The American Spectator : The iPod People

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The iPod People

By Daniel J. Flynn on 1.12.12 @ 6:08AM

Imagine not knowing what an album is.

Americans ever-so-slightly favored their music in digital rather than physical form in 2011. This is a first. It's not a last. Physical albums declined five percent last year after declining 20 percent the previous year. Total digital sales rose by eight percent in 2011. Even Stevie Wonder can see where the trend lines lead.

At about the same time that America embraced digital over physical, I said goodbye to my compact discs. Like any good atavist, I did not step willingly into the future. I was pushed there by Santa Claus, who left an iPod in exchange for my being good for goodness sake in 2011.

Anticipating the future was much easier when I didn't have as much of a past.

Cassettes overtook vinyl in 1983, but the previous year, with money from my paper route, I purchased Men at Work's "Business as Usual" and Pete Townshend's "All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes" as tapes at Lechmere Sales in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A decade later, CDs first outsold cassettes. But I had already upgraded to CDs in 1988 when I upgraded from Boston Globe paperboy to Fenway Park vendor. As with tapes, I couldn't buy just one CD on my first shopping excursion. I splurged on The Police's "Outlandis d'Amour," Pink Floyd's "Animals," and REM's "Eponymous" at a Record Town (my 1982 preference for current versus my 1988 purchase of back catalogue says much about the respective music scenes). Despite being ahead of the curve on cassettes and CDs, I am decidedly average in transitioning to digital.

I don't know where my tape collection resides. My CDs will soon be joining them there. I have stored 300 albums on the computer since Christmas. I have since stored those 300 discs in unmarked brown boxes. My descendants will look upon the contents of those boxes as I would a Victrola.

The format changed from wax to magnetic tape to polycarbonate plastic. One constant remained: the primacy of the album. Billboard announced in 1968 that LPs had surpassed 45s in sales. Despite challenges from the ill-fated cassingle and 3-inch CDs, albums reigned triumphant. The iPod, and digital downloads, ensure that we are going back to the future. The binary code may not rotate 45 times per minute, but the marketing, distribution, and playing devices of digital music push consumers toward songs and away from albums.

The iPod just makes it too easy to skip from song to song. There's no wait for the rewind or burden of rising to flip to side two. With every number in your collection at your fingertips, the device begs you to bounce around and overplay the great ones. The needle literally wore songs out so that you couldn't. The iPod only figuratively wears them out.

Album art, marginalized in importance in the post-vinyl world, becomes almost meaningless shrunk from a foot-by-foot record sleeve to an inch-by-inch pixilated mini-me. The graphics are so tiny that it's impossible to determine which member of The Beatles is walking barefoot on "Abbey Road" or what indecent act Keith Moon and friends have just completed on "Who's Next." Good for Apple for its "cover flow" feature allowing users to shuffle through a deck of album art work. But when small is the new big, it doesn't leave much space for those arresting visuals that once served as the symbols of the music.

Most albums are merely collections of songs. But some strike the ear as sonically cohesive works, losing proper cadence even by tinkering slightly with the track listing. Think Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" or Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot," in which the whole trumps any of its components, as the type of art lost to the digitized future. An iPod to an album is a razor blade to the Mona Lisa. It isn't as beautiful cut into ten or twelve snippets.

Unlike physical sales, digital downloads witness singles trumping albums. Amid the benefits of having the ability to cherry-pick songs to download is the downside of the increased irrelevance of the deep cuts that really made the LP. What would "Sticky Fingers" be without "Sway," "Houses of the Holy" without "No Quarter," and "Achtung Baby" without "Ultraviolet"?

The album is but one victim of the iPod. Our older selves' hearing, rich high fidelity yielding to tinny audio compression, and the transformation of music from a social activity to an anti-social one are among other overlooked casualties. Hearing the anarchic chorus of the 21st-century Walkmans on the subway is enough to make one wish for the return of the ghetto blaster to public transportation.

