There was a time, and not necessarily too long ago, when the act of buying a new album (call it a CD if you'd like) would involve me hunkering down next to the stereo, usually smack dab between the speakers, listening to the album in its entirety and reading the lyrics as I went. Even on those occasions when I'd rejoined BMG and was faced with the 12 disk bonanza that marked the beginning of all of those adventures, I'd generally get through them in basically the same way, just over several days. Until my current car (2005) I never had a cd player in any car I'd ever had, not including balancing a portable player on MT's lap or the passenger seat when he was unavailable.
The advent of the iPod has, of course, radically altered my music listening experiences. My principle concentrated listening is now done on dog walks. I do listen at work, sometimes to my own music, sometimes to various streaming stations, but because of my pesky responsibilities - phone calls, people asking me stuff - I don't often consider that good listening.
With the iPod has come the urge to rip the CD as soon as possible so I can get it into my iPod for my next walk around the neighborhood. I'll browse through the liner notes and lyrics as it rips, but the scale of time associated with that is so accelerated as to not make for good liner reviewing. And once it's ripped, the CD goes on the shelf, and it's all iPod from there. I now learn lyrics to songs by listening to them, rather than reading them, which perhaps takes longer, but is still satisfying.
I dabbled in the iTunes thing minimally and fairly long after its arrival, eschewing the instant gratification for something solid in my hand. I also harbor a fear of catastrophic data loss, but I now back up my music files so as to minimize that risk. I bought a few songs here and there, and even an album or two because my urge was so great, or I thought the liner notes were unimportant for that particular album/collection. All in all probably less than 50 tracks.
I do, as Dan likes to mock, have an urge to find new music, though I was never particularly cutting edge or adventurous by any reasonable standard. I was raised on FM radio, and remained a fairly mainstream musical fan for nearly my entire life. My tastes remain basically the same, encompassing a variety of genres but overwhelmingly centered on the nebulous notion of 'alternative'. I think that term stopped being especially useful in about 1990, but I suspect all of the readers of this know more or less what I'm talking about.
Buying physical CD's is not an especially cheap endeavor, since other than the mail-order music clubs, the prices have remained essentially unchanged or have gone up since I bought Outlandos d'Amour about 1988. It seems fairly insane to me, and a bit of a racket, but it is what it is. The costs have kept me from expanding my music collection more than I might have otherwise, being reluctant to plunk down $15 for an album I've heard little of.
The opportunities to learn about and be exposed to new music have exploded even while FM radio has become an insipid and flavorless ghost of its former self. Even in our prime listening years FM had gotten far less experimental than it had been even ten years earlier, but by today's standards it was not bad at all. But other than a few stations scattered hither an yon in more enlightened markets, FM is now a steaming shitpile. Thankfully the internet arrived and offered up opportunities for exploration and exposure never before heard.
Prior to that explosion I did try out an interim method, one that is the diret progenitor of the lacksadaisical CMC, namely CMJ: New Music Monthly. This was (and remains - though without my subscription) a monthly CD and mini-magazine filled with all manner of 'alternative' music, a sort of higher general quality Flywheel Sampler. It was a good way to learn about some artists and bands that I'd never heard of without becoming a record store goon. The economics of CD's kept me from buying many of the artists, but I did follow through on a few, and it satisfied my irrational need for new music.
About the time that I found myself not keeping up with that subscription we moved to MA and my new music listening went into a fairly deep lull, placated by a generally excellent local station out here that kept me (along with my own music collection) satisfied. I still bought the occasional album, often by a band already in my collection, but some new ones as well, though all fairly 'mainstream' - played on the radio station above which tended to be about 6 months ahead of the rest of FM radio.
It was really the birth of the CMC that got my interests revived towards seeking new music, along with a weekly podcast about music (yes it's of NPR origin and mentioned prominently in my CMC entries, but good music is good music) and various other sources of musical information that exist among the billions of such places on the vast internet. It didn't really resolve the economic issues, but at least (as with CMJ) I was hearing new good music, stuff that I was unlikely to ever hear spinning through the dial on the radio. It was clear to me that there was a LOT of good 'alternative' music being made, but the distribution scheme had completely changed.
