The Economics of Attention
When Algorithms Perfect Our Cravings
There's this moment when you're halfway through a cheeseburger and your doctor's voice echoes in your head. Something about cholesterol. Something about sodium. But here's the thing: it tastes exactly like you wanted it to taste.
That engineered perfection of salt and fat designed in food labs to trigger every pleasure center in your brain. You know it's not real food but damn if it doesn't scratch that exact itch you didn't even know you had.
I found myself thinking about those cheeseburgers earlier this week. Multiple times per day I was humming along to "Dust on the Wind" by The Velvet Sundown.
Plot twist: The Velvet Sundown doesn't actually exist.
The Band That Isn't
The Velvet Sundown has racked up over 500,000 monthly Spotify listeners in just weeks. Their sound is pure nostalgic honey. That sugary-sweet 70s psychedelic rock that feels like summer afternoons you never lived through but somehow remember.
It's The Eagles meets Pink Floyd meets every classic rock playlist you've ever heard. Distilled into algorithmic perfection.
The problem? The band members are AI-generated. Their photos are obviously artificial (seriously, go look at them). Their bio reads like ChatGPT having a particularly good day. Sample quote: "The Velvet Sundown don't just play music — they conjure worlds."
But here's the uncomfortable truth: their music is undeniably catchy.
I keep humming it. Even now, knowing what it is. And I feel super bad about it.
Manufacturing human desire with industrial precision
This isn't just about fake music. It's about the commodification of human emotional response itself.
Consider how they've rigged the game. Their tracks appear nestled between Creedence Clearwater Revival and Jimi Hendrix in popular Spotify playlists like "Vietnam War Music." Nearly indistinguishable to casual listeners. They've accumulated half a million monthly listeners while real musicians struggle for years to build even a fraction of that audience.
Most damning? They're siphoning money from a finite royalty pool that should be going to human artists.
This is what happens when machines learn to manufacture human desire with industrial precision. And we're not just talking about music here.
Think about your last scroll through social media. Those perfectly curated posts designed by algorithms to keep you engaged? Your Netflix recommendations that somehow always know exactly what you're in the mood for? The pharmaceutical ads promising to fix your anxiety while potentially creating new dependencies?
We're living in an economy where human attention has become the raw material. Satisfaction is the product being engineered.
The Velvet Sundown is just the latest iteration.
The Cheeseburger Economy
McDonald's doesn't pretend to be your grandmother's cooking. But it has perfected the art of delivering exactly what your lizard brain craves. Quick satisfaction. Consistent flavor. Zero friction.
You can drive through, order by number, get the same experience whether you're in Nebraska or Bangkok.
AI music operates on the same principle. Tools like Suno and Udio can generate songs that hit every nostalgic note, every familiar chord progression, every comfortable cliche that makes us feel good. They're not trying to challenge us or grow with us or surprise us.
They're trying to deliver the musical equivalent of that perfectly engineered cheeseburger.
And just like fast food, there's a strange comfort in that predictability. The Velvet Sundown will never disappoint you with a controversial political opinion. Never evolve beyond your comfort zone. Never ask you to grow alongside their artistic journey. They could, in theory, create an endless amount of albums in the beautiful sweet spot forever…without running the risk of the band breaking up…or dying off.
They offer the emotional satisfaction of music without any of the messiness of actual human artists.
But consider what we lose in that transaction.
Optimized for immediate satisfaction
Real musicians are already fighting for scraps. Spotify pays between $0.003 and $0.005 per stream. An artist needs roughly 250,000 streams just to earn minimum wage for a month.
Meanwhile, The Velvet Sundown accumulated over 400,000 monthly listeners in less time than it takes most human artists to gain 1,000 followers.
The math is brutal and getting worse. Deezer reports that 20,000 fully AI-generated tracks (18% of daily uploads) are submitted to their platform every day. That number was just 10% three months prior.
Each of these tracks competes for the same finite pool of attention and royalties that human artists depend on to survive.
