Starting from 0:00

Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Soundcloud: you name it, you can stream with it. In a world where streaming reigns supreme, the opportunities of what to listen to are limitless. But lately, I’ve been thinking more and more about how the medium through which we listen has an impact on our future listening patterns. 

After recently taking a summer course in the “Social History of Popular Music” that I wished I had taken earlier, an idea was introduced to me that I haven’t been able to shake: the 21st century power to start songs from 0.00.

What does this mean? 

I’ll explain. 

As listeners in the age of streaming, we have grown accustomed to, and presumptuously expect, if not demand, the ability to start every song we listen to from the very beginning, 0.00. Zero minutes and zero seconds. This includes songs we have never heard before. We have been gifted the ability to judge a song from its intended starting position, forcing the artist to create a certain type of song that has both the challenge and the luxury of drawing us in from the beginning, keeping us hooked until at least the middle, if not the very end. We have an excess of choice and control, and we are no longer at the mercy of the benevolent force in the radio studio choosing what to play, and when.

In contrast to this surplus of control, we have radio. In the past, the radio was a vital source of new music discovery. However, the artist could not guarantee that the listener would have the ability to tune in for the song’s opening warbles, meaning that the type of music created had to be catchy and compelling at any given point, in order to account for new listeners throughout. This resulted in songs that had a mounting pressure to be catchy, engaging and impressive at all points in their approximately 3-minute duration. Hence, consistently repetitive, catchy, or sonically compelling songs skyrocketed through the charts.

To use the 1960s for an example, think Good Vibrations by the Beach Boys, Be My Baby by The Ronettes, and Come Together by The Beatles. Each one of these songs is undeniably an earworm for one of these reasons.  I wondered, in the present streaming age, have artists begun to make music with this 0.00 phenomenon in mind, allowing for more experimentation and irregularity? 

Now, this is not to say that radio is a thing of the past. I am a huge fan of live radio, and am a proud volunteer at CFRC here in Kingston with my own co-hosted show, Between Friends, as well as holding the position of Radio Show Manager of our own Muse Minutes. Besides this personal love, commercial radio is still very popular, and arguably the key to artists’ success. However, it can’t be denied that most Gen Z do not turn to the radio as their default listening service when given the choice. 

Considering these two mediums against one another, upon my musings, I couldn’t help but wonder how this transition has changed us as consumers. My fear was that we may have become selfish and fickle listeners, with little attention span for what we cannot control. Has our obsession with starting from 0.00 rendered us incapable of enjoying a song from a random point, and hearing the music for what it is, rather than wondering what we may have missed in the first two minutes? I worried that our FOMO (fear of missing out) ran too deep within our generation to ever get back to the unburdened and carefree relinquishment of control to the voice with a face for radio.

However, just as I feared our ability to enjoy fragmented snippets of songs was waning, and that our discovery of new music through catching a few seconds of compelling melody was over, along came either our saviour, or our utter downfall. TikTok. 

Now, I think the TikTok music sensation deserves an article in and of itself: trust me I’ll get to that one eventually. But TikTok has changed the way in which music is experienced once again, leaving my head spinning. Now, some artists are making music with the intention of creating a viral TikTok sound, releasing a 15 second snippet of their upcoming single, hoping that a trend will emerge along with it. 

This works until it doesn’t. 

Common fan complaints are that they became oversaturated with, and sick of the song before it is even released. Victims of this criticism can be seen in Troye Sivan’s ‘Rush’, which narrowly escaped becoming a ‘TikTok song’ as it was released just in time, instead of suffering the same fate as I believe Infinity Song’s ‘Hater’s Anthem’ will succumb to. This song, at least for me, had the potential to be one I really liked, and would have readily added it to my playlist, if it were not for the fact that I’ve heard the same two-line snippet on my FYP (For You Page) since early July, and the song has still not yet been released. 

All in all, I think that my contemplation on the 0.00 phenomenon has left me with more questions than answers. I think in a world full of uncertainty, Gen Z desires this tight-fisted control over music, and the way we listen to it, hence our obsession with being able to start from 0.00. On the other hand, it worries me to think of the way TikTok shortens our attention span, and reduces music to grabby one liners that lack substance. I think these varied listening habits make it difficult to predict how artists, and listeners will behave as the 2020s continue, but what I can say is that it certainly will be a wild ride. 

Buckle up, and listen in. This one’s bound to be a doozy.

Illustration by Maddy Baird