Do you think it might be because the younger generation has a fundamentally different relationship to music that we're not quite understanding?
Most of the people I know involved in the music stuff are older. I'm not sure any are under 30. I'm in my 40s. I remember making mix tapes on cassette. I can hear a song and my mind goes to the next song on the CD automatically because I listened to that CD so many times.
Music wasn't just background noise. It wasn't a song in the background of a TikTok video, or a streaming service playing non-stop music on random. It was an intentional activity, I had to think about the song I wanted to hear, find it the CD in my stack, put it into the player, and hit play. I then got 50 minutes of the listening experience before I had to make a new decision.
It might be possible that we're building tech for a bygone era when people use to care, and they simply don't anymore. They're used to listening to any song they want for $9.99 per month (less than how much I was paying for 1 CD in 2002). Music isn't something special, it's just the background noise to the TikTok video we call life.