But the deeper cost isn't just economic. It's the slow death of musical discovery itself.
When algorithms optimize for immediate satisfaction, we lose serendipity. We lose the possibility of being challenged, confused, or changed by art. We trade the unpredictable journey of human creativity for the comfortable loop of algorithmic validation.
Think about the last time a song genuinely surprised you. Not just pleased you, but made you feel something you couldn't quite name. That kind of experience requires risk. Uncertainty. The possibility of failure.
It requires human artists willing to fail in interesting ways rather than succeed in predictable ones.
AI music represents the elimination of that risk. And in removing the possibility of being disappointed, we may have also eliminated the possibility of being amazed.
The Uncanny Valley of Everything
Here’s the bigger question: if AI music triggers the same emotional response as "real" music, what exactly makes human creativity special?
I keep thinking about humming along to "Dust on the Wind" before I knew what it was. The emotional response was authentic even if the source wasn't. The nostalgia felt real even though it was manufactured.
So what exactly was I mourning when I learned the truth?
Maybe it's not the music itself but the myth of purity we've built around human creativity. Musicians have always used technology. Always been influenced by market forces. Always created within systems designed to maximize certain outcomes.
The streaming economy was already reducing music to algorithmic recommendations and playlist placements before AI entered the picture.
The Velvet Sundown just makes visible what was already happening: our relationship with culture has become transactional. Optimized for engagement rather than enrichment.
But here's the thing about living in that uncanny valley. You start to notice the difference between satisfaction and fulfillment.
That cheeseburger might hit the spot, but it doesn't nourish you the way a carefully prepared meal does. And that Beyond Burger may satisfy the nistalgia you have for that burger, but thinking about meat grown in a lab may take away the romance you once had for the meal. The social media scroll might entertain you, but it doesn't connect you to anything meaningful. And AI music might please your ears, but it doesn't expand your understanding of what it means to be human.
Intentionality
We're not just passive victims of algorithmic manipulation. We're active participants in a system that gives us exactly what we think we want.
The Velvet Sundown exists because there's a market for nostalgic comfort food. For musical experiences that require no emotional investment or growth.
The real question isn't whether AI music is good or bad. It's whether we can learn to consume it consciously rather than unconsciously.
Maybe the answer isn't prohibition but proportion. We can enjoy our musical cheeseburgers while also making space for meals that challenge and nourish us. We can acknowledge that sometimes we want the algorithmic comfort of The Velvet Sundown while also actively seeking out human artists who might surprise us.
But that requires something increasingly rare in our friction-free culture: intentionality.
It requires choosing the difficult path of conscious consumption over the easy path of algorithmic optimization. The platforms won't make this choice for us (their incentive is to keep us engaged, not necessarily fulfilled). The algorithms won't save us from ourselves (they're designed to give us more of what we've already consumed, not to expand our horizons).
That leaves us with the most human choice of all: deciding what we actually need versus what we think we want.
What Lingers
I still have "Dust on the Wind" stuck in my head. Even knowing what it is. Even understanding the economics behind it. Even recognizing the way it's been engineered to push my nostalgic buttons.
It's still undeniably catchy.
But now there's an aftertaste. Like the lingering awareness after thatBeyond Burger that you've been fed something designed in a laboratory rather than a kitchen. The satisfaction is real, but it comes with the knowledge that you've participated in a system that prioritizes immediate gratification over long-term nourishment.
The choice we face isn't between good and evil. Or even between human and artificial.
It's between conscious participation and passive consumption. Between choosing what serves us versus what serves the algorithm.
Machines can give us exactly what we want. But the most radical act might be remembering what we actually need. And sometimes, what we need is the beautiful uncertainty of human creativity. Even when it doesn't hit every pleasure center perfectly. Even when it challenges us. Even when it risks disappointing us.
Because that risk, that uncertainty, that possibility of genuine surprise? That's the difference between satisfaction and transformation.
And no algorithm, no matter how sophisticated, can manufacture that.
At least not yet.