My love/hate with music technology
I’ve had an iPod (in some form) for more years than I can remember. With that, I’ve used iTunes since I was in high school (don’t count). Things have certainly changed in the way that we consume music, due to more and more advancements and ideas in music technology. As a consumer and huge music appreciator, it’s made things a bit difficult, at times, frustrating.
First off, how the hell do I organize all of my music so that I can actually listen to it? Ever since I was a little kid, I started collecting music. First on cassette tapes, then on CDs. When I was in college, I worked for Warner Music Group and accumulated more CDs than an indie music store. Over time, I’ve tried to rip all of these CDs onto my computer, weeding out the music I’ll never listen to again, praying my CD drive won’t give out on my MacBook Pro. But now, I have an incredibly large amount of music on my computer (I’m about halfway through the CDs), and I have absolutely no idea how/when I’ll listen to most of it.
If you sat down and actually surveyed the amount of music that I listen to in my music collection on my computer, you’d find out that the numbers are downright depressing. Even on my 16GB iPhone 4, I listen to no more than 30% of the music I’ve uploaded on a regular basis. One great example is the Prince “Musicology” album that I just listened to the other week for the first time since probably the concert in 2001.
So how do we fix this new-found fickleness with music? Our own music collections and the way we consume music are turning into a homemade version of TRL without the celebrity guests and crowds in Times Square (well, depending on where you work). With Apple’s cloud storage launching this fall, I fear the problem will only continue to intensify.
With all of the advancements in music technology out there, where’s the help tool that’s going to help me appreciate my music, not just store it? For now, I’ll still wrack my brain trying to figure it out for myself.
