In this week's feature, Dan Moore talks about the way our music-listening habits have changed over the past century, all the way from live performance to instantaneous streaming of 99% of all recorded music. He asks a number of good questions. Among my favorites is this one: "Why listen to the worst song on a Lady Gaga album when you have exactly the same right to listen to the best songs on each Madonna album?"
See also: -The Future Is Fine: Streaming music isn't evil, it's just different -Five Ways We Might Be Listening To Music In the Future -Does Spotify Mean the End of the iPod and Your Music Collection?
One of the consequences of that particular sentiment, in Moore's eyes, is that newer music fans consume more broadly than older music fans. One reader has a slightly different take -- Mark wrote us this morning to say:
I am 63 years old ..I have spanned most of the formats listed. I am NOT someone who thinks they have not made good music since the '70s. I also am not a fan of the actual record...I carefully had interchangeable cartridges to isolate my pristeen records, used discwashers and STILL after a couple plays the popping started...so I loved the move away from vinyl culminating in the CD.However, your good article missed a point about what is wrong with delivered singles...I cannot tell you how many times I bought a record/CD..played it at leisure and discovered that I actually liked some of the NON-radio songs better than the "hits" that compelled the purchase in the first place. I considered THEIR discovery a sufficient reward to compensate for the filler.
Unfortunately as we evolve, due to downloading, into a strictly single based system, what is actually happening is that the decision of what to release often is in the hands of an A&R guy and not a real music lover. Those "other" songs I discovered will eventually not be recorded at all. We will be trending toward a system of spoon-feeding what may amount to a form of soylent green music-something that feeds the masses but denies that the variety that A&R people seldom connect with.
Do I have an iPod? Yes...with 8,000 songs almost all of which came from my own CDs. I do love the convenience, but I never delude myself that i am somehow elevating the experience or the joy of discovery by its use.
Thank you
How does streaming change the way you consume music? And for you musicians, how does it change the way you think about producing and distributing your art?
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