The album is no longer the unit of musical currency
.. which I THINK is not really that much different to how people have always taken music on board.
Haven’t the play lists simply replaced radio?
The album is no longer the unit of musical currency
.. which I THINK is not really that much different to how people have always taken music on board.
Haven’t the play lists simply replaced radio?
@JohnPhilpin I had a similar thought a few years ago as a research project for a composition class I was in. I found that while streaming has taken off, radio listenership hasn’t dropped too much. I was surprised by that.
@JohnPhilpin The album was always the unit of currency for the music snob—the person who overvalued the significance of the artist’s intent and undervalued the music’s effect on most people: fun, dancing, etc. I was fully in the snob group, and have since learned to embrace the playlist and enjoy silly pop songs alongside album-length artistic statements.
@JohnPhilpin When I started my journey into MP3 files, as a former tapehead (and mixtape maker), my dream goal was to have a collection of loved music I could cycle through without commercials. Apple Music, iTunes Match, and ubiquitous WiFi have pretty much got me there. I still buy Albums to support artists, but anymore I am just as apt to grab a track that I know I like—then, I might do a deeper catalog dive later.
@JohnPhilpin Nothing has replaced radio 📻 . Radio will always reign supreme. Nearly every person still active in ham radio has a story about the first time they heard a distant station on a short wave radio, perhaps 50 years ago. It is nearly always described as a magical moment, something that gave them a chill, a strong sense of wonder. They turned it on and this music appeared from out of nowhere, perhaps with some crackling & atmospheric noises that helped to make it sound like it was somehow coming from far away, just through the air, no wires, no nothing. Just magic. Totally different from a play list or any other complicated contraption based upon wires and physical connections.
You have proposed a false equivalency. Surely you know you're not supposed to do that. It will make people mad at you. Grrrrr! 😡 Watch out! 😡😡
@JohnPhilpin I’m not sure how I feel about this… while my family uses Spotify (and we still keep our cds & vinyl around and listen to them a lot) I still miss the joy I remember as a child listening to the radio (for some reason I was obsessed with a station that played 50s and 60s stuff). Then in my teens and twenties that was replaced with hours spent flipping through stacks of tapes & cds in music shops. Something there is gone that meant a lot to me. The camaraderie? The shared experience? I’m not sure.