I’m reminded of a time in the early 2000s, just after I got my first CD burner, when my musical way of life jumped from making tapes to making CDs. On one side, my life was like, “well, I can only buy so much, I can only tape in real time so much, and I can only borrow so much from the library, that I’m just going to enjoy as much as I can, when I can.” That era of my life was marked by knowing almost every album I owned, and being able to listen to all of my albums over the course of a month, copied albums included. I took my music seriously, and I loved what I loved furiously, but only a few albums at a time.
On the other side of that divide my life changed dramatically. I was simultaneously immersed in a new city (PDX) with more access to buying and getting more music, and I had access to Audiogalaxy while I could borrow and burn CDs in large quantities, very quickly. On the other side of that divide, I became the kind of person dominated by the single notion: “Holy cow, I am rapidly acquiring so much music that I can’t keep up with listening to it all.”
I think I lived in that mentality until sometime around 2010, when I could no longer keep up with my own habit of copying albums and burning discs. I still have large numbers of mp3s I’ve never listened to, and spindles of discs I’ve never put on again. It was probably around then that I also started to realize that I could find almost anything of any kind anywhere online fairly quickly, and suddenly, copying music seemed to matter less and less.
As a test, the first three albums I could think of off the top of my head that I don’t own a real copy of, that were easily found online, for free, on a number of streaming services. (The first Ramones album, the first Pavement album, and the first Metallica album.) I think that’s telling. Even 10 years ago that wasn’t true. I try to put myself in the mind of 20 years ago, when I was making hard choices at the record store over albums that are easily found for free online, now. I look at shelves of CDs that I spent at least $10 a pop for, and all of them are now free to hear, all over the internet.
Perhaps this is why I’m so much more interested in DIY releases and indie artists now? It’s all the guilt I have over the tons of money I’ve pumped into big bands over the years?
ACRONYM Inc. 