Music downloading creates listener apathy

[bananapeel]

Re: Music downloading creates listener apathy

In the 19th century, music was seen as a highly valued treasure with fundamental and near-mystical powers of human communication

Back in the early half of 19th century, the only way to access music was to listen to it at a live performance. With the advent of technology to record music, this key value in music was by-passed.

[JetaTek]

Re: Music downloading creates listener apathy

I noticed this back in 2001 after I had amassed a mere 30GB of music from Napster & Scour Exchange. As strange as it sounds, I actually found myself torn on whether my accelerated music acquisition habits were positive. On the one hand, I was getting exposed to a huge swath of artists and at a very fast pace. I felt like I was making up for lost time by catching up on all the electronic music from the past decade (1991 - 2001). But on the other hand, I was devoting less time to each individual artist than I did when I'd bop down to a record store and plop down $15 for a CD.

So for me it really boiled down to a breadth vs depth ideology. I came to the conclusion that it was more beneficial to have a broad awareness of thousands of artists, than to know every note in the albums of 10 artists.

While I still download lots of music (I've got somewhere in the range of 900GB now) and a wide variety at that, I've found that my listening habits have come full circle over the past 5 years. I tend to dedicate more "quality" time to my favorite artists like John Digweed & Thievery Corporation. And by "quality" I mean listening to their music in the absence of other distractions. I might load my iPod up with 10 new DJ sets each week and listen to those on my iPod while driving to work, but when I relax in the evening while around the house I listen to my favorite artists. So I can still get that wide range of exposure to new artists and new music while driving, but I can give undivided attention to my favorite artists in the evening and still develop an emotional attachment to those songs, albums, & DJ sets.

[GregWhelan]

Re: Music downloading creates listener apathy

^ what JetaTek says - I listen to lots of new things each week, but also return to the sets/mixes i know are good. Out of the new sets I dl each week, a few of them get played again and again and hence become 'classics' too

[ubiqe]

Re: Music downloading creates listener apathy

what they say is quite true, but on the other hand, in the times of cassettes you would listen to a track only because it was there - many quite shitty tunes among a few gems possibly. You'd say it grew on you but really you'd just get used to its medicority cause you didn't have much choice. Now if I'm to listen to a track or set more than once, it's got to be really good... There's always more competition when the choice is wider - and that's good.

[weswood]

Re: Music downloading creates listener apathy

Threads like this create reader apathy.

It's scientifically proven.