iPod destroying music??

[Les Kern]

Can anyone tell us what this man is missing?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7948-1277937,00.html

[howard]

an ipod?

[Abstract]

A few sessions of breastfeeding with mommy when he was a baby?

[Blue Velvet]

Ooo -- pushed all my buttons!

To slag off Brian Eno, Kraftwerk, Lemon Jelly...



M.O.R.O.N.



(Now playing... The Eels, just after Miles Davis and King Sunny Ade)

[Savage Henry]

It's just another one of those desperate for attention freelance pillocks who will do anything to feel important. By attempting to invoke the wrath of the millions of iPod fans his e-mail account will be hit by an unfathomable number, making the little moron feel
very special; special enough to demand higher fees for his freelanced chunks of culturally-baron pseudo-intellectual diatribe.

[3rdpath]

crybaby-psuedo-audiophile-valve-sucking-geek.




and why slag Zero 7? They're amazing...

[virividox]

whatever an ipod is a tool if we pay for it we can listen to whatever we damn well please; but thats besides the point, who are these music elitists anyway; if i like pop i like pop, if i like overplayed music so sue me

[toaster_oven]

i hate to play the devil's advocate, but...

this guy might have a point- although he didn't make it very well... i tend to listen to more of my music now, but now i've started to get sick of my music collection- (because it takes too long to transfer a whole new set of albums, and re-work my playlist - and the ipod doesn't come with a radio)... i don't savour a new album as much after i buy it - i used to look forward to putting on a record at home after a long day- now i don't listen to music at home because i have it in my ears during my commute.

but i love my ipod - and i will continue to use it every day.

-TO

[Blue Velvet]

I don't get it -- is there nothing stopping anyone from listening to an album in its entirety if they want to?

Or putting the thing down for a few days and listening to a CD when you get home from work? It's not an umbilical cord...

It's the way people get when they get a new mobile phone.
Look at me, let's take it out again and play with it so everybody can see my new toy... like chimps with hand-mirrors.

(OK, well it's been a tough day...)

[howard]

this guy is afraid of the options the ipod gives you. Now you can listen to singles if you want to. I personally listen to albums on my ipod often, and then switch it to single songs as well, just like most people do with there cd players. its not the ipod thats randomly shuffling songs its the person. this guy is doing something far worse that bad-mouthing the ipod. He is badmouthing music listeners and forward progress in technology, and I for one am personally offended.

[revenuee]

What the hell, he starts of bashing the thing, then near the end he pretty much embraces it --- talk about conflicted writing style

[rainman::|:|]

yeah, i'm not taking any iPod advice from a guy without an iPod. But for the sake of argument, let's ignore that. Yeah, i do wonder about people that jack in to their iPods first thing in the morning, and are gone for the rest of the day. Personally it bothers me to listen to music constantly, after all there are many situations one likes to be able to hear ambient noise, and many places it's inappropriate. Unlike NY, here in des moines it's considered rude to wander around a shop with music pounding out of your earbuds, and i feel very isolationist when i do. At work i could listen, and I do on some occasions, but it's usually when i want to be left alone... it's interfering when people can't talk to me on the job (unfortunately). Commutes, well everything on a daily basis is about 8 minutes or less, unless i'm going to a weird part of town or out of town... and getting the iTrip on a good station and ready takes a couple of minutes, so I only listen to it when i go out of town. The biggest use I get out of it is bringing it to gatherings and parties, when people are more receptive to actually *listening* to music... or when I'm tanning, or something like that. When I have few distractions so the music itself isn't a cerebral distraction. I think other people are the same, if they get tired of listening, they'll shut it off. It's not like it's some insidious device that's bound to eventually make music worthless...

paul

[Abstract]

It's just another one of those desperate for attention freelance pillocks who will do anything to feel important. By attempting to invoke the wrath of the millions of iPod fans his e-mail account will be hit by an unfathomable number, making the little moron feel
very special; special enough to demand higher fees for his freelanced chunks of culturally-baron pseudo-intellectual diatribe.

I agree with you 99%, but despite the fact that he made his point quite poorly, he did make one point. There are holes all over his writing that would allow me to shoot many of his points down with, but from the quote below...

