My buddy was explaining the music listening experience of days of old to his teenage daughter. He related to her the ceremony of plopping down in front of the speakers, record jacket in one hand, refreshment in the other, and the joy one found in those moments as the music transported you, swept away the problems of the day, mended your aching heart, and gave you a sense of belonging to a community, all in exchange for a few moments of your undivided attention.

After listening politely (only one or two text messages), his daughter asked, "How did you get anything done?"

Evolve or die.

One can also say de-evolve or die....

These days a lot of people always seem to have a LOT to do.
Multitasking is the norm for many...I do it too. I have a hard time just watching a good movie. I have to watch the movie while surfing the net and maybe even keeping a magazine handy for the commercial breaks and while waiting those e-x-c-r-u-t-i-a-t-i-n-g 3-to-5-----OH GOD NO---TEN SECONDS!!! …for the next web page to load....

But you know....whenever I stop doing everything else and just watch that movie...it's ten times more enjoyable and I actually get to relax.

I think we all do a LOT of "stuff" these days that we can skip...it's a question of kicking the habit, 'cuz that's all multitasking is...just a bad habit.

Obviously, for most people the experience of listening to music is definitely changing. How to respond?

Life is a cluster of choices. Why do we feel the need to surf, listen to music, watch a movie, text, take and make calls, and carry on a conversation with somebody in the room all at the same time? Who's the boss? Who wins? Says who? I hope they're making plenty of Ritalin. Another dozen venti's, please. Evolve, submit, or make your own way. Or some combination/variation thereon.

While we're following the money, we can also keep an eye on the low- and no-budget operators, the "slow food" equivalents in the digital McMusicBucks omniverse. There's always something interesting happening on the other side of the seesaw!

I don't think "need" has anything to do with it.
It's just conditioning...habit.

10-15 years ago...how many people felt the "need" to permanently have a cell phone stuck in their ears and to walk around with the damn thing hanging there ALL DAY LONG...(some getting no mare than 2-3 calls )...???
Now...EVERYONE is CONSTANTLY on their cell phone. Walking, jogging, driving, shopping, dinning...heck, I bet some people have waterproof phones for the shower and pool!

We are all being conditioned to ALWAYS be "in the loop"...just in case, so we don't miss out on anything….and it’s now even happening at grammar school levels. I can’t wait for the next couple of generation leaps.

It also ties right in to the notion of 24/7 news channels...and I know some people that just HAVE TO check in every hour or so to see if something new has happened.
You can't even go hiking into the deep woods without seeing someone on their cell phone or Blackberry, answering emails or checking out something on the Internet.
Just look at what people bring to the beach these days…a lot more than a towel and suntan lotion.

Yeah...and we wonder why no one sits and listens to music anymore with total focus....

Dear Moses,

No one cares. I love album art and liner notes. I love music. I also love downloading any record I want in under a minute and then listening to it through my monitors.

If some jerk wad wants to write a piece of junk song and have Miley Cyress sing it then put it on every Dell computer sold, with Dali wallpaper then so be it. Big deal.

I'm not good looking enough to get a record deal and that's all that counts these days. Even if I was a hunk I still wouldn't want a record company or a computer company to take my music and make it "commercially acceptable."

The major record industry did away with music a long time ago. Now the computer industry is doing away with them.

Our job is to go through music on our own without a DJ, or VJ and find what's good. With "liquidity" comes good and bad.

A computer, an mp3 player, an album, a piano, these are just tools. Who cares what some company wants to do. They can have money, I'll have music regaurdless of their agenda.

Nice article,
Adam

I must confess, I was rather disheartened by the sense of arrogance I got from Mr. Avalon's piece. Indulge me some brief observations:

"Many musicians and producers were initially attracted to the music business for reasons that may no longer be relevant."

Huh? Like what? They don't want to make music anymore? Now, when it's easier than ever for folks to create GOOD sounding music and share it with the world almost instantly, we're supposed to somehow feel that it's a bad thing? I know I got into music because I loved writing songs and playing instruments and experimenting in the studio. I can do all that now like no other time in history. Times are the best they've ever been.

If, however, someone entered the game strictly to make money, then yeah, times are tough. Good riddance and don't let the door hit ya on the way out.

"...we should entertain the idea that it's entirely possible that the public altered their musical consumption methods..."

Not a possibility at all but a stone cold fact. The industry ITSELF has been affording more and more ways for the consumer to personalize their listening interests ever since Edison begin engraving wax cylinders so folks wouldn't have to go see musicians live all the time. If the industry didn't want for folks to *GASP* actually use their purchases (music) in the most convenient manner possible, they never should have abandoned the LP.

What saddened me the most was the suggestion that the Great Unwashed has no right to take our precious creations and find more relevant ways to use them. How DARE they take tracks out of the Holy Album Concept and make a mix tape? Or deign to sully a Great Song by using it in a less than respectful manner? Mickey and Minnie in an X-rated cartoon!? No, you say!

I always thought the purpose behind sharing our creations was to enrich the lives of our audience and not to restrict it. Would Beethoven have approved of Kubrick's use of his music in A Clockwork Orange? Would he have approved of its performance on a synthesizer or in any form other than how he originally composed it to be performed? Is the fact that he's long dead somehow more relevant than it would be if was recently dead? Or not dead at all? It seems that Mr. Avalon might agree that we respect Ludwig Van's creative intents and never perform it out of context (or for that matter, at all). Forced subservience to the theoretical quality of a creation (not everyone likes Light My Fire OR Janis Joplin) does not magically give these creations value.

That's the purpose for public domain, to allow the culture to take a creation and find new and unexpected ways to create with it. That's how cultures evolve. Even copyrights were originally intended to provide limited exclusivity as a financial incentive for folks who might otherwise spend all day plowing the back 40 to create something. They made a few bucks and after fourteen years, it became the property of the public to expand and elaborate upon it and to in turn, enrich the culture further.

Of course, those days are long since over. It's know considered more reasonable for a creator's great-great-grandchildren to draw more benefit from a work than it is for the people living in the culture within which the work was created in the first place.

I further suspect that Mr. Avalon's fears that music may one day become little more than "cultural wallpaper" will never come to pass, anymore than it already has. We've always been surrounded by and immersed in forgettable generic music, whether it be the theme to a TV news show or the backing track to a deodorant commercial. Most musicians and composer will be forgotten. This is certainly nothing new. Out of all the composers in Beethoven's day, how many are remembered today? Three? Four? More? The fact that most folks reading this post can't answer that question speaks volumes. Perhaps we should be striving less to be remembered for who we were and let our works be remembered instead (in whatever form).

And even if the public decides they DO want to dumb down music until it becomes nothing more than a distant distraction, who are we to say they're wrong? If they find our efforts that unimportant, why are we even bothering to make music for them in the first place? Maybe because some of us AREN'T making music for them, we're making it for ourselves; if the masses happen to like it as much as we do, well, then hey, bonus round.

Personally, I'm damned glad to see the labels and and the suits who run them taking a major hit. They once had a purpose but that purpose is fading and will soon be gone. THAT'S what's fading into a cultural twilight, not the serious musicians and the works they create.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to climb off of my soap box and go watch a good Mickey Mouse porn flick.