Here's a facet of surveillance society that hasn't been much discussed: how distracting it is is to

Here's a facet of surveillance society that hasn't been much discussed: how distracting it is is to know you are being watched?

I became a regular paying customer of music streaming services since about this time last year. Maybe a little bit sooner. Because I write about this stuff, I find myself thinking all the time about what kind of information I'm feeding the service about my choices. I find myself thinking about two things:

• How much money artists are earning and how much of the money I'm putting into the system I'm spending. I think about the money all the time. I spend, what? $10 per month? That's probably less on average than I spent in the CD days, because I bought a decent number of CDs. So do the streaming companies divide that up proportionally or is there a fixed payment per play? So by playing more do they get less or do they get more? And does it depend on the specific artist and what deal his or her label was able to negotiate?
• What kind of profile is the service building about me? Sometimes I find myself playing a specific artist longer because I want to increase my vote for that artist versus other artists in the service's overall profile of me. I even find myself thinking about those playlists that these services releae from time to time. Like: your summer rewind (or whatever)

What do I care? Why does it matter? But I think about it all the time and it takes me out of the moment of just enjoying music.