It’s bad for us…really

We live in the age of the Long Tail, literally billions of choices for just about anything we could want.

That’s supposed to be a good thing. We’re supposed to like it. No, love it. After all, each of us can customize almost every detail of our lives.

Truth is, too much choice paralyzes us, makes us increasingly anxious and dissatisfied.

Barry Schwartz, who wrote a book about this, called The Paradox of Choice: “If we’re rational, [social scientists] tell us, added options can only make us better off as a society. This view is logically compelling, but empirically it isn’t true.”

We’ve had it all wrong. Less isn’t more, more is less.

If the topic interests you, and I think it should, because we’ve been trained to believe listeners cannot be happy with libraries of 350 songs, you can read an article about it HERE, or watch Barry’s TED Talk here:

The idea of a music expert (and we, air talent, were once considered music experts) introducing us to wonderful new songs, some of which we will love, seems a lot more appealing now, huh?

And it may also explain why Apple’s Radio features talent considered to be music experts, with Apple investing more in the talent than most radio companies do.