Musical
Chairs
Last week I got an email from a co-worker that
I found extremely disturbing. It contained a link
to an
article from the New
York Times, which recapped the dismal state of music Compact Disc
sales. It also
posited the theory that Christmas 2007 would be the last that big box
stores such
as Best Buy and Target
would be selling CDs in a serious fashion before they begin to phase
them
out. As a
music fan, this was
like getting an electronic bucket of cold water
poured down my back.
already in my lifetime. So the idea of yet
another change in the popular format of recorded music
shouldn’t surprise me in
the least. I absorbed the last big change from casette to CD pretty
much with a
shrug, actually
buying a few before I even had a player. It
was a fait accompli. But to me, the big difference
this time is that the new
format is a digital handful of magic beans. Want to buy the latest
musical works?
Pay your money and download some files! We'll even thorw in a thumbnail
of cover
art!
This is an absolute
deal killer for me. I simply can’t get my head around the
concept of paying $9.95 for
ether. And I can’t abide the possibility of losing
thousands of dollars of collected music collection if my
hard drive
gets
smoked.Yeah, yeah, I know how
to back up my shit, and I know how to
burn a cd.
But that’s not the point. It’s just another hoop I will have to jump
through to enjoy the music I buy
going forward. At the risk of
sounding like the curmudgeon that I am rapidly
becoming, I am just not
that comfortable with spending good money on
the intangible.
Too many of the parts that used to
make an album experience great are lost
this
way. Not the least of which is the album art itself.
This has been a
long
downhill slide since the LP went R.I.P. Once
you could put on a record and
stare at the cover art for hours. Following along
with the lyrics, reading the liner notices, soaking up
the little artistic
details, basically immersing yourself in the musical experience the
artist was
trying to
convey. Gatefold? Oh, Hell Yes! Now you are fortunate to even
get
liner notes with a cd. It is more
often the case at present that all you get is a
folded insert of credits, and a link to the band’s website.
But here is a recent
example of a fully realized cd experience. On a recent visit to my
local store,
I noticed that Nine Inch Nails
had a new CD out. I no longer listen to Trent Reznor as much as
I used to, but
I still dig his stuff and try to keep up with his work. The first thing
that
caught my eye
about Year Zero was the
warning on the back label of the digipak:
USBM WARNING:
Consuming or spreading this material may be deemed subversive by the
United
States Bureau of Morality.
If you or someone you know has engaged in subversive
acts or thoughts, call: 1-866-445-6580
BE A PATRIOT - BE AN INFORMER!
Awesome! The cd was
nicely priced at 13.99, so I
threw it in the basket. I get back to the office and
open it up. When I lay my
thumb across the black surface of the cd, it changes white. WTF? I lay
my
whole
hand on the cd and all the text disappears revealing a completely white
surface
marred only by
a series of zeroes and ones across its face. When converted to
ASCII,
the code reveals a website,
exterminal.net, which appears
to detail the
surveillance of private citizens by some nefarious government
organization. As
I listen to the cd, I am immersed in the negative utopian vision of an
hence, where the government is spiking the water supply with a drug
called parepin
in order to keep
the populace docile, amidst efforts of resistance. The cd booklet
reveals
clues pointing to other websites,
further expanding the story. Calling the toll free number in
the USBM warning treats you to a chilling
message informing you that the chip
in your recently purchased media has been activated, and that you
are now being
tracked as a subversive!
I was surprised and
thrilled to find Year Zero to
be
an amazingly deep concept album, displaying Reznor’s
finest music since Broken.
This is
coupled with a supremely compelling open-ended storyline reminescent
of Brave New World, 1984, or The Matrix. The level of thought,
effort and creativity that went into this
release is tremendous. I just don't see how this level of
presentational richness and artisitc detail can be
possible from a music download alone.
I am not
exactly alien to the concept of downloading shared music (cough,
cough), it is
not my
habit
to do so. I still buy the CDs from my favorite bands immediately upon
their
release, either at a store or
directly from their website, in order to support the music I love. With
the saddening
fold of the once
mighty Tower Records, a chain that had a huge impact on
my musical upbringing, it has never been
more apparent or important that I
spend my money at local music stores. I am well aware that if I
don’t support
the Silver Platters, Easy
Street Records, and Sonic
Booms of the world, (buy shit
from them!) they
won’t be around long.
for it on lala.com, or buy it
used somewhere for half to a third of the
new retail
price. Of course
the savings is a factor, but another impetus is that my music
collection has
reached critical mass.
After 20 years of
collecting I now own close to 1500 prerecorded CDs from almost every
genre
of
music, so anymore there are fewer holes in my collection. And no matter
how
much
I love
Back in Black or Kind of Blue,
I don’t need
a third version of those
albums.
So it appears we are
at an impasse. For many reasons we are
no longer buying music the way
we used to, and the music industry is
evolving accordingly. Perhaps the Compact Disc will become
a boutique business primarily
for collectors the way vinyl has, and I will be still be able to enjoy
music as I have become accustomed. Or more likely this is just the
first of many
depressing yet
inevitable signs that I am getting older, and the world is moving on
without me.