You know how it is on Sunday morning. Sitting back, tea in hand, lazily leafing through the papers – not really reading, just vaguely capturing the headlines. But this week, one particular story in The Sunday Times caught my eye. Beware, iPod zombie cyclists are on the rise the headline warned, followed by the image of a cyclist wearing some serious headphones but no helmet. Now that’s a worrying thought.

Here’s another worrying thought. According to my children, I have a tendency to move very rapidly from one apparently disconnected idea to another before settling on one, final thought – a trait they affectionately describe as my ‘ipod shuffle mode’. So is this the first sign of my mature years creeping up on me? I don’t think so. And I’m beginning to sense that I’m not alone.

Our 30-second attention spans appear to have evolved into something of a modern-day survival function – affecting the way we read, watch, shop and buy. We live in an age where information is more accessible than ever before, but the very amount of data we encounter makes it all less meaningful. It has also impacted hugely on the way we consume music.

In the 1960s we would invest hours in discovering the meaning behind certain music – listening to albums over and over, learning every lyric, knowing every chord. We wanted to understand every element of a song and resonate wholly with the artist. But today, we leave ourselves with little time to really digest what we are hearing and within seconds are hankering to move on to the next offering.

So before my concentration quota for the day runs out let me put this out there. Is the 30-seconds we spend on listening to a track on iTunes before flicking to the next the equivalent of a watching a TV commercial? Are we choosing music based on as little information as that, and with as much distraction surrounding it?

Answers in 30-second sound bites please…

Ruth Simmons, CEO
soundlounge