Is the Ipod bad for music?

[Dify]

I was asking my self this question the other day when I throught about how I listen to music these days.

I remember before I got an Ipod, I had a minidisc player, with one disc. and I could go on for like one if not two whole weeks without changing it, at the end I knew all the tracks/lyrics by hart.

But now, since i got an ipod, I became picky on the music I wanna listen to, Hell I got some tracks on Itune that I listend only once!! once!! What the hell, I feel that before my Ipod I would listen to every track and really listen to them in every details possible.

so not only did my Ipod change the way I consume Music, but it changed the way I listen to it too. When I think about it, I see it pretty negatively I must admit even if I love my Ipod and wouldn't want go back to my MD .

So the question is, has this hapened to you to? What do you think of it?

 

[mstrze]

Instead of 'memorizing' 40 tracks (or however many could fit on an MD), you are now experiencing probably hundreds of tracks...maybe hearing songs you would not have heard if you were limited in your MD days.

How is expanding your music-listening experience worse? Just because you are not over-exposing yourself to the same songs over and over and over again?

I have noticed as I get older my music listening followed the same pattern as yours. I'm 40 and when I was a teen or early college years, I listening to CDs over and over and over again. As I got older, there was so much more I enjoyed that I rarely heard an album enough to memorize tracks...in fact with some artists, I only listened to favorite tracks or made mix tapes of favorite songs. iPod matches my listening perfectly, PLUS I do have several albums that I still listen to over and over again on the iPod.

I don't think in your experience, iPod has necessarily adversely affected music. It has expanded your music-listening ability.

 

[themoonisdown09]

I like listening to albums in their entirety. I always have and will probably always continue to do so. There are some albums that completely suck except for a song or two, but that's usually not the case with me.

 

[0098386]

I know exactly what you mean. I went from a Minidisc player (~24 tracks per disc, usually 2 albums or a lot of fave songs) to a 128mb MP3 player (32 tracks) to a jock off 15gb iPod (3750 tracks). I thought it was too much too because you really do just rip everything to iTunes and forget. I've got so many songs that I actually haven't heard at all!

I guess that's just how it is these days!

 

[themoonisdown09]

I thought it was too much too because you really do just rip everything to iTunes and forget. I've got so many songs that I actually haven't heard at all!

I guess that's just how it is these days!

I rip everything that I buy to iTunes too, but I don't understand how you can buy an album and not listen to it. The first thing I do when I buy new music is listen to it all the way through.

 

[andalusia]

I rip everything that I buy to iTunes too, but I don't understand how you can buy an album and not listen to it. The first thing I do when I buy new music is listen to it all the way through.

Well I guess that's the problem with torrenting music. Getting music just for the sake of having it.

 

[velocityg4]

Not only has the iPod/iTunes improved my music listening experience it has made driving much safer. I can just select a playlist and hit play before leaving the driveway. Overall I listen to the same songs as frequently as I would with CD's. It just cut out the time wasted and driving safety hazard of scanning tracks and flipping through a binder with hundreds of CD's. Plus I don't have to lug that binder in between the house and car nor worry about it being stolen, which happened to me about eight years ago along with my car stereo (luckily I was an early adopter of iTunes and had already had 320kbps MP3 backups of my music collection).

On the other hand I mostly just listen to the radio now. After my stereo was taken I went for six or seven years without a car stereo pretty much killing my affinity for buying music, plus almost everything produced in the last decade is garbage.

 

[c-Row]

Well I guess that's the problem with torrenting music. Getting music just for the sake of having it.

Some of us actually do buy that many albums every month.

 

[0098386]

I rip everything that I buy to iTunes too, but I don't understand how you can buy an album and not listen to it. The first thing I do when I buy new music is listen to it all the way through.

I haven't bought music in a while, most of my library are game music rips, my old CDs or (the bulk of it) music from my parents. It already took too long converting their Tangerine Dream LPs to MP3.

According to iTunes 50% of my 8127 songs have never been listened to. 40% have a play count over 1. 11 tracks have a play count of over 100. The most is 257.

