Our not-so-idyllic digital future

There is a long post about digital stuff - - music, movies, assorted whatnot - - over on 2 Blowhards that's really worth reading. I want to single out two particular grafs (but the whole post, really, is pretty interesting):

* Aside from copyright concerns, the big worry people have expressed about the effect of programs such as Itunes is that they destroy "the album" as a creation. Now that the program itself is all about the individual songs, who's going to go to the trouble of listening to a carefuly constructed album?

Exactly right. One big argument in favor of digital music, and against the RIAA's pricing, is the "Sixteen bucks for two songs" argument, as in: "Don't you get mad when you pay sixteen bucks for a CD with twelve songs on it, when you only want two of them?"

Well, no, not really. I've never understood this argument. Yes, I used to buy rock or pop albums on the basis of the one or two songs I'd heard on the radio or on MTV, but then, I always understood the idea of the single as a marketing item for the album. And quite often, I found that often the best songs on an album are not the ones released as singles, and more importantly, a well-produced album is a delight in itself, in the sequencing of the songs, the interplay of their subject matter, et cetera.

Any classic rock radio station will play Pink Floyd's "Another Brick In the Wall, Part II" fairly often. And it is a great song, most assuredly. But it's even greater when you hear it in the context of the album of which it is a part. Digital distribution is going to kill that aspect of music, and that's a damn shame. Chalk it up as a further reduction of our cultural attention span.

Back to the Blowhard:

* But as I played with Itunes, one other worry occurred to me: it seems inevitable that Itunes (etc) will be the end of the song-that-grows-on-you. Why? Because you'll never give a song that doesn't instantly grab you a second (let alone a tenth) chance. I'm not the world's most impatient listener, yet with Itunes I find myself not just skipping the in-between-the-hits songs; I don't even transfer them to the hard drive in the first place. I also find that there's a strong temptation to listen to songs for just a few seconds at a time. Click -- and you get that rush that the first bars of a song you like deliver. And then it's Click again. Pretty soon you're like a rat who's developed a taste for speed; you're going from place to place, looking for another up. When you don't find it, you're outta there, and outta there fast.

Again, exactly right. This will encourage our fetish for instant gratification. I'm reminded of a bit of dialogue in the movie Mr. Holland's Opus, in which Mr. Holland (Richard Dreyfuss) describes his youthful initial encounter with the music of John Coltrane. I don't recall the exact wording, but it goes like this: "I listened to this record, and I hated it. I mean, I really hated it. I hated it so much that I took it home and listened to it every day, trying to understand why I could hate it so much. And then I realized that I loved it."

This isn't uncommon. I've had this experience many times, and not just with music (although you could take the same bit of dialogue, substitute the name "Hector Berlioz" for John Coltrane, and you'd have my exact story with regard to who is now my favorite classical composer). I suspect that we won't take time to get to know an artist, to allow his or her work to slowly cast its spell upon us. It'll be "Gimme magic now, or I'm on to the next person." That's not good.

What I fear (or, not so much "fear" as "suspect") is that this soon-to-be idyllic heaven, when there are millions of songs out there for pennies each, is going to have serious repercussions for not just the way we buy music, but for how the music itself will impact our lives. We should think about that.

(I've written about these issues before.)