Evolutionary Psychology and the Musical Attention Economy

I recently read Daniel J. Levitin's latest book, The World in Six Songs, and as with everything I read these days, I'm finding ways to apply it to AE. I've worked in the music industry my entire career and have been amazed at how Attention is used and abused. Paris Hilton signing a recording contract? William Hung? William Shatner? (Shut up, Erik.) What is it that pisses people off so much about this? Is it merely the transition of Attention earned into a sellable song, an easy form of monetization? That's how I had thought about it until reading Levitin. Here's a quote from TWISS, p. 141:

"What you want for a communication medium is one in which honesty can be readily detected, what ethologists call an honest signal. For a number of reasons, it appears that it is more difficult to fake sincerity in music than in spoken language."

And there it, for me, at least. I prefer Bob Dylan, Conor Oberst, Paul Westerberg, and Amanda Palmer, people I've heard others complain about not being about to sing properly, a complaint most would agree applies to Hilton, Hung and Shatner, as well. But in the cases of Dylan, Oberst, Westerberg, and Palmer, they are sincere to a fault, and thus have legions of die-hard fans. They succeed despite limitations.

I know I'm not alone in this; most people's shit-detectors must be working pretty well.

Maybe this is merely another example of quality over quantity. Listening to popular lies is far less fulfilling than unpopular truisms. Any punk, metalhead, or rapper would probably tell you the same.

For further reading of Levitin's argument of how the musical brain created human nature:

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