42: Percent of rickshaw drivers in Dhaka, Bangladesh, reporting hearing loss
15: Percent rise in brand awareness after a hair salon franchise employed ASMR to promote itself
300,000: Settlement paid by Whole Foods under Illinois’s Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) for allegedly using “voice recognition system without properly obtaining consent” of its workers
. . .
¹Footnotes
Rickshaw: thedailystar.net. ASMR: marketingdive.com. Whole Foods: findbiometrics.com.
100: Distance (in meters) from “schools, hospitals, courts and places of worship” within which loudspeakers are banned in Mumbai
16: Number of decibels reduced by the installation of a two-mile long fence along a highway
$12: Fee for drivers making too much noise on “No-Honking” day (1,000 rupees)
¹Footnotes
240,000,000: Estimated number of years since when male katydids have made sounds by rubbing their wings
60: Number of dust grain impacts per second recorded by the Mars rover
30: The percent that the measured frequency of whale songs has declined over the past four decades
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¹Footnotes
Katydid: newscientist.com. Mars: newscientist.com. Whales: nautil.us.
23,000: Number of nightclub employees estimated to be laid off due to noise ordinances coming into effect in Nairobi
100,000,000: Number of streams a single human-mimicking AI vocal track had gotten on Tencent Music in China as of mid-November 2022
4: Number of syllables (L, R, W, Y) generally missing from curse words in several otherwise seemingly unrelated languages
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¹Footnotes
Key: Nairobi: nation.africa. AI: musicbusinessworldwide.com. Curses: nytimes.com.
1: Number of No. 1 songs from 2010 to 2020 that changed keys
18%: Percent of noise-polluted marine parks in Australia estimated as exposed to unsafe shipping traffic
14%: Percent rise since last year in noise complaints at the second largest airport in the Netherlands
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¹Footnotes
Key: npr.org (the exception was Travis Scott’s “Sicko Mode,” featuring Drake). Australia: cosmosmagazine.com. Netherlands: eindhovennews.com.
