Throwaway Download Culture

 

What the OP said in one of his sentences was very accurate. People these days brag about having, "owning" 6000 songs. The focus now in many people is to simply HAVE music, not to enjoy it, listen to it. Yes, 6000 songs, of which probably only 100 they have really heard. With cds, most people at least heard every cd ONCE, with physical music you kind of feel compelled to give every record a try. Downloadable MP3s just encourage you to... have more.

 

Please, don't think your case is the rule. It's the exception. Music fans who actually listen to all their MP3s are an exception. You are not the rule.

 

That's true. But then again, when you brag about a collection of records you even have something physical to brag about.. In the other case, you have to say "excuse me while I turn on my computer where I store pretty much all that's important in my life: memories, photographs, documents, and now even music". And as you mentioned Mike, when you compared a reproduction of a painting to a jpeg, now even pictures!

 

Really, the dependency on one single device to manage everything scares me. We'll depend for everything on an computer.

 

 

In many ways this comes down to Marshall McLuhan's old adage, "the medium is the message."  A technology is never just a transparent means of delivering music, it fundamentally transforms the nature of the music, how it's made, produced, experienced, etc.  Hell, Bing Crosby became a star because of the development of the microphone--the close, low croon as opposed to the operatic belting out--and pop music changed forever.

MP3s obviously represent a further miniaturizing and condensing of sound from the miniaturization and condensation offered by CDs.  We can easily get nostalgic about lost forms (I know I often do), but they were already b*****dizations of something that came before.  I have a colleague who just retired who swore by his 78s!

The greater effect of MP3s is, as many have said here, the increasing loss of the physical and visual dimension of an album, but it also leads to greater fragmentation, shorter listening patience, which is not good for prog or album-length ideas.  Will a future of MP3s, and their inevitable replacement, be able to produce another Sgt Pepper or [fill in the blank]?  Yet, when I get down about this, I think of a band like The Residents who keep adapting to new technologies and their recent work, The Bunny Boy, was designed with You Tube and other new media in mind, and it was stunningly creative for doing that--the album wasn't the center of the experience.

The bigger impact, again as others have said, will be the notion that music is supposed to be free.  When I speak with my students most of them already assume this is the case.  The concept of paying for music seems absurd to them.  This is when I feel dystopian and desperate.  For everyone who wants to claim that myspace (or myface as Jeremy Clarkson nicely puts it) gets more musicians out there with greater, broader possibilities, I want to know how will these musicians be able to keep making music if no one is paying for it?  The real potential here, in the not too distant future, is the end of the whole notion of the professional musician.  Which is terribly sad to me, but, then again, that was a new idea that dawned in the 17th century. So perhaps we've just come to an end of a modern idea.  Maybe this will all lead to everyone being a musician and no one being a star.  Can't say I'm feeling terribly optimistic about it all, I must say.  But, as the Firesign Theatre once (nearly) said, Everything I Know is Wrong. 

God, that was a long one!

You have this kid, lets name him Bob. Bob is say 15 or 16, and listens to all the mainstream junk. He buys all his favorite bands CDsOne day Bob hears Tool on the radio, and he instantly becomes infatuated with the band. A couple weeks after buying 10,000 Days Bob's ears are worn out. He yearns for something more, but with a limited selection of only four Tool albums, he doesn't have many options. So, Bob hops on his computer and begins his search for similar artists. It was at this point that . He hears of a program on the internet called "Limewire" and starts to illegally download music in the hope of finding something to satisfy his musical tastes. Over the next couple of months he begins to experiment, discovering The Mars Volta, King Crimson and even Devin Townsend. 

After a year or so Bob discovers torrents and rapidshare / mediafire, and his true ascendancy into musical enlightenment begins. He begins to download artists which at one point he never knew existed, obscure bands unknown to the rest of society. His tastes have developed into something he never could have foreseen as a young teen, he's come to enjoy the finer things in music, from ambient to shoegaze or even black metal.  But one thing doesn't change, he still buys his favorite albums. He's still able to appreciate the music which he holds so dear to him, except that he's buying from genres that are obscenely obscure. He's able to respect the musicians which still bring him joy, even if he happened to disregard some of them. 

The point is that Bob would never have discovered those bands if it weren't for illegal downloading, he never would have bought that Porcupine Tree album if he hadn't bootlegged the other one first. He utilized bootlegging as a portal into a new realm of music. He may have downloaded some things which he wasn't supposed to, but in the end he still purchased his favorite music, which in the end evolved from terrible garbage like Disturbed to talented artists Absu or Intronaut. Only through the use of bootlegging can someone discover and love these bands. It helps educate people about those bands we never knew existed. It helps dispose of musical ignorance, and develops musical taste. People will always buy music, illegal downloading just allows people to buy music that they were once ignorant of.

You might be right, but most kids that only listen mainstream don't buy CD's... In fact, only very few do. Many people also don't feel the need to spend money on an album, if they can also download it, whether it's for not caring about the artwork, or not having much money to spend.