This is a machine sold for listening to music, but it’s a machine used for half-listening to music. And that’s not good. It’s for providing an aural backdrop to everyday life: the accompaniment to the pre-breakfast jog, the 8.15 from Slough, the family ironing. It’s music as an ambient enhancer, a drip-feed of minor stimulant that never obstructs the higher mental functions. Like a Starbucks decaff latte.

.... I think he's right in an overall sense. People use the iPod to fill the uneventful voids of a day, which may actually be a bad thing. Its just background music. Ever wish your day, or an event in your life, had a soundtrack? Can you imagine chasing a thief down the street in a dream without there being a kickass song on? No, I can't. Strange. In reality, there is no soundtrack.

The iPod provides us with something. Its muzak. All of it. We're so ADD now that we can't even sit on a bus and think. Or stop thinking. We need to have stimulus all the time. Its weird and unnatural, but that's what we do, and that's one of the main points this writer is "trying" to make.

His other points have holes like swiss cheese. Oh, and Lemon Jelly is coo.

[King Cobra]

Wow, that article was confusing, random, and seemingly pointless. Sorta like some (not all) of the reviews I read about albums in Entertainment Weekly. A lot of off-topic comments... I can't even find the main idea. I think my brain's going to explode...

[kaylie_kipe]

I love my iPod. In a way I do understand what he's saying, listening to music on it 24/7 could be a bit much, but I, and I'm guessing most others as well, don't constantly use it. When I'm walking to school, in the car, or cleaning house is what it is mostly used for, and sometimes when I want music to fall asleep to. The iPod is an amazing thing and I love that I can take my music with me wherever I go. Also, I think that music sounds great through it. Maybe if he had an iPod he wouldn't be so bitter.

[paulypants]

So does he love it or hate it--he says audiophiles should shun it, then he says the shouldn't be without one...wtf?

[Ugg]

The death of music has been taking place ever since, well, forever. He isn't bringing up anything new just this misplaced belief that every album is a work of art in and of itself and by only listening to one song of an album is like having everything but Mona Lisa's forehead blacked out. It's bs really, just because Monet created a series of water lily paintings doesn't mean they all need to be seen in one place at one time. Let's face it some composers have better moments and it's those that should be celebrated not the insipid ones.

As far as the iPod becoming merely a muzak player, that too is bs. We've been fed corporate pablum by the radio stations and record companies for decades. The iPod is more about individual choice, about being able to tune into music when and where you want. There's nothing wrong with using music to tune out the rest of the world and music's ability to relax, energize, soothe, etc can now be utilized to its greatest extent.

When you go into a clothing store, do you buy everything that's on the manniquen or do you pick and choose? What about the grocery store, auto dealer, travel agent?

The guy is a luddite and won't admit it. All this spouting off about the death of music is nauseating. To see the future of music tomorrow, look at the teens of today to see how they're using the iPod and iTMS, their choice of music maybe reprehensible but HOW they use it is the important thing and in the end it's not that different than how the walkman/cassette tape generation made use of it. So why all the bother?

[sethypoo]

whatever an ipod is a tool if we pay for it we can listen to whatever we damn well please; but thats besides the point, who are these music elitists anyway; if i like pop i like pop, if i like overplayed music so sue me

Ditto. This guy must have been writing while inebriated.

You just don't slag Zero 7. They rock!

[zelmo]

At one point, my CD collection numbered well over 1200. Suffice it to say that there is very little music I don't get pleasure out of. Alas, Life happens - longer work hours, a daily 1.5 hour commute, and a family of my own - these have all cut into my available time for sitting around and listening to music. Before I got my iPod, it had gotten to the point where I packed a couple of dozen CD's into a bag and carted it around in my truck, and hardly ever changed them out (certainly not often enough). The iPod has enabled me to rediscover the music I have always loved, and the listening options are varied enough that you can alter the experience to suit the mood. You can select whole albums if you want the experience he whines is lacking. You can shuffle, and be constantly surprised and pleased by the long forgotten gems that keep showing up in the playlist. Sure, if you want to listen to some background music while you walk, exercise, or whatever, you can do that (I do). Sure, this makes it possible to let the music sink into the background. But to say that that is the sum total of the iPod experience is way off base.
I guess if this guys point is that technology has taken away the intimacy of listening to music, he really ought to be whining about the Walkman and the advent of CD's. With the availability of portable music in these formats, it was no longer necessary to sit in your living room with a nice turntable to get a quality listening experience. Once my music collection went the way of the CD, I found that I didn't pore over lyrics and liner notes very much any more, because a lot of my listening time was in the car, or just out and about. Heck, sometimes I didn't even know the names of all of the tracks on a disk, since driving and reading are not generally thought of as a good combination.
The iPod (entire digital music) experience is what you want it to be, changing with your whim. This is not limiting, it is empowering. This dude just doesn't get it.

