Honestly, why would anyone want forty thousand songs in their pocket?

Paradoxically, having thousands of songs in my pocket (and most of the music ever recorded, via streaming services) on my phone has helped me cut down the clutter of my record collection and really focus on the records I enjoy most. If I can stream the entire catalogs of artists I sort of like, such as the Cars or Pat Benatar or the Police, do I really need to own their entire catalogs on LP and CD? Nope. And I've been culling the herd of physical media for that very reason, and focusing on just the core artists I most enjoy, kind of like the good old days of scarcity when I was a kid and only had access to a limited number of records.

 

Try Munch/Boston Symphony Orchestra on the "Living Stereo" SACD. No repeats, bracing tempos, incredible brass playing.

 

Yes, my music server has everything -- which is why I don't need tin discs in plastic cases of everything now. Vinyl which of course I love, I do not need in many cases either.

Yeah -- get it down to those really wonderful sounding titles and favorite artists on vinyl and CDs, and enjoy quality and some variety when you feel like it as well.

But I do need 400,000 songs available at the click of a dial personally. 40,000 is not going to cut it. LOLOLOLOL

 

I currently have 45,096 songs on my laptop, and I think it's wonderful.

 

Bruce Cockburn has four live albums, have you heard any of them?

 

SHF: fighting progress since 1976

 

Don't forget the "rap is still not music" crowd. It's like the flat-earth society around here sometimes.

 

There has been no progress since 1976 to fight.

 

...which does not reside on my phone! Now I have to switch back to my 120gb Zune!

 

I guess so I can listen to pretty much what I want when the mood strikes me. All about convenience...

 

To some people it IS black and white. We've had threads about the subject, and some people insist that they play every album in its entirety every time - and that to do otherwise would be offensive to the artists...

 

Some call today "progress". I call it "regress".

 

I play albums in their entirety … and then stop and reflect for an hour about what message Paul McCartney intended to send with "Spirits of Ancient Egypt" before moving on to give my full attention to Give My Regards to Broad Street.

 

It's true. That's why, whenever I pull the tonearm off "Ram" side 2 after "Monkberry Moon Delight" I get an angry call from Paul McCartney: "Hey, cut it out!"

 

Let me tell ya something, I freakin' wish I could get my entire collection in my pocket in lossless format. I still haven't managed to accomplish that. Why, you ask? For one simple reason -- if I'm at work and I get a song in my head, I want to hear that song and the album it's on as soon as possible. However, I can't just put it on in the car now as things stand -- I have to go home, find the CD in my collection (which is currently disorganized) and grab it for the car the next day. If I had a little device I could carry with me at all times with everything I've got on there, I can listen to whatever the heck I want whenever the heck I want. That sounds good to me.

And this is why I've posted elsewhere on this forum some time ago about why the portable devices they make for this purpose (including the Fiio which I now own) need to have considerably larger capacity.

 

Do you know any other songs? Never mind songs, how about just trying another note?

 

Wow, we both went for the Paul McCartney reference independently. That pretty much sums up the forum, dunnit?

 

Hey -- your reply sounds familiar!

 

You could say almost the same sort of thing about having a large record collection. If you could carry around a large library of music with you, why wouldn't you want to? That in itself has nothing to do with music being too easy to acquire in the digital age, and if you only listen to rips of your own collection I don't see where the problem is.

 

I CD's in the back seat of the car, in all the little storage slots in the car for CDs, a pile in the trunk, plus I have a nano in the car -- and I STILL can't find the tune I want to hear when I want to hear it (I know I had that 4 CD set of Gould playing Schoenberg in there, but when I want to hear The Book of the Hanging Gardens, can I find it? No). In the car in particularly I'd love something that approaches a celestial jukebox with thousands and thousands of piece of music on it that could be recalled at whim.

I also love having music easily available for study. I've been on a big Schoenberg kick lately, reading Allen Shawn's Schoenberg book and going through the composer's work, life, paintings, etc. The fact that I can jump on YouTube and find, say, the Second String Quartet with scrolling score to listen to, read along with, stop and study, is just freakin' great. The ease with which that's possible does the opposite of worry me -- it thrills me.

When I do serious listening I can still sit down at the big system with a record and lose myself in the sound itself. But I don't think instant or at least easy access to more music devalues music at all. It all depends on what you do with that access. If you want to treat it like the availability of aural wallpaper and a mood enhancer, why not, we've been doing that with radio and canned music services like Muzak for almost 100 years. If you want to treat it like access to a tremendous, easy to access library of art and knowledge, you can do that too.

 

"I saw the pile of 10 or 12 CDs in my car the other day and thought I need to take a few out. I don't need that many! I only listen to 3 or 4 then swap them over."
The Universal Law of CD listening maintains that it's the 13th CD that you REALLY wanted to hear, but it is NOT stuffed in your car glovebox now, that you carefully selected from your collection that night before, but left on the table next to the front door.

"What does it achieve to have that much music so easily available? In my opinion, it devalues it not only for the artist, but for the listener. How can one invest anything into their listening experience when it is so easy to acquire and flip between songs, albums and artists?"
I agree with your approach on this...
and if I worked in a Snickers factory, in theory I would ALWAYS be Satisfied ©®
But, taking your logic to the extreme, did we all appreciate our music more when we had to play and record our LPs onto cassette tapes to play on our Walkmans....perhaps maybe?

 

I just wish they could figure out a way to make these portable music devices play an album in its entirety.

 

I think the OP may have answered his own question. Instead of having a pile of CDs in your car that you have to rotate through, removing some, adding others, and generally just getting in the way, you can simply use a player that contains all of those albums. You dispense with the need to lug around a CD collection around in your car.

For me, the biggest benefit of being able to carry around thousands of songs is the ability to play them on shuffle. I am constantly being surprised by great songs that I have on my player, but would have never thought to play at that particular moment in time. (And if I had thought about it, it would have meant locating the CD in my collection, bringing it out to the car, and then putting it in my CD player.) It's fun to be regularly surprised by what comes up on shuffle mode. And if a song that makes me want to hear the full album, then it's just a matter of a few clicks and I'm enjoying the full album.

I still enjoying playing full CDs and LPs at home, when I can sit and relax by my main system. But for driving around (especially when traveling greater distances and being away from home for a while), my iPod is indispensable.

 

For a long time I did not use any portable music device. Then I started to have more time away from my home because of my work and the only solution was to purchase an IPOD. I do not like the sound in mp3 or mp4 format, but at least I can hear music wherever I want. I still feel uncomfortable with this ... situation.

 

This is my position on the matter as well. When I travel, which is frequent, I want to listen to whatever music I am in the mood for -whenever I want. With a loaded iPod I can do this.