Napster/Bittorrent vs. the dusty record store downtown / the past, present and future of music

[SalsaC]

As a twist of faith, I relocated this laptop I'm using from it's usual place to my brother's desk, which had a tower of our old CDs on top of it. One of them caught my eye. It was Gregorian's "Masters of Chant IV". I thought "damn, how long has it been since I last listened to it?" and picked it up. I opened the cd case and started to read the booklet, which had a kind of a foreword from the band's frontman, Frank Peterson. One part of it was where it started.

 

Frank wrote: "My friends and I would meet at someone's home simply to sit down and listen to music. In those days music was consumed in the same way that it was created: with love, patience, devotion and determination. Unfortunately, today our business works differently..." I had read those same words numerous times before back when I was 15 years old, but it never hit me the same way it did now. I started to think about his words from my own perspective, and I realized that he was right.

 

In the 70s and 80s, the music industry was quite different. Music was distributed either by radio or by records. The bootlegging culture was alive and well. There was no easy/free way to get new music. You either bought your music, or borrowed it from a friend. Think about what this does to music. Music becomes a treasured item, something to pay real attention to. You couldn't throw it away just like that. Exactly like Frank said: "it was consumed with love, patience, devotion and determination". In other words, letting the music grow on you. This kind of world results in one thing. Two actually, depends on which way you look at it.

 

Firstly, only a couple of artists rose to fame, but those that did sold massive amounts of records while performing to filled-out stadiums. Bands like Queen, Police and Prince spawned phenomenas of ridiculous proportions. During the Cold War, young audiences were an unharvested goldmine. Music was "the thing" that connected young people together. Even if only a few of them were really passionate about music, records were still being bought because it was the only media available and it wasn't only a hobby of the music-fanatics. Like today, I was listening to "Bridge over troubled water" by Simon & Garfunkel through our hometheater, and my dad, who rarely listens to any music at all, comes behind me and says "and that's where the bass come in" and snaps his fingers. And that was EXACTLY the moment where the bass guitar kicked in. He has probably heard the song last time in the 80s, yet he still remembered it so vividly! By no means is he a music fanatic, but this goes to show that people from that era consumed music differently.

 

Secondly, because of the masses focusing on a few artists, underground bands were truly underground. The only media available, as said, were records and tape-trading. You can see it already, can't you? Let's move on...

 

Nowadays, music of the masses is still there, but in a slightly different form. Record labels spit out new artists with a fast pulse, but they are fairly short-lived. Why? Because the general philosophy behind the consumption of music has changed. The reason for that is right in front of you. It has provided a new way to distribute music, a fast and easy way. People don't settle for things they see on MTV or on the shelves of a record store. The record sales are dropping, but at the same time the number of artists on the scene are increasing. This leads to the industry doing something Frank addresses in his message: "Most producers these days are looking for marketing plots rather than trying to develop new U2s, Pink Floyds, Led Zeppelins..." Which gets us back to the beginning of this paragraph. It's a never-ending wheel.

 

But the way I see it, that's not necessarily a bad thing! There's more bands enjoying a decent success nowadays, from a more varied selection of genres. Yes, the state of the industry is f00ked, but that is a result of the state of musicimproving. There's no going back to what once was, but those who want to go back should stop and think about what's going on right now. It's much easier to find music to suit your own needs and that helps to draw potential converts to the world of music.

 

There is still music being consumed with everything Frank described, it's just that the focus is now on a much wider range of different artists. Me and my friends still gather to listen to music, but there aren't a million other people doing the same with the same artists. That group of people who don't care about music enough to buy it, is much visible than before, but that is because so much music is at your fingertips, for free. That leads to music becoming an endless stream of "dead air" to some and that helps to build the illusion that no one cares about music the same way as once was in the past, but that's not true.

 

I can see the whole evolution on my own life. First records I bought were from Gregorian. I used to listen to the cds before going to sleep, reading the lyrics from the booklet as I go. I grew attached to the songs, I knew them inside out and had my first experiences with real goosebumps with music. Once I learned to download stuff, I started to pick songs here and there and play them as a background to some other stuff. "Dead air", so to speak.

The first songs I learned with the guitar were those I had downloaded before, but this time I had to listen to them repeatedly, really getting into them. How else was I supposed to learn them? I slowly started to appreciate music more and more, eventually getting to the point where I am now, throwing pseudo-intellectual analysis about music into the ether. I can comfortably say that I am consuming music with love and passion.

 

This is a foundation to build your own thoughts on. What's your take on this? Is music really dying as some people say? How do you consume music?

I will throw some more thoughts in once I get my mind around what I just said. I might be saying something I'm not actually meaning, I might be contradicting myself, I don't know!

 

Put your own thoughts into words.

[the1]

tl;dr???

 

 

lol.

 

I'm not reading that wall tonight. But I will say music doesn't sell for one reason: it's far too expensive. Price drops are the only solution imo

[the1]

Okay read it all. Respond tommorow.