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Amen!

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/01/10/060110164416.p4z0rnx6.html

Music downloading creates listener apathy

Internet downloading and MP3 players are creating a generation of people who do not seriously appreciate songs or musical performances, British researchers said.

"The accessibility of music has meant that it is taken for granted and does not require a deep emotional commitment once associated with music appreciation," said music psychologist Adrian North on Tuesday.

North led a team from the University of Leicester, central England, that monitored 346 people over two weeks to evaluate how they related to music.

They concluded that because of greater accessibility through mass media, music was nowadays seen more as a commodity that is produced, distributed and consumed like any other.

It could also account for the popularity of television talent competitions, particularly in Britain, which allow viewers from the "iPod generation" a rare chance to engage and appreciate music and live performances, they suggested.

"In the 19th century, music was seen as a highly valued treasure with fundamental and near-mystical powers of human communication," said North.

"The pace of technological change has accelerated further over the last 20 years or so and these fundamental changes in the nature of musical experience and value have arguably become even more pronounced.

"Because so much music of different styles and genres is now so widely available via portable MP3 players and the internet, it is arguable that people now actively use music in everyday listening contexts to a much greater extent than ever before.

"The degree of accessibility and choice has arguably led to a rather passive attitude towards music heard in everyday life.

"In short, our relationship to music in everyday life may well be complex and sophisticated, but it is not necessarily characterised by deep emotional investment."

The academic's assessment follows a warning last week from rock legend Pete Townshend, The Who guitarist, that listening to rock music on an MP3 player through headphones could cause deafness.

Damn straight mate...

I find it more difficult to get into music that people have burnt onto an mp3 disc for me, or that I've downloaded * slaps wrists *

Yep, nothing like the feel of the parting money and the smell of the biscuit I say...

I'm of a mixed opinion. I totally agree with Mat's last comment, I just brought home three new, exciting albums tonight, it's a great feeling, the records become part of you, something you own. You devour the cover art and packaging, feel a thrill pulling the disc out of the case and transferring it to the player. But, having said that, I think the article makes a somewhat condescending argument. Did the advent of the free public library decimate people's ability to appreciate good literature? Having ten thousand books instantly lined up at your fingertips is a bad way to go about exploring the joys of reading?

It's like saying you'd appreciate the cinema so much more if you'd only take the time to walk to the theater.

And let me be the cranky geezer predictably asserting that the vast majority of the stuff that gets the lion's share of downloads these days doesn't merit "deep emotional commitment." It's almost reassuring to me that nobody takes the current musical climate more seriously than a trip through a McDonald's drive-thru.

I love when you buy a new CD, bring it home, take the plastic wrapping off and the CD sticks just alittle bit when you try to pull it out... Guarantee of 'freshness'... where it takes just alittle effort to get it out of the case (the fear of it snapping in half is good I say ;))

That's a fine point there Chance, regarding Libraries...  but again, it must be said that the CDs I borrow from libraries it takes longer for me to connect with...  If it's books... I dunno, some of the finest books I've ever read, I've borrowed from a library, and the best films I've seen were on video... 

I guess music's it's own thing...

I feel like if I own it, I owe it to myself to listen to it and absorb it. This is not always the case, however. I have spent too much money on albums I only listened to once or twice.

Music is music - I love it on any format... 

Mp3 hasn't dimmed my appreciation of it in the slightest - then again I am from the "walkman generation" not the ipod gen that the article refers to.

Plenty of times I have had mistical experiences with mp3s


This same accessibility has made my attitude towards music more involved,  and has broadened my musical education.

Absolute rubbish, bullshit, I say! 50% of the music I have is downloaded, and it hasn't decreased my appreciation of it one iota. It's all rock'n'roll (or other genre) music, and yes, it's nice to bring home the CD and unwrap the plastic, but after you realize that half your spending money is gone and you've overpaid for a piece of plastic that most of the revenue isn't even going to the artist that made it, you start to realize how nice it is to download the cover art and listen to it on your iPod. My iPod is my CD player, and my turntable. I shut off the lights, just as a lot of you do, and put my earbuds in, and listen to music that even you guys have turned me on to.

I'm sorry, there's no difference.

i agree with this article 100 % ....i have a friend who burn's me stuff but i never get around to it , i have never been a big library fan. most of the book's i read i couldn't find in a library.

...Excuse me ma'am, where do you keep your pornography?

I would agree that the convenience of music has de-valued it somewhat.
But it's mostly the lack of quality product combined with that.
So I think this is more of a comment on the current music landscape of today and how their target audience (kids) experience and access it.

