I was at a concert a few days ago. The opening act was an Israeli singer named Ninet, and she absolutely rocked. I enjoyed her performance so much that I found her on iTunes and downloaded the album she’s currently touring to support. Doing this reminded me that I am probably one of a small number of people who still get music by purchasing entire albums, or paying for it at all.
Buying albums, or record albums as they were called back when vinyl LPs were still the industry standard, seems to have almost vanished. I feel this is a tragic loss. Albums used to be something worthy of a collection, one people would proudly display and vigilantly care for. They weren’t just collections of arbitrary songs that artists dumped on the public in one convenient package, but they were forms of expression themselves. The songs were organized in way to communicate certain themes or tones, even if they were only abstract. The artwork mattered, whether it was some barefoot dude with long hair and an out of control mustache holding his acoustic guitar or some wild illustration representing what looked like a snapshot moment from a shocking science fiction adventure. The artwork was specifically paired to visually represent the music found inside, and in the best examples could be nearly as evocative as any of the songs. Without album covers to stare into and mediate on while listening to the music, generations of junior high students wouldn’t have had anything to draw on the inside covers of their social studies notebooks.
Beyond the album cover and any interior artwork, there were also the liner notes. If you bought albums, you didn’t have to run an internet search to look up song lyrics to make sure you were singing along correctly, and didn’t have to wonder who had written the song or which of the guitarists was playing that killer solo you liked so much. Sometimes the photo of the band on the inside would be your first indication that their line-up had changed.
I stopped buying CDs regularly a few years ago, mostly because in my part of the world it just isn’t easy to find anywhere that sells the ones I want, and downloading music is so much more convenient. When I wake up on Friday mornings, the day the music industry usually releases new music, one of the first things I do is scan iTunes to see if anything new catches my interest. If it does, I’ll usually download it to my ridiculously-oversized music library right away. I don’t mind paying for my music; I like the feeling of permanence it gives me knowing I have a copy of a song paid for and owned. I don’t like that so many albums have bonus tracks added, since they can break the theme of what the album was intended as, and it's rare when they turn out to be anything more than poorly-recorded live versions or redundant remixes.
I don’t have satellite radio anywhere and I don’t subscribe to any streaming services, since they’re all more about individual songs. If I ever listen to internet radio, it’s usually with the hope I’ll discover an artist I want to check out later. If I like more of what I hear, I’ll probably go ahead and buy their whole album. I kind of wish I had more liner notes to read as well, but at least I’ll have the music.
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