I don't think you need to have 100% attention on something to appreciate it. I think you can do multiple things at once and if something cuts through and grabs your attention - it's made it. It's special. You'll go back. The NEW penetration point of popular consciousness.

All this "no one has an attention span anymore" because people don't choose to listen to a work all the way through giving 100% attention 100% of the time is BS.

We have a more sophisticated sense of attention, not a worse one.

If something grabs me - I mentally zoom in.

I think the argument that taking loads of things in and then zooming in is bad often comes from people who are doing little more than whinging that they can't cheat their way into people's consciousness anymore with the right contacts, right hooks, and blah fucking blah.

You have to actually make a connection - a genuine connection these days. Surely... that is what art is supposed to be! In stark contrast, in particular in the case of music, to where music had been dragged led by format in the post-war-era? It's just evolution.