The good news is that after nearly a decade of decline, total album sales increased ever-so-slightly in 2011. Alas, the popularity of Adele, rather than a revival of the album, accounts for the turnaround. The LP is dying a slow death, and when it finally croaks the iPod people may not know what they have lost.

As my Boxing Day turns into Boxing Month, I decide that some albums won't make the journey from compact disc to computer. They'll just go straight into the brown box. What "nice price" sticker hypnotized me to buy Genesis's "Invisible Touch"? Do I really own "Stadium Arcadium"? I recall liking Semisonic's "Feeling Strangely Fine" in the 1990s but I don't recall why. But the tragedy isn't really this or that album falling down the memory hole. It's the loss of the whole art form.

About the Author

Daniel J. Flynn is the author of Blue Collar Intellectuals: When the Enlightened and the Everyman Elevated America. He blogs at www.flynnfiles.com.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (41) | Leave a comment

Brian Mc| 1.12.12 @ 6:49AM

Flipping an album was an art back in the day. Using fintertips on the edge, you'd slide it up and flip it in the air, never touching the flat surface to avoid scratches. Carefully drop it back down on the turntable and then, clean it. Gently drop the needle and then, sit back and listen to the second side of "Abbey Road" while looking at the poster from the "White Album".

Dave| 1.12.12 @ 8:19AM

Having started my radio career in the dinosaur days of the early '60s, and playing those things called vinyl albums, the ability (or talent) to slip an LP from its sleeve, hold it by the outer edges between the palms of your hands, flip it over, and without touching the tracks, gently drop it onto the soft felt cover of turntable #2 in under five seconds, all-the-while cradling the request line phone receiver between your shoulder and cheek, and making sure your dropped the needle on the right track was an art form that only became acquired over many finger smudges, dings and .. DAMITS!@%$

For those of us who regularly caught the wrath of a music or program director for "over cueing" a 45 or album track to the point of "excessive cue burn" was to be on the receiving end of a rant never to be forgotten. How could it? We'd hear it at least once a week.

I suppose in this new era of techno wonderfulness, the only finger smudges today end-up on the listinees ear buds, or the cell phone touch pad they're texting on while listening to Eddie Murphy: The Hot Tub Jam. But excessive cue burns? Better ask your great-grandpa.

Wordmonger| 1.12.12 @ 12:58PM

What is a listenee? Radio broadcasts to listeners as television broadcasts to viewers.

Ivan Ivanovich| 1.12.12 @ 6:51AM

I bought Elvis on a 45 for a buck and I remeber my Grannies wing up Victrola, but more important is that I remember all the gagets that came and went between then and now. Those I-Pod people that don't know this is temporary are the ones we have to worry about. Maybe they should download 1984 (The Book) while they can still read?

Appleby| 1.12.12 @ 7:06AM

My sainted Southern Granny called it "cramming and smattering" when she saw me piling heaps of unread books around me and looking first in this one and then in that one, fascinated by the immense variety of reading material in my Aunt Jane's bookcase. (Aunt Jane set me a really good example by saving every single book she was ever given or bought during her childhood, many of them no longer available even from the used book people.) She taught me the value of reading one or at most two books thoroughly at a time, of digesting what they had to say, and of reflecting on their contents. I think Granny would have said the same about the iPod culture that never learns anything about the music it crams and smatters. I have heard that classical music sales are down as well; the Binkie Slingers can't concentrate long enough to absorb and digest Bach or even Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue"...and as for live performances, forget it altogether. I took my nephew to see Gilbert and Sullivan's "Mikado" when he was 4 years old. His Mama said he wouldn't undestand it and would "never sit still for it." He found it hilarious and bubbled over with the excitement of telling her all about it when he got home. Later I took him to see the ballet "Giselle" (at age 8) and he was shocked to hear another boy say that ballet was boring. The Binkie generation is missing a large portion of its heritage by cramming and smattering only what it already knows -- and even more by experiencing it in no context because it experiences everything alone.

