by Mark Saleski
There’s no doubt that I bring up this topic too often, but sometimes I just can’t help it. Let’s talk about the future. Specifically, one in which all of the physical objects of entertainment have been replaced by their digital counterparts. This worries me, though not for the reasons you might think. It will affect me in some ways, but that’s not my major concern. No, my big worry is, well…everybody else.
OK, so me first. Yes, if all music is digital, I will consume less new music. This is of course one of those old habits things. I grew up with music on physical objects and prefer them to downloads. I also prefer the physicality of poking through a bin of recordings, hoping to land upon something I’d never heard of before. Sure, it’s possible to do this kind of thing in the digital realm, but it just isn’t the same. Part of what makes the phyisical experience different is chance: you are in some way constrained to what the store owner has put in those bins. For the sake of argument, let’s say that somebody comes up with a digital interface that simulates the record bin trawl. Further, let’s say that this interface becomes a reality at about the same time that “the cloud” is fully realized. We have the jukebox in the sky, where everything (and I do mean everything) is available. In a virtual bin full of a randomly ordered selection of all rock recordings, your chance of finding something good would be reduced (by how much, I’m not sure because I freaking hated probability & statistics in college), given the enormous inventory.
As for the actual listening experience, I’m one of those dinosaurs who still owns an actual stereo. It’s a fairly simple thing, involving a CD player, an amplifier, and a pair of speakers. Sometimes I swap out the CD player for the turntable. You will notice that the words “computer” and “iPod” don’t show up in the last two sentences. Every so often I use my iPod when writing reviews, but neither it nor my laptop have anything to do with my consumption of music as entertainment. It’s not so much that I’m a Luddite as the fact that I’m not keen on polluting a system that’s already perfect…for the sake of supposed “advances.”
My concern for society in general is the shrinking of the culture of sharing music. You visit somebody’s place and there are no racks of discs to check out. There are no bookshelves either. The eReader has taken care of that. Yeah, I know, there will be some sort of console (like an iPad), that will contain a person’s entire collection. This will allow the collection to be displayed in various formats and sorting orders. It will all be there, right at our fingertips.
Will it? Perhaps so, though I’m definitely turned off by this idea of objects vanishing. The aesthetics of a rack of LPs or a shelf of books cannot be denied. Will our homes begin to look like what can been seen in science fiction? Cold, nearly empty spaces?
You might say that I’m just being overly nostalgic for a time gone by, and you just might be right. But this is a situation where “progress” is questionable. I had done a pretty good job of not thinking much about this recently, but then I watched a documentary on the making of Peter Wolf’s Midnight Souvenirs. He’s standing in his apartment in front of a long display of albums, saying that it’s not a record collection…it’s his “wall of influences.” It’s not a collection, it’s just “the stuff that I love.” There were Chicago blues albums and records by Little Richard, the Everly Brothers, Merle Haggard, and Lefty Frizzell. Had Wolf gone on, I’m sure we would have seen a bunch of soul and funk records too.
Will “the console” take the place of just witnessing what a person has collected? I suppose it will have to. Just don’t look for one at my house. Instead, you can’t flip your way through all of my J. Geils records. They’ll be in between the Little Walter and the Howlin’ Wolf.
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While I do have a ton of music in digital form, the house is also stacked with shelves full of CDs, DVDs, and books. The wife keeps telling me we need to get more spartan, but I love thumbing through those shelves looking for something interesting.
I believe the 2 formats can co-mingle. Still love the albums and CD's but it would be hard to live without the digital music.