halfstep - a music hack

lfranchi and I spent the last day or so at Music Hackday NYC, and made a thing. I had a good time with it, it's sort of useless and tongue-in-cheek... two the most important traits (if you ask me) in a weekend hack.

Fitbit is great at motivating you to go the extra distance once you are out and about, but not so good at motivating you to get your ass off the couch if you've got nowhere to go. The issue (as we see it): there is no threat of punishment for not reaching your goals.

Now there is.

A chrome extension that looks at how you did against your Fitbit steps goal from the previous day, and then only lets you listen to the equivalent percentage of each song today.

Only hit 70% of your goal yesterday? Well, we hope you haven't grown too accustomed to the ends of your favorites songs... because you won't hear them today (but you will get some "motivational" notifications).

Maybe things will be better tomorrow, you slacker.

Currently supports Rdio, Pandora and Hype Machine (sort of).

Screencast: http://www.screencast.com/t/Wm8kZbW5

Attention Rate vs. Royalty Rate?

Has anyone written about the fundamentals of the attention economy having a greater impact on musician payouts than absolute royalty rates?

— J Herskowitz (@jherskowitz) October 14, 2013

I'd estimate that my favorite album in 1992 was played at least 10x the number of times my favorite album of 2012 was played.

— J Herskowitz (@jherskowitz) October 14, 2013

In 1992, that artist was only competing with a dozen or so others for my attention. Today, they are competing with thousands….

— J Herskowitz (@jherskowitz) October 14, 2013

Although my annual spend has increased, my available attention has stayed relatively fixed, spread across many more artists. Less $/artist.

— J Herskowitz (@jherskowitz) October 14, 2013

Actually, I take that back. My available attention has decreased. Now spread across robot dog videos, on-demand TV, Twitter and the web.

— J Herskowitz (@jherskowitz) October 14, 2013

My top played artist of past year has 130 plays from me (out of roughly 10k plays total) during that period. ~1% of my *musical* attention.

— J Herskowitz (@jherskowitz) October 14, 2013

So, the real (not intended to be trolly) question is… how much should a band with a 1% attention share earn from me?

— J Herskowitz (@jherskowitz) October 14, 2013

… if $10, then my annual spend on recorded music would need to be $̶1̶0̶,̶0̶0̶0̶ $1,000.

— J Herskowitz (@jherskowitz) October 14, 2013

This is obviously a sample size of 1, and this is meant to be an answer to anything... just a new question to ask.