🎧 You are what you listen to

September 5, 2022

Commuters in Northern California got a saucy surprise after a truck overturned, slathering several lanes into a marinara mess. A spaghetti truck was quickly dispatched.

Let’s get to it!

The Big Idea: How music tastes change as we age
Chart: Are music stands being replaced by something new?
Perspectives: In defence of going to concerts alone
Cartoon of the week
Around The Web: Frauenkirche has a new organist, a 96-year-old soprano sings like an angel, Shostakovich ranked, plus more fascinating finds.

THE BIG IDEA

How Do Our Music Habits Change As We Age?

University of Toronto researchers worked with Spotify on a study looking into how our listening and searching habits change over time.

Their paper, The Dynamics of Exploration on Spotify, was presented at the Sixteenth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media in June 2022. AAAI stands for Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.

Music exploration

There are many valid criticisms levelled at Spotify and other music streaming services, but one advantage remains clear: music exploration.

Online streaming has facilitated and changed the way we find new music and artists to enjoy, albeit subject to algorithms that attempt to anticipate those choices. The question is: with all those tracks available, how are users finding new music to enjoy? And, does that change as we (the users) age?

Not surprisingly, the answer to the latter question is yes.

As the paper notes in its abstract, "We find clear differences between users at different points of their off-platform lifecycles, with younger listeners consistently exploring less and exploiting known content more."

The paper recognizes that other factors come into play, including seasonality and personality. However, user lifecycles tend to follow broad patterns. At first, people go to discover new music, but that happens less and less over time.

Nostalgia

As we get older, nostalgia becomes more of a factor, and novelty becomes less attractive. That's the common assumption. However, expanding tastes can also come with age, and lead to perhaps a different sort of exploration.

The researchers used data from 100,000 Spotify users based in the United States. They looked at age, and how often users added new music to their personal lists. Then, they compared that with those patterns over time. Age groups were divided into 18-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, and 55-64.

The results

Older users are more likely to explore new content
Older users turn over their content more on a weekly basis
Younger users explore less over the whole system
The latter is particularly true of older music — younger people explore it much less

"This provides large-scale evidence supporting the notion that variety-seeking behaviours increase as people age," the researchers write.

The details reveal more differences. For instance, though younger listeners explore less, they're quicker to add their new discoveries to their personal selections and even their top tracks. Younger listeners also explore a more diverse range of content than their older counterparts.

The goal of the ongoing research into listener behaviour is to tweak the AI algorithms to incorporate user lifecycle information and level of exploration into diverse genres.

CHART OF THE WEEK

Are Music Stands Becoming Obsolete?

Anyone familiar with playing a musical instrument will know how important it is to have a music stand to hold your sheet music while you play. So when we noticed a drop in the relative interest in music stands online, we took note.

Music stands have become ubiquitous for musicians for centuries. Originating in Ancient China around 200 BC, they were not commonly used until the 1300s by European musicians from Germany and Switzerland. Since then, music stands have become the single most common piece of music equipment.

But around 2010, something started to impact the use of music stands.

The first iPad...

...was released by Apple in 2010.

It wasn’t long before some musicians realized how useful iPads were for displaying digital sheet music.

They liked them so much, that some started forgoing music stands altogether — turning instead to specialized stands built to hold their tablets rather than music scores.

As a second-order consequence, there has been a steady increase in digital sheet music sales and a gradual decline in paper sheet music sales.

By the numbers

$236.7M: Sheet Music Publishers in the US, Market Size in 2022
-2.4%: Sheet Music Publishers in the US, Market Size Growth in 2022
-1.8%: Sheet Music Publishers in the US, Annualized Market Size Growth 2017–2022

(stats via IBISworld)

Can classical music escape sheet music?

Hannah over at Bb Flute has some compiled a list of reasons why musicians are choosing digital scores over paper sheet music:

Your entire music library is just one swipe away
Music on your tablet is searchable
Saves storage space
Saves paper
Easier page turns
Can play in the dark
Wind isn’t an issue

While the pros are tempting, don’t discount music stands just yet. They are still the industry norm and the most common way to play while reading analogue sheet music.

BTW: If you’re looking for a good stand for your iPad, you’ll want to consider picking up a Bluetooth-enabled hands-free page-turner. Click here for a comparison of the best page-turners on the market.

THE LATEST

Nicola Benedetti just launched a new online Baroque Virtual Sessions series

Frauenkirche has appointed a new organist

Lang Lang is putting a classical twist on one of your favourite singalongs

Shostakovich's best symphonies ranked

PERSPECTIVES

Tenor Plácido Domingo Linked To Criminal Sex Trafficking Case

Why Going to a Concert Solo Might Be the Best Thing Ever

Way back in 2014, the National Endowment for the Arts released findings from a study about how and why patrons participate in certain arts events.

The first report looked at what motivates and prevents people from attending arts events such as concerts. While most of the major barriers are pretty standard — not enough time, too far away, etc. — one listed barrier stuck out: no one to go with.

The social element

Twenty-two percent of survey respondents said that not having a concert companion was enough to prevent them from going to see a performance they were interested in. At a time when arts presenters are trying to fill seats, it would be beneficial for everyone if we broke down the stigma against going to concerts by ourselves.

Granted, we enjoy going to concerts with other people for a reason. Going by yourself can feel a little bit awkward; limited seating means sitting very close to strangers, and it can sometimes be disappointing to experience a magical concert and not have anyone to share it with.

But going to a concert alone has many advantages. Sitting in the audience of a great concert, you are sharing the experience with hundreds of other people, regardless of if you know them or not. Perhaps we are too polite and often wary of friendly strangers who talk to us.

A chance to disconnect

In September 2015, the New York Times published an article suggesting that disconnecting from our phones and devices in the concert hall could be a selling point for classical music performances. It argued that very few spaces are left in our society where we are expected to disconnect from the online world. People seek out time to “unplug”, whether going up north to a cottage or giving themselves intentional off-the-grid time. In the same vein, could we not consider going to a concert a much-needed opportunity for some introspective alone time?

Some practical reasons to go to concerts alone

You’re less likely to argue over the armrest with a stranger.
You never have to wait for someone to go through the long bathroom line, and no one will judge you for having two Häagen-Dazs bars at intermission.
It’s also easier to navigate crowds by yourself, and if you don’t invite anyone, you don’t need to agonize over if they are enjoying themselves or not.
The freedom to buy tickets at the last minute and attend a performance on the spur of the moment can also make attending a concert much more exhilarating. If a rush ticket isn’t guaranteed, getting one can feel like winning the jackpot, and you’ll enjoy the performance that much more.

Whatever the reasons, the more we go to concerts by ourselves, the less weird it will be for everyone. Then maybe that twenty-two percent of people won’t have a reason not to go to concerts after all.

AROUND THE WEB

🎀 On This Day: Flush from his new fame, Elvis Presley gifts his mother, Gladys, a pink 1955 Cadillac Fleetwood.

📺 Don’t Fall Down: Vietnam veteran being told how much his Rolex watch is worth

👂Hear This: Unearthed footage of operatic soprano, Magda Oliverowith singing at 96 years old.

👶 Meta: Twitter thinks this baby Jesus sculpture in a Los Angeles art gallery looks just like Mark Zuckerberg

🐈 Aww: A cat living his best life

POST WEEKEND CONVERSATION

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