Technology always helped bring the auditor closer to the medicine . Progressing from wax tubes , to records , to cassettes , to CDs , each jump has benefited the music rooter . But maybe it ’s gone a bit too far .
The History
Admittedly , newfangled medicine formats have always changed the means we listen to music . However , I do n’t recall any have had such an upshot over the last 60 years as the move to MP3 and other digital data file formats . The advent of the 45 RPM single in the 50s is arguably the first big shift in the way pop music was consumed . phonograph recording run from longer - play 78s and 33s , to the cheaper 45 format , which carried two or three songs on a disc , and became much more approachable for mass consumption . before long , every bountiful soda water artist was free their big hits on 45s , and this became the main mode of consumption .
Then came cassettes , which shrank down the record onto magnetic movie and work the long - represent album back into vogue . Cassingles also remain popular among consumers , but the idea of the album as the main leverage was gain steam again because tapes were more long-lived and prosperous to store . It also made it possible for people to record their own mix very easily .
But the problem with all these analogue format is that they wear down and degraded over time . Vinyl lost it ’s sound quality the more you played it , scratched easily , and storing it in the faulty place mood would warp it ’s shape . Tapes would sound muffled over time , and the actual magnetic tape could easily be spool out from the cassette .
Enter the Compact Disc . Created as a way to forestall the abjection of sound over time , the summary disc ushered in the digital era of medicine , but it was n’t without complaints . Audiophiles said the speech sound was dusty and sterile , and purist worried about the mind you could skip around the album decree so easily , that albums were meant to be heed to sequentially , and not on one - running repeat for smasher . It also was n’t impervious , still liable to strike and subsequent choppy playback . Still , it was the best available option to get music to consumer , until the MP3 .
Too Much Music
Sometimes , I experience the upgrade of MP3s made medicine too easy to find . or else of taking time to value good work , we now down as much euphony as we possibly can . My music aggregation feel increasingly impersonal , to the point that I have album I ’ve forgot I downloaded . Sometimes I ’ll listen to an record album I like just once , and never touch it again . Why ?
Because at any given time , I have about 10 - 20 other new album I ’m wanting to break out . There ’s just not enough time to give every album the same aid , and when you render to really get into a fistful of album , you lose out on 100 other new vent .
The MP3 era is turn on the music junkie ’s futile quest to stay put up on all music , at all times .
But that ’s not to say it ’s all bad . album that used to take me month to tail down in the past can be found with a few proceedings of google ingenuity . I ’ve been able to listen to artists I might have only known by name in the past times , and not have to wait for incarnate America to make their music accessible to the masses .
contract Tastes
Despite the greatly enhanced variety of music available to the intermediate music auditor , I feel like people ’s tastes are actually narrowing , more than they ’re branching out . for certain , the hard-core medicine fan will go out and cut into out obscure artists in 20 unlike literary genre . But for the casual indie rock fan , it ’s just as easy to go out and find 20 other bands who fathom just like Sigur Ros .
As a answer , you see people digging deeper into genre that they really wish , while ignoring the entree they have to so many other large literary genre . The hike of net forums and community based around certain kinds of medicine have only helped attender to key out with other similar - minded individuals and firmly entrench themselves .
However , the rise of unclassifiable , genre - free euphony this decade would seem to go against my feeling of contract tastes . Fans have embraced musicians who pull from a change of ostensibly unrelated influences , and reassemble the constituent into a whole new animal .
creative person as adult as Timbaland , as modest as the Avalanches , as weird as Flying Lotus , or as colorful as M.I.A have all made a name for themselves by consciously disregard the bound of musical style . And as a result , I ’ve see myself and many of my Quaker excavate into literary genre , past and present , they previously had ignored . We ’re better medicine fans because of this .
The Death of the Album , The ascension of Musical A.D.D.
I pick the iPod . Before MP3s , when you wanted to listen to something , you at least had to insert a all over record album , or at least take the time to piece together a mixtape . Tracklists have in mind more back then , because it was more unmanageable to rearrange the ordering ( keep open for the skip / shuffle function ) .
These days , you may take a shit out whatever you want into an unfocused play list and take it on the go . bestow or subtract songs in a matter of seconds , it ’s a thought - gratuitous mental process . There ’s no need to give a whole album the time of day anymore when you could just contribute your favorite . We all have Musical A.D.D.
But the truth is , I ’m just being a paranoid purist . When CDs first come out , vinyl radical purist lamented how too many tracks were wad into the 74 - minute capacity saucer , and how easily people could just switch from track to track . Before that , the integral pop music refinement was formed around 45 rev singles in the 50s and 60s .
So while the cantankerous old man in me wants to say that we postulate to preserve the complete album , the truth is that it ’s meaning among music fan has always changed and develop .
As much I want to say MP3s have break all our listening habits , the truth is , they ’ve just pushed us into the next wafture of music culture . Maybe it means the album tracklist really is stagnant . peradventure I ’ll only mind to a terminated record album once or doubly from here on out . Or maybe it just intend people take to start makingmore interesting album desirable of such attention .
https://gizmodo.com/thriller-my-first-album-5215656
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