Enter E-Music...a subscription based source of downloadable music. You won't find lots of well-known, major label artists and bands there (though more all the time) but you will find lots of bands like Yo La Tengo and others of that 'toiling in popular obscurity' ilk. For $10 per month you get 30 downloads (all to own and all of higher bitrate than iTunes). It's a bit weird to run out of monthly downloads and be three songs short of an entire album, but for $0.33/song, it's a price I'm willing to pay. I generally work my way around the problem by being very careful about what I download, or fill in the gaps with singles/novelties.
For the equivalent of <$4 for the average album, I'm free to indulge in more experimentation than I've ever felt capable before. I'm still somewhat conservative in my choices (almost always having heard one song by the band) but I've done a couple without hearing a single song, simply based on recommendations and comparisons to other bands I like. What you give up, circling back to the beginnings of this post, are physical things, and especially liner notes. It seems like technology could easily overcome this, but either because of fear of copyright infringement or a lak of interest in the general public, no one seems to offer up their liner notes as part of the purchase, as a pdf or whatever. That bums me out, though I'm buoyed by an infusion of new and interesting music.
I still opt to buy an actual CD for the bands I have a long history with, but I seem to have come to terms with the digital world we live in.
While I typed this I listened to:
Shearwater - unlikely you would have heard anything by them
She and Him - also unlikely
Peter Bjorn and John - they have a song called Young Folks with a catchy whistling part that has gotten some mainstream play
Other great stuff
M. Ward
Bon Iver
Andrew Bird
Arcade Fire
New Pornographers
Belle and Sebastian
Cat Power
The National
Neko Case
Okkervil River
If anyone finds themselves interested in joining e-Music (no long term contract, just by month), I think I can get a bonus for getting someone else to sign up.
Happy listening...
6 comments:
Thanks for detailing the journey.
Internet radio has been a boon for me, in that (with my schedule), it's been one of my only sources of hearing new & interesting music in recent times. In what may be the beginning of the end here at work, they removed our access to streaming radio. No more MPR (except via the FM feature on my MPR player), no more Accuradio Jazz, Ambient, or Classical. I'm seriously, seriously bummed.
I actually have a song from Cat Power from an E-Music promo.
Very cool. On what looks like a much smaller scale, I have purchased a few songs and albums from the net, many of them also give you the "digital book" - but really - what can you do with that - even less than the skip through the pages of the CD you are preparing to rip. The damage to the art form previously known as album-making has been done and likely will never be repaired. Music is too fragmented; audiences too scatter-brained. "Album" as a word, I suspect, will start to fade. "CDS" already have given way to "files" or "downloads."
The price of the e-music album could motivate purchases of entire "albums" - what the listener does with it on their players is another matter.
I have experienced the quick fly-through of album art work, credits, and lyrics as the CD is converted to files, and moments before the CD is set upon a shelf to collect dust. Seems the best use is to let somebody borrow it - otherwise it sits there, the effort of an artist, forgotten, favoring a more selfish perspective, mine iTunes me song self digital own.
I read this post closely and I hope to answer with a post of my own today. I've struggled for years to come to terms with my iPod, a gadget I love/hate.
I'm definitely still on board with the album.
I do think the notion of album was something we happened to catch the wave of, rather than something enduring over the course of music.
There have, since the advent of recorded music, a means of distributing singles. My family had tons of 45's from when my brothers and sisters were young. The one good thing about a 45 different than a download is that the 45 always had a side two, with something perhaps unexpected.
Bummer for Dan at work.
I'm not sure what the 'digital book' is. I have not run across it.
As for Stephen, I eagerly await the post.
The digital book is a book that is on a handheld devise. You don't turn pages, the pages turn on the screen.
I never really liked to listen to an entire album by the same group. I am more of the ipod guy who likes the shuffle feature. My first cd player was a five disc shuffle.
no not what I meant
simply liner notes available as a file along with the song files
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