Daddy used to remark that a computer didn't make you smarter; it only made it possible for you to be stupid much more quickly. The gadgets that isolate and narrow us are disassembling the world we used to share.

Old Soldier| 1.12.12 @ 7:56AM

Good article on why my CD collection isn't going anywhere for a while. I am very glad that DVD and Blue Ray players have remained backwards compatible. I have even let the snob in me purchase some classical Blue-Ray disks for higher quality (as if my damaged ears could hear the difference).

You bring back memories of being shocked by Ted Nugent's "Cat Scratch Fever" album cover in Junior High.

bluecollarbytes| 1.12.12 @ 8:48AM

'Sorry to hear you've capitulated to the ipod' ; >)

Maybe in the future we'll see 'breakthroughs' in tech and we'll see a high fidelity digital format available to the masses.

JW| 1.12.12 @ 8:58AM

Aw come on ! Shop the Net and you can find nice turntables , and many artists and classic LPs are being released and re-released on vinyl . I have a well stocked Ipod but I also play records when I want to have the "album " experience .

Stuart Koehl| 1.12.12 @ 8:59AM

Sorry, but I grew up with LPs, made the seamless transition to CDs, and believe the iPod to be one of the great inventions of all time. At last, I am freed of the tyranny of popular taste and can listen to the music I want to hear. I don't have to plop down $18.95 to buy a whole album just to get the one track that I like. And I can make my own albums, thank you.

Moreover, most of the music I like was never going to be placed on vinyl or CD in any case. If you like the truly esoteric, then digital music is a blessing. It allows artists to break free from the recording labels and market directly to those who want to hear their music, no compromises in the name of commercialization. Without it, I doubt I would have even a fraction of the music I now hold on my iPod.

As for sound quality, yeah, at the margins I imagine some of you can notice the difference between analogue and digital, but a friend of mine once defined an audiophile as "someone whose stereo cost ten times more than his record collection".

I still have more than 300 LPs--most of them from smaller, esoteric labels now extinct--and for Christmas got the most wonderful thing: a turntable that will convert my vinyl into CDs. This will allow me to listen to some amazing music, lots of it never reissued on CD, not just in the privacy of my own home (just how the heck listening to an LP was supposed to be a social occasion beats me--do you take your turntable, amp and speaker stack down to Starbucks with you to share?), but wherever I go.

And on those long, cross-country drives or transatlantic flights, I don't have to listen to pot luck on the radio or the canned offerings from the airline, but to whatever my heart desires.

So, wallow in the tristesse of souvenirs des LPs perdu. I am too busy downloading neat stuff off iTunes to care.

Petronius| 1.12.12 @ 11:00AM

Dvorak's Violin Concerto plays as I type. And my system isn't quite as good as Powell Symphony Hall but damn close. i-Pods are for "tunes". The Niagra Falls of analog is two blocks away. Scored a full set of Shubert Symphonies on Philips for $20, mint. People who like music the way it should be heard are retreating to analog. Digital formats are compressed, like having to view a Monet on drywall. If open reel tape was still available, I'd spend the dosh for another Revox. The used ones on Audiogon cost more than when they were new. The soundstage and imaging are a world apart when digital and analog are played in an open listening space. Play a disc and an LP of the same piece and placement of instruments, depth, channel balance, and even the presence of the space where the recording took place is apparent. And while I can't put it in my shirt pocket and carry it around, I don't want to as my mind is usually preoccupied when away. Real music is for listening, along with a good book and Single Malt. Let the i-Pod people fill their heads with sonic swill. Pick an issue of Absolute Sound and a few new 180 gram LP's of the old classical collections from Acoustic Sounds. Used gear is to be found on Audiogon at reasonable prices or you can put out a million for top lines from MBL and Clearaudio. There are two kinds of everything in this world: the Best; and all the rest.

albert constantine jr| 1.12.12 @ 9:08AM

I still have my vinyl (though I no longer possess the working turntable to play it). My hundreds of cassette tapes are now stored in the garage, I didn’t begin to even purchase cassettes until the end of 1999, and now I’m told the era of the album and even the CD is over.

