It is my pleasure to present this week’s Carnival Of The Capitalists. The Carnival is now well-established and I am confident it needs no further introduction but I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate past hosts for their…

in my previous breakdown of the 3360-hour attention-year, i ended up with something like 800 hours of music per year. the pop chart gives a measure of how many tracks move through that 800 hours for the typical, passive music-fan, and it’s not tens-of-thousands or even thousands, it’s hundreds.

most people won’t wade through 10,000 (an ipod worth) or 500,000 (an online music store worth) of songs. i think that each individual’s attention is limited a lot more than their credit cards these days.

you can’t convert everyone to “taste-maker” just by giving them neat-o technology tools. most people fall heavily into the passive mode and rely on taste-makers to tell them what’s good. we went through a whole generation of people that couldn’t be bothered to set the clock on their vcr (until it was fully automated). setting up even 100 songs for an ipod is a serious time commitment. geeks will do it, but i’m not convinced everyone will. and it’s ok. it’s good that there are fewer active, taste-making people than passive, soaking-in-it people.

if you’re making the media, ignore the relatively small group of active people at your own peril…

if you’re making the tools, and your tools demand an “active-mode” person, target the large group of passive people at your own peril…

that said, i agree. there should be a mechanism to pay taste-makers (the existing options are falling apart), and they should be paid based on results.