An overview of the Attention Economy and its impact on aspiring musicians
There are 24 hours per day and for the average person:
8 hours are used for sleep
8 hours are used for school or work
8 hours are used for leisure
Therefore, if you’re an aspiring musician, you’re fighting for a portion of that 8 hours of attention that the average person has available for leisure. Amongst musicians, demand is high for peoples attention, but since there are only 24 hours per day and 16 of them are already used up for sleep, school or work, attention is in short supply.
That was an overview of the Attention Economy. Let’s now turn our attention to the demand for and supply of aspiring musicians and their music.
Because of technological advances in music production, becoming a “musician” has become easier than ever.
Prior to the onset of the digital revolution which started in the late 1990s, one would’ve required years of training and practice to become competent enough to be considered a professional musician, be it a vocalist or instrumentalist. Hence, the supply of musicians was somewhat limited, constrained by the limited availability of truly talented individuals who were willing to work hard to hone their craft.
With the onset of the digital revolution, one no longer needed to be able to sing or play an instrument to be considered a musician; you could make great-sounding music just by knowing your way around a digital audio workstation using Autotune and MIDI instruments.
And because of this same revolution, you were able to share your work with the entire world - first with MP3s through platforms such as Apple iTunes, then through YouTube and now today through streaming.
And because of the ease of music production and music distribution, millions of people who would’ve previously been shut out of pursuing a career as a professional musician due to a lack of musical ability could now pursue their dream.
With the advent of artificial intelligence, you won’t even need to know how to work an audio workstation - soon you’ll be able to create music just by using text descriptions of what you want your music to sound like. One can only imagine how many additional millions of “musicians” will enter into the music business within the next couple of years.
Putting all of this together, there’s a seemingly endless supply of aspiring musicians who want their music to be heard but there’s a limited supply of attention. And this supply/demand imbalance will become even more pronounced once AI makes music creation available to the masses.
So, what’s an aspiring musician who’s a diamond hoping to be found amongst an ocean of salt to do? How do you get noticed?
By coming full circle and building your reputation and fanbase before recorded music even existed - through live performances. Demonstrate that you can actually sing and/or play your instrument.