“My head feels like a frisbee”

Or… “Does downloading erode your appreciation of music?” (And I mean legal downloading, of course!)

I now have 12,548 “songs” in my iTunes Library. Every month I download 90 songs – maybe 10 albums – from emusic.com. Sometimes 50 songs more, if I feel inclined to buy a booster on top of my subscription. It’s cheap – it works out at about 17-22p per track. And occasionally I’ll buy songs from the iTunes Store or amazon – which are a little more expensive…

That’s a lot of new music to listen to each month… on top of the huge volume of music I have already. 

I’ve added 13.9 hours of music this month! The total playing time of my iTunes Library is 42.7 days!!!

When I bought music only on vinyl – vinyl! – or CD, every new record (or CD) was an “event”. The record would go on the turntable (or the CD in the CD player or computer… ah, my first Apple Mac) and I’d play it through repeatedly. (Often to the annoyance of – over the years – my parents, my neighbours in college, my parents again, my wife…) I’d kick back and read through the lyrics along with each song. I’d really get to know the album (even if, with a CD, I might start skipping the odd track).

But now I buy so much new music… I don’t. Even when I do buy music on CD (sometimes cheaper… and it’s a ready-made back-up!) – or borrow my sons’ or, less often (our tastes differ!), my wife’s – I just rip it and add it to the pool.

Sure, I do listen to all that new music album by album at least once, maybe a few times. And I have set up playlists for particular artists (or, more rarely, albums) – like the Shpongle playlist I'm listening to as I write this. But most of it just falls into that wash of music in longer, more generic playlists that I play on “shuffle” as I work (or avoid work).

So it seems that my relationship with my music has changed. Most of those songs are far more casual acquaintances than intimate friends… 

Mostly – often even when I really like them! — I don’t even remember their names. ( I had to check this… the song that’s now playing is “My head feels like a frisbee”. Hence the title…)

I feel I’ve lost something.