Tuesday, June 15, 2021

Rational Numbers

A while back, I wrote about my minor fixation* with seeing how many people in the world are listening to my music on Spotify at any given time. I'm not really the type of person to hold onto obsessive habits, in part because they also have my attention span to compete with, so I kind of forgot about it... until last night, when I saw that there were fourteen people listening to my music at the same time. I felt like Navin Johnson when he finds his name in the phone book. (If that reference is lost on you, then you really owe it to yourself to watch the 1979 movie The Jerk. Everything else can wait.)

So far, my record (that I've seen, anyway, not that I'm really looking all that often... honest) is sixteen people listening at one time. I realize that this may not seem like much, but it is in fact 1/20 of the number of people who reside in the town where I grew up. When I was playing live shows, I'd be happy if there were sixteen people present who were actually listening to the music. I don't exactly perform in huge venues, mind you. More often than not, I'm competing for people's attention with close-captioned ESPN and/or their phones. Talk about obsessions.

To the best of my knowledge, Spotify is about the only streaming music site that provides the artist with real-time metrics. I love that people in Argentina, Australia and Mauritania can all hear my music, as can anybody who lives just about anywhere else in the world. This truly amazes me. 

If the "listening now" number ever surpasses the population of my hometown, my mind will be thoroughly blown.

Thanks for listening. If you like what I'm doing, please share it.

* possible band name up for grabs

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