Really, all it means is that in 30 years, kids won't be able to root through their parent's music collections and find as many cool LPs and 45s (or even CDs). I guess it remains to be seen how people "hold on" to their music collections if they're purely digital.

My daughter "roots through" my iPod the same way she would root through a stack of vinyl. Finds cool stuff, listens to it over and over again, just like in previous generations.

There isn't the LEAST bit of luddite crankiness involved here, is there?  ;)

I agree with the folks above -- there's no difference. About 50% of my music right now is purely downloaded and I still have a major emotional investment in it. I still love to buy things at the store, I still shop at record stores, but I do a lotta downloading, and I've found plenty of gems that have become staples of my listening collection online.

Main diff to me:

silver CDs from 1985 are still playing well today.  Home burned CDs start decaying within five years.  Buying a CD is better at preserving it.  I wonder how easily the next gen will build a lasting library with personal technology.

There will be a better way of doing things, and burned CD's aren't the only way to listen to music.

I myself hate burned CD's. That's why I got rid of my car CD/MP3 player, I had too much music, which resulted in me shuffling through literal stacks of burned CD's to find what I felt like listening to at that particular moment. That's why I have my iPod.

There is a well documented and researched psychological phenomenon regarding ones investment and belief in something that has required an investment of money or something of value.

In particular, it is well known that those paying for their counseling rather than getting it for free(as in , say, a community mental health center) report more success and satisfaction.

I believe this principle will apply to buying CDs versus burning them for free.

Yes, but that is NOW... I'm just wondering if/how people will store their old mp3s in 30 years (or whatever the new technology is). If the iPod/hard drive crashes, you lose it all.

Honestly, that kind of worries me a little. I'll probably end up getting new hard drives every few years and transferring the files just as I have the past few years.

Flash memory will also drop in price and increase in storage space. That's a very good storage medium, no moving parts.

You could not fit my music collection in an IPod, or even 2 of them.  Plus that is compressed -- I prefer having a full spectrum copy available where possible.

With my CD collection, I buy it and put it on the shelf.  As pointed out, my daughter can some day browse it easily.  Your methods can work but it is a pain -- multiple hard drives for multiple copies with making new HDs on a regular basis.

This is not a theoretical issue to me.  The plusses of digital cameras completely outweigh the negatives.  But how do you store your images to ensure their survival for 50-100 years?  I am working through this now.  My plan is involving multiple CD burns, a safe deposit box, and yearly re-copies.  To me it's the same thing except I am not emotionally vested in the physical copy of all of our pics like I am a real CD.

Did you know that the Nottingham craftsman that called themselves Luddites (after the guy, Ned Ludd, who "famously" broke stuff to make a point) destroyed industrial technology in protest of poor working conditions and unfairly low wages?  They actually spared the machinery of employers that had not eliminated the minimum wage and had decent working conditions.

Interesting how the english language co-opts things.

How much of the revenue from your downloads goes to the artist?

I don't know if I feel apathetic but I certainly feel the anxiety about missing and not having "good stuff" that comes with the high level of access I have.  I can't even get onto p2p or bit torrent stuff here at work because the network squeezes it out but with the stuff that I do get I feel overwhelmed, like I'm not taking quality time to actually listen carefully to the music I do get.  I also wonder about people with every live show of their favorite artist--Ian notwithstanding--do they actually listen to all of that?  Not only revenue, but a sense of dialogue with the artist is also lost I think.

When fossil fuels run out in about 30 years it's going to be tough to run those ipodz!!!

I think it's probably different for evrybody, and I'm sure there are people who appreciate every precious sonic second of music they have, whether its downloaded, store-bought or on rotation in their heads, but the one close friend I have who downloads music addictively seems to take no pleasure in anything but the acquisitiveness aspect of it. He talks more about his goshdarn iPod than what's on it. I will never stoop to buying an iPod -- all that cataloging. I have enough trouble keeping track of my music in its various formats already. And while I'm sure there are virtues to consolidation, really, I'd rather not be bothered. I've got enough to obsess about.

I dont really care if my music is for free or not.... either I like it or I don't - money has nothing to do with it.

I have gotten lots of pleasure out of 50 cent bargin bin records in an Opportunity shop, as much as I have from my expensive box sets of CDs.

There are free mp3s that I listen to constantly (creative commons stuff too) and there are albums/CDs that cost me money but I never listen to.

It...takes care of that for you, ya know.

