When Toronto DJ Yale Fox performs for a young crowd, he’ll generally only play a song for a minute or so before mixing out to the next one. “I rarely play past the first chorus,” says Fox, 24. “It sounds weird, but it’s nightclub standard nowadays.” When he played his first corporate gig (where the audience was 30-plus), Fox was surprised. “Everyone kept saying, ‘You’re mixing the songs too fast,’ ” he says. “I had to slow myself down and play the whole song.”

That night, Fox became aware of what he calls a “generation gap” in how younger people (say, those aged 25 and below) listen to music, compared to older crowds. He sees it when he’s driving with his parents, too: Fox will skim through tracks on his iPod, while his parents “scream, ‘Just let the song play!’ ” Working with University of Toronto sociologist Robert J. Brym, Fox has written a paper that coined a term for his generation’s inability to listen to a piece of music that lasts more than 90 seconds: musical attention deficit disorder, or MADD. It’s a condition he’s been studying—as a DJ, first-hand—and one he believes is on the rise. Continue…