music

So there's an article at Rolling Stone about the Death of High Fidelity. For a RS article, it's very well-written. However, like a lot of music journalism these days, it's primarily composed of the diluted sentiment, "Waaaah! Things are different!"

It is true that there has been a trend in music producing which ends up making every song as loud as possible, and that means that you lose the subtleties that were once potentially present. The article takes aim at mp3s as the cause of this problem, even though it also recognizes that this trend goes back about 15 years. Mp3s are only a feature of the cause of this transformation in the way music is made and sold to us, but by no means is it the root cause.

Somewhere around the time every car started coming with a tape deck or 8-track player and when every human being on earth owned two Sony walkmans (walkmen?), the nature of music changed. Listening to music was once a primary activity - you would listen to an album the same way you watched a movie or read a book. Now, listening to music is a secondary activity. You listen to it while you're driving, while you're exercising, while you're working - it's always on in the background.

Now, at the risk of being unpopular, I place the blame for this change in the industry squarely on you! When was the last time you just listened to music? Of course, with this fundamental change in the way that people listen to music, it would have to affect the music that gets made. You simply wouldn't be able to hear the subtlety that was once present in these songs while you're driving in a car - the only way to really hear it would be to listen while laying on the floor in the dark with a speaker on either side of your head. But nobody does that anymore, so why are we whining that music is no longer appropriate for that style of listening?