The source is a study conducted by Microsoft cited in “The Diary of a CEO: The 33 Laws of Business and Life” by Steven Bartlett.
Steven adds: “To put things in perspective, the same article reported that for goldfish, that attention span is 9 seconds: one more than us.”
The goldfish is beating us 1 to 0.
If we use TikTok or social media to launch a track, we have to deal with this reality. Those involved in #MusicMarketing know that we often see snippets uploaded for “the sake of reporting”: they start from the intro, wait for the track to build, and try to explain the genesis of the project.
By banging my head against it, I realized that doing this doesn’t pay off.
Today, if we don’t stop the thumb in the first 2 seconds, we are invisible. We have a window of 8 total seconds to convince someone not to scroll past. It is a challenge of pure attention and #Marketing applied to the speed of the feed.
For this reason, when I choose the snippet to upload to the platforms, I prefer to ignore the structure of the song and follow the logic of attention.
This is how I do it:
➡️ Look for the Hook: it’s not necessarily the chorus. It’s the most memorable point, the one that sticks in your head on the first listen.
➡️ Eliminate the formalities: if nothing impactful happens in the first few moments, we’ve already lost the listener.
➡️ Bet everything on the catch: look for a visual contrast or an immediate emotion that breaks the scroll pattern.
Promoting music today has become a constant challenge against distraction.
We must choose our strongest point and play it immediately. Or resign ourselves to being less interesting than a fish in a glass bowl.
#LibriVsMusica
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I am Andrea Corelli, Professional and Advisor to the Music Industry.
From Monday to Friday, I share strategies, backstage insights, or the stories behind a song on LinkedIn. On the weekend, I enjoy the flow.
If you need help with your artist, label, or music project, write to me.