thought, they largely deal with reconciling topics that are uncomfortable to discuss, or are not even well-written to begin with. Moreover, a meaningful discussion on contentious issues cannot be without disagreement, controversy, and possibly eliciting feelings of defensiveness or anger in an one or both persons party to the discussion.
Thus, it is evident that any sane well-managed person will avoid as far as possible from encountering animosity and consuming content that does not elicit positive emotions.
Factor 2: Music is generally produced to be of higher quality that blogging
Attention is the currency of the digital economy where consumers of media "pay" for content that they desire by spending time on it. The dwindling attention span endemic to the digital generation is thus akin to increasing thriftiness and frugality in spending one's attention. Thus, it follows that just as how people will only spend money to demand goods and services that they are both willing and able to buy, the online media consumer will only spend time and attention on content that they are interested in and are thus willing to consume.
Hence, just as how people might choose to spend more money on a branded, higher quality consumer good, so they would be more inclined to spend their attention on work that is of higher quality than that which is not.
However, if we run with the above analogy, a problem arises because people sometimes choose to spend less money on cheaper, off-brand goods than expensive, branded ones - and by analogy, surely some persons would be interested in "lower production quality" text compared to the "higher production quality" aural stimulation?
The perceived paradox, of there being no persons consuming lower quality content in general although we might sometimes buy with money lower quality physical goods, can be reconciled by recognising that the key difference between the currency of attention and that of money is that, in relation to each other, multiple units of money can be spent at the same time, whereas time and attention cannot; a lot of money can be spent concurrently whereas only one unit of attention can be spent per unit time. Moreover, money is arguably a renewable resource as it is possible for additional money to be procured, whereas time is a non-renewable resource that cannot be regenerated when spent.
This means that the opportunity cost of buying a lower quality physical good is much less than spending time to consume a lower quality production, because not only can money be spent concurrently to buy many goods at the same time (thus the spending on one thing does not take away from the possible spending on another thing until the point where money runs out), but also there are means to earn money again.
In contrast, time and attention is much more valuable, for one can only spend a unit of attention per unit of time on one unit of content, which means that one cannot consume a low quality content and a high quality content at the same time. Thus, the opportunity cost is higher in that consuming a low quality content is done at the expense of a high quality content that can be consumed in that same time. Moreover, the sense of loss when consuming a low quality content is far greater because time is a resource that cannot be regenerated (eg "that's 10 minutes of my life that I'm never getting back").
Having established why people are more inclined to consume higher quality content than lower quality content, we can move on to the discussion of comparing the quality of production between music and blogging.
The general quality of music production is higher than blogging because there is an intuitive sense of what constitutes good music, where there is no common accessible standard for casual writing. The casual music creator, regardless of instrument and medium, by virtue of being able to even produce music, will already have a basic level of technical understanding for benchmarking the quality of their work - ranging from simple mistakes like being out of time to more technical errors such as the complementing of harmony and melody or the musical key that a piece is played in.
Just as how we sometimes submit our college essays thinking that we had done a good job, only for it to be returned to see a failing grade on that, so different people have different standards for what constitutes good writing, and since the barrier of entry to writing is very low where literally every literate person has the potential to write well, that makes the quality of writing a lot harder to judge than that of music making.
Thus, the quality of music produced today even by non-experts will be consistently higher than the writing that similar amateurs produce on a regular basis.
Factor 3: Producers have better consistency and track records than blogging
Because of the aforementioned consistently higher quality of music than blogging, that means that the debut of most independent music-makers are pieces of very high quality.
In contrast, the quality of pieces on some blogs as my own might span the entire spectrum ranging from the excellent to mediocre. This means that not only might new visitors who chance upon a lower quality post be put off, but persons in general who land upon this page might feel as if they are playing the lottery on the quality of the posts herein, where they bet with their time and attention, and because of the aforementioned value of time and attention in Factor 2, it is plausible that they will be unwilling to play again.
Thus, producers of music have a better consistency in quality and a track record of producing quality content, that takes the chance out of the aforementioned lottery by virtually guaranteeing that if you have consumed his/her music before, that it would not be a waste of time to do so again this time.
Factor 4: Music-making is a higher valued skillset than blogging
The preliminary final factor of consideration would be The Relativity of Skillsets.
Just as how society today has started to relegate different careers as having different values, even though each career has its part to play in the functioning of economy and society (ie "non-essential" workers), so we place different values on different sets of skills relative to each other.
The value of good writing is diminished compared to the value of music-making because of the barriers to entry for producing music. Producing music requires either talent or a honed skill that one has to go out of the way out of interest or passion to pursue and improve. In contrast, writing is a skill that has a very low barrier to entry, and is one that is being consistently practiced through any form of written communication.
Since one does not have to go out of the way to write a good piece since writing is so common, the value of good pieces are diminished solely due to how saturated the "market" of writing is today. Today's media landscape is saturated with the written word ranging from the news to novels to the bus-stop advertisements, and this inundates readers and drowns out the smaller voices regardless of the quality of their work, for they are at the mercy of the medium wherein they exist.
We spend a lot of time reading - from food packaging to the time and the text on our phone screens, but not as much time listening to music, thus diminishing the value of every encounter with the written word.
Thus, music-making is a higher valued skill since special time and attention had to be taken by the producer to pursue music-making, while writing is too common a medium of communication, thus diminishing the value of writing as a skillset, making any form of writing less popular than any form of content that isn't words on a page - and since music is the exact opposite of that, it and its production is highly valued.
I guess it's also because music and writing are two different media types? For music you can just play it in the background as you do work but for writing you need to sit down and dedicate time to open your eyes and brains to read something new. (So maybe more mental load?)
ReplyDeleteI think another point is the development of platforms to share this media. As you said, for music there's a way to get on the homepage and be publicised further while writing there isn't really a dedicated blogging platform that'll do that.