familiarity over novelty
and distribution over content.

We love new products
that secretly remind us of old products. We love new songs with
old chord structures, new movies that are sequels
and adaptations and reboots.

When they study the spread of
these pieces of information, what they've said is that they
most likely spread through broadcast mechanisms, rather
than social mechanisms, that it's not, in other words,
about a million one-to-one moments, but rather about a
handful of one-to-one-million moments.

Emotionality and
familiarity are incredibly potent when it comes
to popularizing a piece of content. But they're not enough. The distribution strategy,
the distribution mechanism, the sources that
these places hit is more important
than the qualities of the content itself.

what Diana would
say is that repetition is the god particle of music. It is the thing
that distinguishes the cacophony of
the ordinary world from that which the
brain processes as song.

the best kinds of music play on the part
of the mammalian brain which is so ready to hear
repetition and variety in a certain sequence

Rhyme to reason effect says
that we are weirdly more likely to believe ideas
and slogans if they contain an element of rhyme,
an element of musicality.

people need identities. And identity is antagonistic. Identity is how I am not like
everybody else around me

MAYA, M-A-Y-A-- Most Advanced Yet Acceptable.

to sell something
surprising, make it familiar. But to sell something
familiar, make it surprising.

The sensitive taste for music
seems to be between the teens and early to mid 20s. By the age of 33,
Spotify suggested, people stopped listening
to new songs entirely.

your tastes
have crystallized by your 30s.

The political sensitive period
seems to be from mid-20s to-- I'm sorry, from
mid-teens to late 20s as well, really
similar to music.