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 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 explorationThere 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. NostalgiaAs 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
"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
(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:
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 Why Going to a Concert Solo Might Be the Best Thing EverWay 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 elementTwenty-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 disconnectIn 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
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
MEME OF THE WEEK (Source: The New Yorker/Ellis Rosen) How did you like today's email? |