"The accessibility of music has meant that it is taken for granted and does not require a deep emotional commitment once associated with music appreciation,"


Most of today's music isn't deserving of deep, emotional commitment. That's why these kids are a bunch of zombies.

I don't like the IPod and know nothing about it. You can't surpase the good old Walkman.

Give these kids a vinyl copy of Dark Side of the Moon and a set of headphones and tell them to get with it.

Music downloading creates listener apathy?

BULLmerda!

A good 25% of my music was downloaded (legally) and I like it just as much as my CDs. I'm sorry, but these people don't know what they're talking about.

It's the results of their research, not an opinion. Maybe if they'd included more people like the defenders of MP3 downloading posting in this thread, their results would have been different.

For me, the ideal went this way:

1 The Buzz. You heard something on the radio, or your friends talked it up, or you read something about it. Just the teaser to excite you. WTF was that?!

2 The Hunt. You tracked it down. Not always easy nor obvious. Whatever it was that I wanted was always, coincidentally, the hardest to get. I had to order it from someone who'd never heard of it.

3 The Wait ... maybe you read some more, heard some more ... the anticipation mounts ...

4 Carrying it Home. Yay! You could look at the sleeve on the bus, and wonder what kind of amazing the music was. Drool time. Looking at the grooves in the vinyl for clues, dead wax messages ...

5 The First Spin. Set aside an hour. Get some mates round. Slap it on the deck and let it spin ...

ALL of this was pleasurable, and had a real element of cultural definition and bonding (excuse my pretension - hope you know what I mean - something rich and resonant in addition to the music). If the music is just an idly curious click away ... I dunno. It's not the same, that's for sure.

I'm still playing albums I bought 35 years ago. I doubt I'll still be playing today's download (an interesting one, BTW) in five years' time.

i don't own a ipod either and very rarely download stuff..back in the summer i downloaded the new Ric Ocasek cd from a guy who recieved a promo copy. Played it for months and when the cd was released i bought it put it on my stereo and it was like hearing a totally different album. Much more depth and the bass was more distinctive i enjoyed it far more than the mp3 version.....i don't think people can download ' A Love Supreme " and listen to it as MP3's you are not gonna hear they way the album was meant to be heard. Rudy Van Gelder didn't engineer this album back in 1964 so future generations could compress the crap out of it and listen to it thru tiny Q-tip like headphones ?

Beautiful post man.

That's a great post.......i have a client who comes over for Photo shoot's and he is alway's talking up his I-pod . He keep's telling me i should get one and download all my music onto it ???.I have over 3,000 cd's ...by the time i did this i would be dead. Also i don't find it very difficult to walk over to my cd's and search my collection , which is catergorized by genre and alphabetical !  I guess if i commuted on a train i would look into this , but by no means would i substitute listening to my cd's/ vinyl with MP3's on a full time basis.

Does anyone worry about their ears with these things?  Like, I remember a news report not too long ago, saying how young folk are messing up their hearing for their later years.  That's one of the things that kinda puts me off.  Isn't there a difference between the volume of Ipods and traditional walkman's/portable cd players?

Which makes it not that much better than an opinion. Research in areas like "consumer behaviour" and the like has been dodgy, to say the least. I'm majoring in media studies myself, and I tend to take what psychologists say about media with kilos of salt. It'd be interesting to read the entire report, maybe I'll do that.

Actually, I recently was in a crisis situation where my iPod was unavailable, my portable CD player was unavailable, and all I could use was my trusty old walkman, er, portable cassette player (good thing I hadn't thrown it away or I might have had to go unentertained and *gasp* face the public for a change). Well, let me tell you, the sound was garbage because there was so much hiss. In order to actually hear the music I had to turn it way up, which just made the hiss worse. As for iPods, well, I imagine that if people play them too loud (I can see this being a problem with the tinny bud headphones) they could cause a problem, but this is the same as anything concerning music. To quote a weezer slogan: If it's too loud, turn it down!

"Which makes it not that much better than an opinion."

Well, I dunno if it's better or worse. It's something else. Research tries to be objective, and an opinion can only be by definition subjective. Non?

Well, both bad research and hidden agendas are worse than opinions.

Emphasis on "tries".

I see what you're saying, it's just this particular branch of research has been full of hack researchers - often very conservative and with slack definitions of what is valid and reliable. Of course that the media often takes what is called a "tendency" or similar in the report and call it  "conclusive evidence" doesn't really help.

Just like some of you fine folks, I don't own an iPOD and have no intention of getting one.  My collection consists of maybe 900 cd's and I don't have a problem finding what I need.  I drive 80 minutes a day (total) with work and if I had 1,000+ songs at my disposal, I'd be all over the place.  Now in the morning I take a disc or two with me, and return it to it's alphabetical slot on my shelf when I come home.

