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Notes of a technaut
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As we bravely crawl toward the future our technology leaps forward at a pace the Olympians can’t keep up with. Its application has brought incredible changes to our lives and culture, in particular - music, the virtual notes...
The changes are fundamental and affect our consumption and outlook of popular music, from a pop ditty to an avant-garde symphony. The first casualty is - album, as format, its sequencing, artwork… With the erupting trend of online buying - it is SONG that’s being emphasised again that, B-sides being long defunct, signals the single's end.
Individual cut or, hopefully, a cluster of songs rather than a collection we know as a ‘long playing’ record, is the ‘king’ again. Thus, running order - determined by whatever criterion artists use [emotional?] - is futile because a listener randomises the experience. Consequently a ‘concept album’ concept is instantly obsolete; artwork is also meaningless with all its credits, ‘thank yous’ and other trivia acts piled onto inlays-cum-booklets.
This shift has been caused by the small cyber matter Downloading is as well as by the current gen’s view of music as something - evanescent. This virtual consumption needs no physical possession and the non-materialistic way has resulted in destruction of the ‘First editions’ also by simply ‘bettering’ subsequent versions by remixing, re-digitising, adding bonuses, format-upgrading…
The neo-music lovers do not mind seeing details of a painting before being able [ever?] to view the whole picture. The iPod generation is happy to have it all on hardware that is nowt more than a glorified Walkman, effectively isolating a listener, again. It hopefully is just a passing phase, alike its cassette predecessor, but albums may only survive in the present form as long as the players are made. All VHS tapes are already part of techno-history...
Max Stresco
4-4-2005