The Arithmetic of Attention: What a Single CBC Radio Play Reveals About the Illusion of Streaming Success inspired by Maia Dartsch We inhabit an age intoxicated by integers. Every morning, musicians awaken to a fresh liturgy of metrics: monthly listeners, followers, impressions, engagement rates, saves, streams. Digital dashboards have become devotional objects, their ever-ascending numbers masquerading as objective measures of artistic achievement. We have quietly accepted a peculiar epistemology—one in which quantity is mistaken for quality, visibility for value, and numerical abundance for cultural significance. Yet every so often, reality whispers a quiet correction. A single play on CBC Radio—a solitary, ephemeral broadcast lasting barely four minutes—can often generate as much income for a songwriter as thousands of Spotify streams. It is a comparison so counterintuitive that it exposes something deeper than the economics of music. It reveals the profoun...