My own purchasing habits validate this, as I now tend to purchase individual tracks to my Amazon Cloud, download to my laptop, and listen to playlists. The method may have changed, but among the first tracks I purchased in this manner was the Big Bopper’s “Chantilly Lace”, which didn’t need an album to be one of the most upbeat singles in early Rock & Roll, and still brings a smile to my face whenever I hear, despite over half a century passing since the "Day the Music Died".

Stuart Koehl| 1.12.12 @ 9:16AM

Might I recommend the Crossley 6-in-1 Turntable Sound System, which includes a fully function turntable, AM/FM radio, cassette player and CD player/recorder? This allows you to listen to your old media, but also lets you convert both LPs and cassettes to CD--or to download the resulting MP3 files directly to your hard drive, iPod or iPad? Turntables are becoming hard to find for a reasonable price, and this is a pretty good one. Moreover, the entire unit is fairly compact and comes in an attractive wooden case, which allows you to just put it out on display for all to see--and hear.

Herb| 1.12.12 @ 10:34AM

I have found plenty of turntables for sale on Ebay and recently bought a classic Garrard Type A, identical to what came with my Dad's new console stereo circa 1958. It had a feature I had never seen before, a lever labeled 78-45-33-16. To a seven year old it looked like a kind of gearshift and one day when a Perry Como album was playing I moved the lever to 78 and turned the crooner into a chipmunk, instantly followed by Dad chasing me around the house yelling "Don't you ever do that again!".

Haven't made the iPod transition yet but there is lots of good music on the internet to be downloaded to desktop and played through the home stereo.

I am interested in the ongoing debate over sound quality between digital media and vinyl played on a vacuum-tube amplifier.

albert constantine jr| 1.12.12 @ 10:47AM

I will check it out. Thank you.

Evelyn| 1.12.12 @ 9:47AM

Being able to download single tracks rather than having to buy a CD or LP is a dream come true, but I do miss browsing record stores just flipping through the albums.

Vern Crisler| 1.12.12 @ 10:00AM

Ipods aren't just for music. I've downloaded tons of lectures and can listen to them driving to and from work. You can get a college education, or at least be reminded of what you forgot, and all you have to do is take a little time to download the information. No more boxes of tapes or CDs melting in the sun.....nor more stolen 8-tracks....

Appleby| 1.12.12 @ 11:05AM

I hope that while you are iPodding behind the wheel, you are paying attention to what's going on in the External World. Distracted Driving is now causing more deaths behind the wheel than drunk driving.

Vern Crisler| 1.12.12 @ 12:27PM

No problems at all Appleby in listening. However, it's very dangerous to try to make selections on the iPod while driving. If I need to do that, I stop somewhere. Listening to lectures is no more distracting than listening to talk radio.

Brother John| 1.12.12 @ 10:19AM

@ Stuart Koehl and Albert Constantine, Jr

I would caution you if you buy one of these units. I haven't personally used them, but I have seen them, and the mechanisms on it appear the same as most low-end turntables made in the 80s and early 90s, in that they had a tendency to spin 3% too fast and thus out of tune. I figured this out back then, when ELO's "Illusions in G Major" turned out to be in Ab, and a number of long tracks turned out to be 30-40 seconds shorter than the label turned out to be. (Useful knowledge if you're trying to make a cassette for the car with the maximum amount of music on it..)

Barn Cat| 1.12.12 @ 10:21AM

One thing that's great about digital downloads is you can listen to 30 second clips of songs before you buy them. You don't have to buy an album of crappy songs to get the one you want. I still find that my favorite song on the album is seldom the hit single.

Barn Cat| 1.12.12 @ 10:22AM

I'll never forget the day I got my first set of really good computer speakers. I listened to songs on my computer and heard things I never heard on my crappy '70s speakers.

