"The average person knows between 10 to 20 artists, that's it."

IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE: "In reality, people aren't spending more time or more money on music than they used to, so it’s trending lower," Live Nation Labs head of product, technology, and design Ethan Kaplan stated yesterday during the opening panel at SF Musictech Summit, Digital Music News reports. After his address, Kaplan told DMN, "In 2013, the difference between a friend and a band is inconsequential in terms of how it's represented on your screen. So, if you look at the media landscape in terms of how we engage with media, it's all self-normalizing at this point. Friends on Facebook, music, something on Reddit, a video, it doesn't have any difference. It's harder to drive loyalty to anything that isn't differentiated from anything else." Gracenote CTO Ty Roberts seconded that emotion, claiming that "The average person knows between 10 to 20 artists, that's it. There used to be a time when that was 40 artists. The message of 'lots of different artists' is lost upon [today's listener], and they're losing track of what artists are important to them faster." (2/20a)