[yuc7zhd2]

I only listen to straight up albums, even post iPod, which has been 1.5 years now. If that toolbag can't handle the power, he's the idiot. Freedom of choice is the western way, freaking commie.

[WinterMute]

Just another in a very long line of musical luddites who don't like change.

It was the same with cassettes and then the Walkman, then CD-r, then P2P and MP3 (although I agree that MP3 is a very bad thing for audio generlly), and it'll be the same for whatever supercedes the iPod...

His only valid point is that some albums are made to be heard in the correct order and as a whole, but he misses the point that you can do that if you want to on an iPod, not everyone runs their pod on Random.

As for music in odd places, that's what I like best about my iPod, Led Zep on the underground, 5 hours of favourites up a ladder painting my house, Audioslave in the dojo doing a little live blade practice, it's all good.

A lot of people can't deal with change, he's just one who chooses to write about it.

Plus he has no idea what Micheal Nyman is about... :D

[jbembe]

At one point, my CD collection numbered well over 1200. Suffice it to say that there is very little music I don't get pleasure out of. Alas, Life happens - longer work hours, a daily 1.5 hour commute, and a family of my own - these have all cut into my available time for sitting around and listening to music. Before I got my iPod, it had gotten to the point where I packed a couple of dozen CD's into a bag and carted it around in my truck, and hardly ever changed them out (certainly not often enough). The iPod has enabled me to rediscover the music I have always loved, and the listening options are varied enough that you can alter the experience to suit the mood. You can select whole albums if you want the experience he whines is lacking. You can shuffle, and be constantly surprised and pleased by the long forgotten gems that keep showing up in the playlist.

Well said! AND you can shuffle BY ALBUM! Often I will rumage through my albums on the computer and add them to a playlist. I then make a smartplaylist from that handpicked collection of albums which automatically removes songs I've listened to since the date that I added them. I then either listen to them by album (more often,) but sometimes I just go shuffle by song. So what?

When I get a couple of CDs simultaneously, one of the best things about iTunes/iPod is that it helps me not to forget them. Before, I always tended to pick certain CDs that I was most interested in and would neglect others. Now with playcounts and smartlists, I can bring back those other albums that sometimes I would forget and enjoy my music more! It actually helps me learn albums and avoid overplaying music that hits my fancy right off more than others. Clearly, this guy needs an iPod lesson.

[slightly]

For anyone who's confused by the article, there are two people writing, as the subtitle suggests.

Mr John Bungey is against the iPod: his contribution ends with "The least they deserve is a little concentration."

Mr Keith Blackmore is for the iPod: his contribution is the second half of the article.

Of course, it could just be one writer with multiple personality disorder.

Matt

[jdechko]

His only valid point is that some albums are made to be heard in the correct order and as a whole, but he misses the point that you can do that if you want to on an iPod, not everyone runs their pod on Random.


I wholeheartedly agree with that statement. For instance, most of Pink Floyd's albums are this exact way. "Great Gig in the Sky" off of "Dark Side of the Moon" makes absolutely no sense otherwise. This is the very reason that iTunes allows you to join tracks while importing. So all of my PF albums are ripped as giant single files so I CAN listen to them exactly as they were intended, even when my iPod is set to random.

[whw5]

This is crazy. The ipod isnt distroying music. If anything it is helping bring down illegal music downloads.

[Macs R Us]

This is just crazy, the iPod and Apple Music store are basicly saving Music in a scence. Do you really think BurgerKing McDonal, aol, even walmart would sell music if it was not good... I don't recoment any of the ones I listed (there crap). The iPod has more fans the any crumy RIO, for example I have 6 iPods. And all my freainds have them and love them... I will not try to explain this since this is odbives... Have fun...