Are We Listening to Taylor Swift All Wrong?

The music business has always been driven by changes in listening technology — first from analog to digital, and more recently from purchase to access. But technology has also changed how fans listen, in ways that shape music, and the industry, in ways that are harder to see.

Early phonographs were big and expensive, which drove family room listening as a focused, collective experience. The growth of the Walkman in the 1980s made listening more solitary, since what it played was for the listener’s ears alone. These days, music is often experienced online but alone. The listening experience is increasingly connected, with all of the choices and distractions that implies, but also increasingly solitary.

The benefits of this are obvious — any song, at any time, available just about anywhere. But is there also a cost in focus or deliberate listening when all those songs are a click away — and, oh, look what your friend posted on Instagram! That’s why listening bars are becoming popular as an alternative. And on Oct. 18, the music catalog and sales site Discogs.com is promoting “Dis/Connect,” a day devoted to “skipping the stream, silencing the scroll and giving your full attention to the ritual of listening to records.”

This is odd for two reasons. First, with Record Store Day in the spring and another one in the fall, is there room for another made-up day devoted to music? Second, the idea of an online company telling people to go offline seems counterintuitive to say the least.

This idea makes sense, though. If we value music so much — enough to not only argue about the new Taylor Swift album, but in some cases choose which of more than 30 physical editions of The Life of a Showgirl to buy — shouldn’t we spend more “high-quality” time with it? Fans have more music to choose from, and spend more time listening, than ever before; counting concerts and merchandise, they spend more money collectively, too. So why does so much of our listening take place while we’re doing other things? Some of this isn’t new — if you are driving, please focus on the road and listen in the background. But how much music do we miss while we’re staring at a smartphone?

“The idea was birthed out of spending too much time on our phones,” says Discogs vp of marketing Jeffrey Smith. Increasingly, websites use “algorithms designed to keep you engaged and sucked in.” As Smith spoke on Zoom, I clicked on my browser to look on Discogs for a good first pressing of the first Lou Reed album. Yes, I nodded to Smith, technology makes it hard to stay focused. It’s a problem. Then I clicked again. Should I hold out for a U.S. pressing?

Discogs began in 2000 as an online database of record pressings for the kind of people who care which vinyl pressing they have more than they probably should. (I am one of those people: My UK pressing of that first Reed album sounds thin to my ears.) In 2005, it launched a marketplace, conceptually similar to eBay but optimized for collectors and without bidding. It’s targeted at the kind of people who take music seriously enough to sit and focus on it, whether that means finding the best pressing of an old album or tracking down every single variant of Showgirl. From a business perspective, the idea that fans value focused listening more is an interesting one, because there’s an argument that the music that we concentrate on should generate more royalties than the music we use to fall asleep.

The Swift example is just a way to attract more attention to a think piece about how we listen to music (although, OK, it’s that, too). More than most stars, Swift’s music demands a certain focus — she’s an album artist in a world of singles acts, and offline listening tends to involve albums. Playlists have their place, but albums often offer more to dive into, both in terms of the amount of music and the visuals and other signifiers that go with it. Each Swift album offers new songs, but also a new version of the artist herself. That’s why they are eras. And if Swift is going to reinvent herself every few years — I’d say the same for Reed or Bob Dylan or any number of artists — don’t they deserve our full, undivided attention?

On a gut level, people get this: Many people spend hours scrolling through social media sites, but few regard that time as well spent compared to deeper engagement with records or books. In a MusicWatch survey, asked whether “listening to an entire album is important,” 52% of music streamers agreed, while only 21% disagreed. (That doesn’t mean they act accordingly, as MusicWatch managing partner Russ Crupnick points out.) The idea of Dis/Connect is to bridge this gap between intentions and actions by encouraging people to take a break from connected experiences to concentrate more on music. (Think Audiophile Sabbath.) Discogs also suggests listening with friends. Instead of listening connected and alone, the idea is to listen with focus, as well as with others. This might sound unusual, but until relatively recently, it was how everyone listened to everything.