Synthetic happiness

«Prior to the digital age, the pressure exerted on the fan was much greater. They had to make their $15 count; therefore, they – like the executives – may have opted to buy familiar albums as a way to mitigate risk. This is, perhaps, why instead of avoiding extremely popular artists like the research above suggests, fans too may have decided to buy music that felt familiar even if it disappointed more often than it delighted. Today though, when fans file-share and preview music through YouTube, they do so, because they desire the ability to reverse the decision, to delete the album if they don't like it. As it turns out, the act of downloading the music (or streaming it) may be the very reason that they don't like it as much, because they aren't stuck with it. Thus, the synthetic happiness, i.e. adaptation, that prior generations experienced when they bought a familiar, yet mediocre album, is never produced. Thus, since they aren't committed to their music decisions, there's less pressure and synthetic happiness to be had».

A Psychological Analysis of Record Industry Decline: ci sono un po' di generalizzazioni ma alcune annotazioni come questo paragrafo mi sembrano piuttosto interessanti.