Putting Curtains in the Man-Cave

We live in a world where distraction and interruptions are normal, politicians talk in 30 second sound bytes, and music is present nearly continuously.  People complain about shorter and shorter attention spans, and more and more interruptions.  We feel that the enjoyment of music is also a victim of this. Before we discuss how this could be the case, some background on the type of attention spans that have been documented: Transient attention span is about 8 seconds long, and is typically something that attracts/distracts - think ads & pop ups when browsing.  With broadcasts the rule of thumb for dead air on FM, half the remaining listeners would flip to another station every 7 seconds in a long decay  (AM, was about 30 seconds for the same thing).  People will listen to under 7 seconds of a song to see if they will like it before finding another one.  I wouldn't be surprised if a typical Social Media post gets about this level of scrutiny before moving on (or if a l

Ever wonder how we existed before?  In the last century we have gained the ability to listen to music nearly 24 hours a day if we so chose.  First with radio, now with internet streaming.  And the catalog and services allow us to find whatever subgenre, however narrow, to base it upon (or indeed widely general, too).  Some folks initially referred it to "music discovery" style, but in reality it's a carefully curated musical stream and for most people it stops there (meaning they won't buy the music but continue to stream it either paid or unpaid).  It's been a revelation when we stream and can fill the day.  A lot of ink has been spilled on how cool this is, in essence.  And some people deride it as "sonic wallpaper."  I think it's an apt description of it, though I mean no offense by it.  We can now have musical entertainment when we do any kind of mundane activity.  No performances to attend, no records to flip, you don't even have to be pa