I know people that really care less about music.  iPOD's are about collecting.  My friend downloaded something like 30,000 mp3's, burned them to discs, and put them in the garage!  He never listens to anything.  It's about shocking people with an absurd number.  My friend Jason bought an iPOD for what I will deem a good reason.  He's in the navy and was taking a 6 month tour of duty.  Poor guy is stuck on a navy ship from September to this coming March.  So him getting one makes perfect sense.  But I can't justify such a purchase just because it's what everyone else is doing.

Yeah, they were talking about ipods in particular, but newspapers can be fuzzy on the details.  The weezer quote makes sense though.  I put my fingers in my ears sometimes when the tube train gets too loud, which is also what the news once suggested.

"Well, both bad research and hidden agendas are worse than opinions."

That's your opinion, of course.

As to MP3s, I think it's the lack of something tangible that can lead "one" (not saying "you", see) to undervalue the music., rather than the ease of acquiring it.

And that's my opinion.

I have an IRiver MP3 player with 500MB flash fixed memory.  And I use it for one thing -- listening while exercising or doing chores.  When you have kids, you get listening time in when you can.  MP3 files are great for that.  I would not want to see my whole collection reduced to that, though.

And I will hang on to my DVDs even once we get into movie downloads on demand as well.

That's basically how I operate, too. I have a LOT of music already. I think if I had all those titles via an iPod, I'd be overwhelmed. It's enough of a decision-making flummox for me to spend the 20 minutes I usually do to grab the one or two albums I take with me in the car.  (Women have left me over this!) But I like the fact that I settle in with just those one or two albums. It's not about constantly shuffling. I can't consume music in bulk. It's just ... excessive to me. But if I were commuting to the coast on a regular basis or something -- I mean, there are definite virtues to owning an iPod. But I take umbrage with the hyper-prevalent and continuing insistence that I *NEED* to own one or that I'm somehow less serious or "pro" or not modern enough about my love for music by not having an iPod. From pod people to iPod people, the addition of that slender letter isn't much of a stretch for me.

(http://www.lifecourse.org/Invasion%20of%20the%20Body%20Snatchers2.jpg)
"You must ... own an iPod ...  essential consumer item ...you are incomplete without one ... "

Haha, yes!  That's me.  No one ever left me over it...I've actually gotten more positive comments.  I know what you mean, though.

That picture is fucking hilarious, thanks to your caption, of course.

Oh My God - - - Jon made a smiley!

  Me personally,  being able to  download music has made if possible for my hubby and myself to hear all kinds of sh*t that we might not nessescarilly hear ptherwise.. Plus I am more apt to buy the records, or go to shows and support the artists I love that way, and  download sh*t to listen to on cd... TAKE PRIDE IN YOUR VINYL!!!!

Same with a friend of mine, he's got upwards of 5000 songs on his computer in mp3... I checked the playcount, and roughly only a quarter had actually been listened to.

While we're all here, you might as well open a new window, click through to here:

http://azfad.blogspot.com/

- and download the Outsiders' album CQ in all its headbursting glory. (Then you can download the Beefheart gem, if you don't already have it).

It's not like owning the vinyl, but it's the next best thing!

I'm sort of worried about my ears after getting an iPod Nano w/a hard case. I guess I just have to be careful of the volume range.

You can't go deaf *just* from listening to music via those things. You probably could if you sat there with it blasting every single day. You'd not go deaf but probably lose some hearing and develop some nasty Tinnitus.

I agree somewhat with the article. I know personally that I have a different relationship between something i've bought with earned money, and something i've attained without any effort at all.

If quality music is made then it will be appreciated in any format. Though, holding something in your hands always feels better to me than opening a folder on a computer with an album.

That's me, too. One reason is I'm still obsessed with the Beach Boys, Spector and other 60s stuff and listen to the same songs/albums over and over instead of always playing new things I've not heard before (i.e., all the music my friend gave me).

Naysayers, just remember. For every ten people that own an iPod because it's a status symbol and to collect music and never listen to it, there's that one guy who collects as much music as he can and actually listens to a good majority of it, like I do. It's rather insulting to be told that I don't know how to listen to music properly.

Word. Thanks, John.
There's a lot of reactionary overgeneralisations in this thread. Can we please stop this "a friend of mine has one trillion songs and never listens to any of them!" crap? Please?

I have a trillion friends with one song that they never listen to.