Citizen Jerry| 1.12.12 @ 10:37AM

Technology may march on, but nothing beats the full, rich, authentic sound of vinyl, when it isn't scratched, of course.

Yes, the iPod makes it easy to just flip through songs. But this is a pander to a generation of kids who have the attention span of a gnat.

PatriotGal2257| 1.12.12 @ 11:24AM

There's nothing to stop you from listening to whole albums even on an iPod, especially LPs that were meant to be listened to that way, such as Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon," and my all-time favorite Miles Davis album "Kind of Blue." Just click on the album name and there you go.

One of the great things I've found in the digital music era is that I've discovered a ton of good, listenable and compelling music simply by listening to the multitude of Internet radio stations in virtually every genre. One day it might be jazz, another day blues, still another day reggae, but that has been the biggest factor in my music collection increasing by 1000%. Having that variety of music on my iPod fulfills my inner deejay in ways I never would have imagined when I was a kid buying LPs, CDs and cassettes.

Nymph| 1.12.12 @ 12:35PM

Since we are on this subject, I will share what I think is a funny story concerning digital music or iPods if you will. I was at the gym one day and I saw this lady there working out (good call on her part, if you know what I mean) anyway, she had an iPod or similar divice she was listening to while "working out". She would spend about 15-30 seconds on a machine, then about 5-10 minutes fiddling with her iPod. This went on the whole time she was there. She probably had about 10 minutes of actual workout time during the hour or so she was there. I just laughed to myself and thought, well, at least she could honestly say she spent an hour at the gym......

Stan Redmond| 1.12.12 @ 12:56PM

Good riddance for me. Albums, Casettes, CDs, have no value to me other than the content of the music. Digital or analogue.

If I lived craving the "good old days" I would give up my computer and engineering software for a drafting board, pencils, and a selection of slide rulers.

Steve Motel| 1.12.12 @ 1:44PM

I like listening to music on my iPhone. I have old-fashioned headphones, though. I cain't stand ear buds.
I listen at work when I am doing mindless tasks, and listen when I work out. I can listen to Hank Williams, QOSA, and Lady Gaga (when I am downloading secrets) .
LP's were a bummer for a lot of us, they got scratched up a lot. Plus I could never afford the expensive equipment like some of my rich friends.

Nick| 1.12.12 @ 7:25PM

I'm sorry, Mr. Motel, but any male who admits to listening to Laddy GagGag, does not, (using my Godfather voice) "Act like a MAN!"

Seek| 1.12.12 @ 2:39PM

Gotta hand it to Daniel Flynn: The guy knows his music. I'd forgotten all about that Pete Townshend solo album from the early 80s until Flynn jogged my memory.

E. Oliver| 1.13.12 @ 2:39AM

I had forgotten that LP as well; my favorite Townsend solo record was Empty Glass (1980) with "Let My Love Open the Door" and "Rough Boys".

Rev| 1.14.12 @ 11:43AM

"An iPod to an album is a razor blade to the Mona Lisa. It isn't as beautiful cut into ten or twelve snippets."

As a musician for over 30 years, I'd question Daniel having any knowledge of music.

His hyperbole about "cutting up the Mona Lisa" strangely isn't directed at CDs and albums, where the packages are ALSO a group of single songs...

apple| 1.12.12 @ 4:00PM

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POST American| 1.12.12 @ 9:50PM

-----------------BOTTOMLESS LINE-------------------

---And further, imagine NOT knowing
what genuine, unelectrified, actual LIVE
music making is.

Ah! ---but then, thanks to engineered decades
of full spectrum cultural degradation and
tech worship -------YOU CAN'T IMAGINE.

---------------HUAC/ Nuremberg 2012----------------

betterthanyou| 1.12.12 @ 10:52PM

God, AmSpec readers are a bunch of out-of-touch morons. Somebody should shut off the electricity in your trailer parks so you can't get Internet anymore.

