The simple matter of fact is that we can all download music to our heart’s desire. You can pay for it or not, and some of it can be obscure to the mainstream. Got that favorite music track that you heard on the local, hot hits radio station that you just can’t live without listening to at least 40 times on single repeat until you get absolutely sick of it? No problem. The Internet has you covered.
What does that do to music history though? Are the generations of music fans to come going to experience the greatness of finding new music outside of saying, “Yeah, I downloaded that. It’s sweet!”
I remember parsing through bin after bin of CD’s and records, asking the dude who reeked of patchouli behind the counter if I could listen to it, and making some killer purchases of music to add to a library that still exists today. I’d go home and listen to what I bought, fell in love, and had to know more about this band I discovered. Then that would lead to other bands who might sound similar or would be name dropped in an interview that I would read somewhere.
Then you go over to your friend’s house and parse through their collection. While you hang out, you flip through their stash, toss a record on (yes, I had friends who were vinyl junkies, but the portability of CD’s always prevented me from heading down that path to obsession), and bask in talking about bands, who is who, the odd time signatures of a song, who else we should be checking out, etc.
Anymore, collecting music is so A.D.D. You want this track, go get it right this second. Then you throw it on your iPod, only to repeat the process with so many, various tracks that you hardly ever get your hands on the album in its entirety. Then as your mp3 player plays back, you find that track that you listened to 40 times on single repeat and skip forward to the next song.
I’ve known of people to download music based on just what they heard in a commercial. You’re hanging out, all of the sudden Modest Mouse shows up in the midst of a variety of mainstream country and top 40 tunes. You do the typical and ask the question of not knowing that they were into them. They reply, “I liked their song in that one car commercial, so I downloaded it. I really don’t know much about them. Who is this again?”
It’s something I’m guilty of as well. More often than none, that sparks me on a pursuit of getting as much as I can about that band, not just that one song. On top of that, I can spend, and have on many occasions, hours with Google and Wikipedia doing a meandering of research on rock and roll history, finding out who is still around and what happened to who.
Do you ever think to look deeper into that music? Get that whole album, listen to it from start to finish, and then think about what the artist was trying to do with this thing that they created? I fear that the love is getting lost in this new digital age. Don’t get me wrong, I’m wading out there with the rest of the kool-aid drinkers, but the appreciation of the art seems to be getting left behind.
As with many other things, you can have a breadth of knowledge or a depth of knowledge. Trying to expose yourself in depth to any one band or artist will (by sheer limitation of the number of hours in a week) decrease the number of bands you can listen to.
In some ways this is similar to digital photography. In the past, one had to be careful what they took pictures of because of the cost of film, developing and printing. Today, I can slap a 2GB memory card in my camera and shoot ’till the cows come home. Instead of learning how to take pictures by carefully setting up a shot, I’m learning by sheer repetition of the process.
With music, we’re learning to appreciate the similarities and differences in music and artists by being exposed to a wider and wider array of styles, genres and interpretations. By sheer volume of artists we can learn more not only about the music, but about the places, people and cultures which inspired it.
My $0.02. 🙂
I try and get freebie music through sources and then, if I like the band, I’ll go out and buy their CD so I can hear the whole thing. I am definitely an old ‘FM Radio’ type of listener to music…I want the whole album…not just the hits.
That said, I find myself with so much new music these days, that I don’t have the time to really take in an album like I used to. I cannot sit and listen to a whole CD and take in the words and the tunes. I’ve got so much music from so many bands, that I like it all…but I couldn’t name you a song on some of those CD’s…and I find that disturbing in myself.
Rock On…
I have not bought a CD for about 5 years now. You’re right, the appreciation of the art is lost. I don’t know what band sings what after a while, and could care less.
Those were good times pre-downloading. I’d take my newly purchased disc home, pop it in the stereo and listen to the whole thing, following along with the lyrics in the CD sleeve. I miss that, actually.
It’s true that you can only have so much time to get the knowledge, and I think I missed the mark on the point I was trying to make. This was a thought I had to get out, but I’ll tag a tiny bit on here at the end.
I try to think about what it will be like as younger generations grow up. I’ve already heard the fun stories of how kids can fathom the inner workings of vinyl records and how people could listen to music on them.
Like Zanstorm says, the days of reading the album sleeves are becoming numbered, at least until a new way of presenting that information comes along. Still, with nothing to hold in your hand except a MP3 player, there’s still a large part of my that thinks that this will be missed out.
As a podcaster, I feel like I need to fill in that gap. However, licensing fees prevent me from playing so much. If anything, my exposure to great music, past and present, might interest someone to go out an buy an artist’s entire library. Since I can’t, then the rest is up to fate to teach rock and roll history.