Inspired on: The Campus Word
This article looks at the impact that huge MP3 collections has on our perception and enjoyment of music, and really got me thinking.
Music has value because it moves us. That special album that takes us back to some magic moment, or the songs we love to dance to. What has people by albums us the love of the music.
MP3 collecting is similar to collecting baseball cards. Grab an artist’s entire discography, and trade among your peers. Our music collections expand almost as fast as the national debt, and often music sits on our hard drives unlistened, unappreciated, and unacknowledged. We become overwhelmed with the amount of music we have to listen to, and start to lose our love for the music that touches us.
When music is downloaded and listened to only once or twice, it becomes a single serving item, like a hamburger. The joy of music is in the artistic expression, and the way we are moved when we hear something we love.
Could the current frenzy of MP3 downloading (both legal and illegal) be eliminating our love for music? There’s a phenomenon known as information overload. One way to look at the current consumption of MP3s is that music is in an information overload stage.
With so much music to choose from, both free and bought, and huge MP3 collections, the line between having music we love and having music because its there is getting blurred.
Most of the time, we relate to this in terms of album sales, and the music industry. What if we looked it as a shift in the perception of music? While music is always special, it’s apparent that we are now starting to view it as a thing to have. What effect this will have on our appreciation of music is anybody’s guess. Based on the habits of the general public, music is losing it’s intrinsic value as art, and becoming more like a piece of furniture.
Bottom line: We used to buy CDs because we loved the music. It is starting to appear that we now collect MP3s because they’re accessible.