E. Oliver| 1.13.12 @ 3:13AM

Yes, dearie. The "better than you" always seek to silence the "uncool".

This thread is a history lesson; if you don't (or can't) appreciate that fact youare "out of touch".

Are you always into intolerance... or just today?

Rev| 1.14.12 @ 11:38AM

Aww, dearie, you're bringing out the "intolerance" card in a discussion about MP3 players?

Cute...

POST American| 1.13.12 @ 5:52AM

"The i-pod, like the earlier disc and
walkman, are being used to not only
create a narcissisitic, ego-techtonic
mass character, but to slowly condition
for the coming micro-chipping of
the population."

--------------------Really kiddies, get back to
exploring, enjoying, playing and making
your own, non filtered, non-programmed,
non-electrified music.

'POP' culture's a FAKE.

'POP' culture is from the Sugar Pops
and is absolutely designed to serve
their long term EUGENICS agenda.

--------------------FACE IT!---------------------

Keith| 1.13.12 @ 3:05PM

I miss my 8 tracks, how the song would fade out before the "chick chick" as the next track came up.

Mister Grady| 1.14.12 @ 3:45AM

There is lots of ignorance being spouted in this thread, but I'll try to keep it short and simple:

1) Digital recording, in and of itself, is NOT compressed. There are compressed formats, yes, but that's something that, when it is done, is done to a digital recording after the fact.

2) CD's are not compressed digital audio.

3) Analog recording is not nearly as good as modern digital recording and mastering techniques. Every stage of the analog process adds noise. But there are still a few tin-eared "audiophiles" who make the absurd claim that analog is better. IT AIN'T. And if you think it is, you quite simply do not know what you're talking about. I'm an expert on this. Deal with it.

3) There is nothing preventing anyone from from putting uncompressed audio on an iPod or iPhone or iPad. Let me repeat that: There is NOTHING preventing anyone from putting uncompressed audio on an iPod of iPhone or iPad. It IS supported. Rip your CD's for cry in' out loud. Sheesh. And yes, there is nothing preventing you from buying new CD's and ripping those. Let me state one more time: All of the iGadgets support uncompressed audio! Okay?

Curmudgeons rejoice!

J Fred Knobloch| 1.14.12 @ 5:18AM

I remember my first iPod. It was a 7 transistor Charmy AM portable radio that I was gifted for Christmas in 1960. It was music anywhere for the time.

As a 7 year old I could not have been happier.

I am now 58 with teenage children who have all of the devices and disincentives to purchase 'hard copy' music and the commensurate devices and internet chops to obtain anything they desire.

However, I believe there is a notion that is not talked about in this maelstrom of bad news and schadenfreude for the music industry. I believe this to be "a flight to quality".

Just as I was enamored with my first iPod in 1960 my children seem to be as impressed with the sound in my home studio. When they want to 'really watch' a movie they bring it into my control room and we really get into how it sounds. I don't think this is an accident.

Just as my generation wanted better sound this generation will want the same. As bandwidth becomes more available 'quality audio' available at a premium will be the desire of the more ardent music fan. As that bandwidth becomes more available it will become cheaper. Hence, more high quality audio will become at the same time more available, more affordable and more plentiful.

The digirati mantra has been 'information wants to be free'. The truth is real quality music cannot be made for free.

Something has to give in this conflicting dialectic.

I will bet on the quality of music every single time.

And there you go....

J Fred

Rev| 1.14.12 @ 11:37AM

Quality music doesn't cost much at all to write or produce.

Rev| 1.14.12 @ 11:34AM

"It's the loss of the whole art form."

The art form hasn't been lost at all. From reading the article, sounds like this guy is going it wrong.

You can STILL listen to the whole album. Just don't hit the "next track" button. There's still plenty of great artwork being produced, still plenty of great music, too.

As far as "tinny" sounding MP3s, sounds like you aren't ripping your CDs or downloading your music at the proper bitrate...