Essential Reading
Forty years ago today at precisely 10:30pm Pacific Time, Professor Kleinrock, a computer science geek at UCLA, typed a message on a computer terminal and hit “enter,” sending the first bit of electronic mail through a 50 kbps AT&T phone line. It was received on another terminal 400 miles up the coast in to the Stanford Research Institute in Palo Alto.
It was the computer equivalent of Alexander Graham Bell calling out to Watson over the first telephone in 1876 or Guglielmo Marconi hearing a Morse code “S” (· · ·) come wirelessly across the Atlantic in 1901.
Kleinrock’s little note—whatever it said—marked the birth of the Internet. Blame him for your always-full inbox, your Crackberry addictions and the slow but steady disintegration in human discourse. Like I said, the man has a lot to answer for.
(Please don’t confuse Kleinrock’s experiment with the birth of the World Wide Web; it took another twenty years before Tim Berners-Lee burdened us with the whole “http-colon-forward slash-forward slash” thing.)
To be fair, it’s hard to imagine a world without the Internet. I, frankly, could not survive without it. And yes, the advantages far outweigh the negatives that have come with being assimilated into the hive. Resistance was (and remains) futile. When it comes to modern communications, we are all Borg.
But the Internet hasn’t necessarily been good for music—and I’m not talking about how it caused the collapse of the recorded music industry. While the Internet has made it enormously easy, efficient and cheap to access virtually any piece of music ever recorded, there are drawbacks. Here’s my list.
1. We don’t listen to albums anymore.
Instead of sitting through entire albums, putting up with the miserable filler tracks, we’ve gone all ala carte. For the first time since the 60s, singles—or at least single songs—rule. The Internet has made it easy for us to pick off just the songs we want. But what about proper albums that are meant to be heard from start to finish with songs in a specific sequence? Will those sorts of artistic works disappear?
2. Record stores are becoming extinct.
Back in the day, going to the record store was not just a shopping excursion. It was also a social event. Music geeks gathered to argue, commiserate and otherwise exchange information and ideas. There was no better way to learn about music than to hang around a good record store for a few hours on a Saturday. But armed with a couple of good music blogs (including ExploreMusic) you can acquire millions more songs instantly using iTunes and BitTorrent. Hugely convenient, but I do miss the surly guys at the Record Peddler critiquing my every purchase.
3. Proper, mature discourse on music has disappeared.
Before the Internet, arguments about music were either done in person or through the letters to the editor page in music magazines. Although that sort of discourse still exists (see the letters page in Mojo or Record Collector; brilliant), any moron can now post an anonymous inane unaccountable comment on any blog, YouTube page or tweet. (E.g. “fk u, man you s uck. Yr band eats pooh, to.”) No doubt there are a few of those already in the comments space below. There is no more polite disagreement, no more intelligent exchange of ideas. (For further discussion, see Godwin’s Law )
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10 Comments
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If you miss the surly guys at the Record Peddler, Brian Taylor now runs Rotate This on Queen West, still a small independent record store, a quickly dying breed.
Great place to buy tickets for most gigs without Ticketbastards’s exhorbidant service charge price-gouging)Though even Brian seems to have mellowed with age as he grew his ZZ Top beard and the kids he has working there seem more polite than intimidating, not like the old days when the Peddler was across from Maple Leaf Gardens.
It seems almost too easy to find loads of great music online now, when I was a kid in a small town it was more of a challenge and felt more rewarding in the end, after reading UK mags like Melody Maker and the NME and listening to what was being played late at night on CFNY, long before it became the Edge, or some great track you heard in a club like Dominos or the Silver Crown, and actually asked the DJ about. Or some obscure track on a mix tape from a friend of a friend.
Don’t get me wrong, I love technology and my Ipod and Iphone but there’s something almost too easy about it now, I must be getting old
Cheers, Steve
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C’mon… the Internet has done far more to help music & fans than ruin it. What the Internet has done is ruin the traditional music industry, which is not necessarily a bad thing.
Bands and their music have never been as accessible as they are now, and the ‘net is an absolute treasure trove of information for us geeks who want to know everything about their favorite bands.
By the way, CD’s killed the album experience, not the Internet. I was ecstatic when I bought my first CD player in the early 90′s… I could finally skip past crap filler songs with the click of a button instead of fiddling around with my tape deck’s fast forward button.
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HEY ALAN! YOUR BLOG SUXX!!
(I actually don’t believe that whatsoever, but I just thought I’d give truth to your “No doubt there are a few of those already in the comments space below” comment. Keep up the great work!!)
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fk u, man you s uck.
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U R GHEY YUR MUSIC BANDS R GHEY 2!
I do agree that a lot of it has boiled down to something similar to the fine skin that you find at the top of soup that’s sat too long without stirring.
I still love listening to albums, but then again I don’t really listen to too much mainstream music. I don’t mind mainstream music, but I find very little of it worth purchasing. Most of it is focused on the best single, and if you disagree with that you’re bound to be called out by droves of crooked thumbed fans typing “FAG” into their favourite social networking site. I love debating music with my friends, but I could never expect the same kind of discussion online for the most part (except at specialized music geek site, ahem).
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I gotta agree with Byron for the internet helping bands (but moreso the fans), and the cd killing albums before the internet did.
Internet is the ultimate tool for quick, widespread “word of mouth”. Some bands wouldn’t exist, or have the success they’ve had without the internet (see Arctic Monkeys, debut album).
Myspace and Youtube has made streaming and bootlegging instantly accessible for all….granted on the free end of things.
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I used to be an album guy, now I too am a single song guy (mostly). I hate myself for that!
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Completely agree with #1
The decemberist’s are great, I thoroughly enjoy listen to their albums and trying to decipher the story.
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I personally have over 4000 store bought CDs in my collection. I will admit that I often engage in downloading a few tracks from new albums to see if it is worth buying, but if I know it is, I run right out and get it. Having only rent to pay, I generally put 100-200 dollars out every payday on music.
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It’s true, but back in the hay day of radio the music industry was a singles game, much like it is now. Is that really the fault of technology or just evidence of our cyclical lives?
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