I've written a few time now about my love of KALX. This station has single handedly returned an interesting variety to my music listening and has opened me up to a form of music listening that is more trial-sized. Sometimes I cope through some of the music. And sometimes I fall in love. But all the time I'm happy for the spinning, chaotic ball of variety (except when it is disco, which despite my best attempts and efforts still grates on me nearly instantly).
But here is a little thesis about our changing relation to music as a commodity. With the advent of the mp3 and the mass storage device (and a little friend I like to call digital media pirating) we have access to boatloads of tunes (I'm a hep cat, I know). At a certain moment in this evolution, for me let's say around 2004-2005 when I began to carry with me a continual 40+ gb of music at any time, the problem stopped being access and become choice. Now we might characterize the problem even a little differently and say that instant access vis the internet is even more important than size of storage (which none the less continues to grow, more of the access point in a moment). But so, choice becomes the problematic issue. You have a metric fuck ton of music, but you don't know how to move through it readily enough to maintain your own interest (a sad day for humankind, when our laziness is returned to us). And so we try using randomizing functions—shuttle. But it turns out with so much music—not to mention audiobooks—shuttle pushes you mostly crap (or if its algorithm makes use of your play counts, only things you already listen to too often). And thus we get Pandora and the Genius Playlist. Functions that require only a minimal input to produce for you a serious of choice, which in the former at least, you can always tweak.
So choice is solved right? Sort of yes, but now we've already (with Pandora) moved from an ownership model. And then Pandora pushes commercials. The rest of the music is still our there for your listening pleasure without commercials easily enough, but you would have to find it. Boo-urns to that. And here is where I at least get off the merry-go-round. The internet has taught me to forego ownership for access, to let go of my death grip on media. And in negative, it has taught me to despise commercials. It has, essentially, returned me to the loving arms of radio. I suppose I mean public radio or commercial-free radio. And specifically, I only really mean KALX, because they produce the only radio without obnoxious DJs and terrible cut music.
Now I'm not saying that innovation will or should cease in any respect to the form of music delivery. But I think that 1) the access vs. ownership war has been won by access—tho I know not yet, I'm just predicting that that war is ideologically already won and just going to take its time to peter out. (And not of course to say that there won't be media-ophiles of all sorts still with rampant need to collect and keep.) And 2) radio, done right, has yet to be outmoded and is in fact newly returned to relevancy. Once people eschew the need for ownership, radio returns to viability provided that it can present an informed eclecticism (which is understandably completely subjective and just as likely to fail for you as it is to succeed for me).
Suffice it all to say, the world of media and ownership is changing and it turns out radio was a pretty smart idea after all.
But here is a little thesis about our changing relation to music as a commodity. With the advent of the mp3 and the mass storage device (and a little friend I like to call digital media pirating) we have access to boatloads of tunes (I'm a hep cat, I know). At a certain moment in this evolution, for me let's say around 2004-2005 when I began to carry with me a continual 40+ gb of music at any time, the problem stopped being access and become choice. Now we might characterize the problem even a little differently and say that instant access vis the internet is even more important than size of storage (which none the less continues to grow, more of the access point in a moment). But so, choice becomes the problematic issue. You have a metric fuck ton of music, but you don't know how to move through it readily enough to maintain your own interest (a sad day for humankind, when our laziness is returned to us). And so we try using randomizing functions—shuttle. But it turns out with so much music—not to mention audiobooks—shuttle pushes you mostly crap (or if its algorithm makes use of your play counts, only things you already listen to too often). And thus we get Pandora and the Genius Playlist. Functions that require only a minimal input to produce for you a serious of choice, which in the former at least, you can always tweak.
So choice is solved right? Sort of yes, but now we've already (with Pandora) moved from an ownership model. And then Pandora pushes commercials. The rest of the music is still our there for your listening pleasure without commercials easily enough, but you would have to find it. Boo-urns to that. And here is where I at least get off the merry-go-round. The internet has taught me to forego ownership for access, to let go of my death grip on media. And in negative, it has taught me to despise commercials. It has, essentially, returned me to the loving arms of radio. I suppose I mean public radio or commercial-free radio. And specifically, I only really mean KALX, because they produce the only radio without obnoxious DJs and terrible cut music.
Now I'm not saying that innovation will or should cease in any respect to the form of music delivery. But I think that 1) the access vs. ownership war has been won by access—tho I know not yet, I'm just predicting that that war is ideologically already won and just going to take its time to peter out. (And not of course to say that there won't be media-ophiles of all sorts still with rampant need to collect and keep.) And 2) radio, done right, has yet to be outmoded and is in fact newly returned to relevancy. Once people eschew the need for ownership, radio returns to viability provided that it can present an informed eclecticism (which is understandably completely subjective and just as likely to fail for you as it is to succeed for me).
Suffice it all to say, the world of media and ownership is changing and it turns out radio was a pretty smart idea after all.