But just like buying a big iPod to carry all my music around with me, I don't want to delete any that I haven't listened to just incase I get to a point where I really want to listen to them.

 

[H00513R]

This is the problem of the digital age. People hoard information. Whether it's music, movies, comics, porn - they want to keep all of it. Especially if they are getting it free. Thankfully I've been able to resist this somewhat. I only buy music that I'm interested in and listen to it thoroughly before moving on.

 

[Dify]

It is interesting to see that some think it has made they're music experience better and some think that it is was bad.

I'm not really sure, on one hand, yes it is wonderful that I can have my whole music library with me. But I think that it is only on the paper, because, what I do see is that I don't listen to track with as much attention. What I noticed is that Itunes only count's a track as played once the track is completly played. So if you listen for example to like the half of the track and then swich it will not count as played.

And I do that a lot, with the browsing made so easy, i go to my favorite moment of the track and then swich to something else.

With Genius I really re-discovered some of the artist I had (which is a good thing I guess)

But I think it goes with the time, to much information, movies, picture, songs... Every one battle to get our attention, every last drop of it, and when I get home, I so tired sometimes not because it was a really hard day at work...but more because I just saw/read/heard to much things...

Dam, I need to be more optimistic!!! Do I view it do dark ? I don't know but some day I really have a hard time to see something positiv, to much trash on tv, all the pictures are fake/photoshoped/singer's voices modified...


Aaaa, let's listen to some Beethoven ...YEA rock & roll !

 

[Xfujinon]

This is the problem of the digital age. People hoard information. Whether it's music, movies, comics, porn - they want to keep all of it. Especially if they are getting it free. Thankfully I've been able to resist this somewhat. I only buy music that I'm interested in and listen to it thoroughly before moving on.

I agree with this completely.

I went from buying and listening to individual albums in my early and middle teens to hoarding electronic copies of everything I could find by my early 20's. My iTunes library tops out at 25,XXX tracks or so, and I can say that I've never listened to about 85% of it. I know what most of it is (it was probably obtained deliberately at the time), but it does not change the fact that I don't listen to it. In my current age (26), I have gone full circle and am back to selecting and buying albums, mostly used, from a local record store and listening to them in their entirety many times over. It has also helped me to be more choosy about which groups I pursue. Most importantly, it gives me a chance to actually talk about music with the knowledgeable people at the record store who seem to have a real passion for music.

On a weekly basis, I cover perhaps 10 albums worth of material. I find I listen to music most when I am sitting in my basement studio, so I have no need for the iPod touch I got insofar as music capability. The music I have on the iPod is for when I can't sleep, and even then I only have about 300 tracks or so and I don't even listen to those all that much.

The most important change comes with routines. In college, music was always on in my dorm or apartment as background noise, so the voluminous iTubes library was helpful for vast assemblies of jazz, blues, classical, or rap that I would have looping. But, my attention was never focused on it, it was just background stimuli. Now that I have a studio, a place where I deliberately go to escape from work and engage in pleasurable activities, I find that the act of listening to music has become much more deliberate. In effect, I listen like some people watch TV. In doing so, I have enjoyed a fuller experience listening to my music, not to mention the sound quality is much better than from earbuds.

I will probably not make the move to vinyl simply because of cost and availability; many of the albums I would wish to own are expensive and hard to come by. CDs, being both plentiful and relatively cheap on the used market, suffice. In all, I want to own at this point something around 450 albums, of which I have maybe 300 at the moment, so obtaining the complete collection is only a matter of a few patient years rather than decades of scouring and collecting vinyl. Moreover, I don't think I can really appreciate the difference between vinyl out of a good soundsystem and CDs out of a good soundsystem. That may change, but I am still a cheapskate, and CDs are nice and cheap most of the time.

 

[Dify]

Xfujinon, I Agree with you .

so basicaly, I just have to wait till I'm 26 right ?

 

[rockosmodurnlif]

Actually I found I just transferred the way I listen to music to iPod/iTunes. Except for tapes I used to make. Now I just make one playlist of songs and update it every time I run through it. iTunes has just saved me from having to sort my CDs so in that respect it has made my music experience better.