For many of you, this may be old news, but it appears that the art of the album is all but extinct. And along with the physical album itself, whatever the incarnation, so goes various other necessary aspects. Some of these include artwork, liner notes and track sequencing. These things I will address individually in upcoming posts, since they each deserve their own special attention.
To clarify, I am not against digital music or individual tracks. In fact I love the ability to find those long-lost nuggets and then be able to consume them almost instantly. I believe that through this instant gratification, one's attachment to the song, album and even artist is greatly diminished.
...ripply effect for fade-out to daydream sequence... Some of my first memories of really becoming involved with the music I was listening to was when I would sit myself by the radio all day long on a weekend and wait for one of my favorite songs (Pour Some Sugar On Me, Electric Blue) to play on the radio so I could hit the record button on my cassette player while yelling at the DJs to stop intro-ing and ruining my recording. I had to put effort and dedication into my music, and the payoff was that much sweeter.
Later, when I started being able to purchase full albums, the medium itself was a limiter. If you wanted to listen to a song over and over, you had to put in at least a little work to rewind the cassette. But more often than not, I would listen to the song I really liked a couple of times, then let the rest of the album play through, thus developing a connection to the the album as a whole and discovering songs you would never ever hear otherwise. You couldn't just random through a bunch of albums. Again, even with CDs, if you wanted to listen to a huge variety of music, you either had to put in the time to create a mix-tape, or swap out discs all the time, which was relatively annoying. (Shut up... I'm talking pre-disc changers)
...fade back to reality... So as you can see, having a physical connection and limited access to music ended up making the music mean a lot more to me. It could be that this occurred during my more formative years, but I feel that the music from that time is more heavily associated with happenings in my life because I was more active an involved with it. This same theory, to me, applies to buying vs. pirating (which I've never done, because that would be wrong... I'm only guessing here) music. I feel more of an obligation to the music if I've spent my hard-earned money to support something I believe in.
So in summary, I love digital music. I won't stop utilizing it or buying digital singles. But I think that this trend is an unfortunate one, if for nobody else than the individual listener. What kind of memories will the kids of tomorrow have of their music growing up. Will it have emotional ties? Will they recognize complete bodies of work, or will they just remember a randomly sequenced collection of disposable melodies? So next time you fire up the iPod, take the small step of instead of shuffling all songs, shuffle just between albums, and enjoy your experience. ...If you have the willpower.
