I'm sure that there was a similar article in 1962 about kids with the suitcase 45 players. All children grow up at some point and some of them will begin to appreciate high quality reproductions of their music. I love apocolyptic/doomsday articles. The world as we knew it will never be the same... I am still in mourning about my Tuesday night Howl fix being a thing of the past. Is it the end of the world? Probably. Should we worried about it? Probably but I've got a lot of things to do before I crawl into a corner in a catatonic fit....
Emporium out.

MP3 players are awesome. Having all my music in a little device in my pocket instead of a gi-normous tome of CD's (which replaced the gi-normous box of cassettes) in the backseat of my car? awesome.

since the majority of the time I'm in my loud, wind-noise filled, junkbox of a car doing 65 - 70 MPH while listening to my awesome iPod, I'm not that worried about ultra pristine sound quality.

I think that guy who wrote the article needs to have a nice big cup of shut the f up.

other than that I have no strong opinions on this subject ;-J

Most people listen to music in a shitty environment, off-axis, on bad speakers...(e.g. car stereos, the driver hears more the left channel than the right)

Most people aren't audiophiles, and never were! Especially youngins'

Does he honestly think they a couple thousand dollars to buy a 5.1 surround system and acoustically treat their rooms while listening to things recorded or converted at 192KHz 24 bit.

Give me a break...

Perfect example: listen to Led Zep I. Recording quality in today's standard is sketchy at best but I would not trade listening to a warped/scratched 33 in by friends basement in 1973 (on the family's console HiFI) in a blue haze for anything in the world.....

Me too. There are still some songs that I hear that I automatically hear the song that used to follow it on my old radio tapes.

Sitting around staring at the radio waiting to hear that song come on was pretty awesome.

(Edit: This was a response to Water Girl's post)

IMO music in most genres has become too formulaic both in content and production. The concept of an album that you'd listen to first track to last is rare in popular music now. Production and mastering techniques now make songs so loud and undynamic since 90% of the listeners are in the car or using some MP3 player of some sort. Don't get me wrong I love my ipod and use my PC to listen to music alot. I agree that there was some magic in that vinyl or listening to the radio and wondering what was next. Maybe I am getting old....

Jeff

I love my ipod but I think there is some truth to the notion that mp3 players are destroying the album concept. With the ability to download a single song, I fear that the majority of young listeners will never truly appreciate how great an album (start to finish) can be. I look at a lot of my students' playlists and they may have a mishmosh of different artists but rarely do they have complete albums.

And in 1906 John Philip Sousa attacked the phonograph industry in a testimony before congress:

"These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in the country," Sousa testified before Congress. "When I was a boy...in front of every house in the summer evenings you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or the old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal chord left. The vocal chords will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape."

It seems that every generation has a period of a revolt against new technologies (and for some reason music technologies in particular) that time tends reveal are largely misguided and lacking in foresight.

That being said, though I listen to ipods and MP3s on my laptop all day at work and on the run, nothing is more relaxing and satisfying at the end of the day than spinning up some classic wax on my technics 1200. Two totally different but equally valuable experiences.

Seriously, how many of today's albums are great from start to finish?

I only have 10 fingers and ain't used 'em up yet.

Am I the only one here who has NEVER downloaded a single track from itunes?? And I don't mean that I don't download singles only albums, I mean I have never made a purchase via itunes....

I've never purchased also. A lot of live music on my ipod, as well as my own cd collection.

Louie, it's not just new albums. If a kid has downloaded "Pinball Wizzard" - but has never heard then rest of Tommy, wouldnt you agree theyre missing out?

I have purchased single songs and whole albums off I-tunes...yes guilty as charged. My point about the concept of the album could have been clearer. In todays world artists don't write and record albums. They record singles and fill out the rest of the CD with filler. I'm pretty much refering to what is top of the charts music for the masses stuff. Overproduced pitch corrected image is everything stuff. I know what I'm trying to say but I don't think I'm making any sense.

Jeff

Ok maybe I can't explain myself properly then! LOL. I need to consider that the majority of people on this site are musos or not people who might buy a Britney Spears or Kanye West CD. I agree that there are still great albums being made. No doubt about it.

Jeff

I hear ya Jeff and Ed, I think I was taking what you were saying wrong. It still sounds a little cynical and longing for the old days which is all that I am arguing against.

When I first read the heading (without looking at the source) I figured that the sentiment might be about the lonely and solitary experience of listening to singles only with headphones.

I always thought one of the best things about music was sharing it. It seems a waste to me that in certain situations where people are listening to music to pass the time that many individuals are locked in to their own Ipods, all listening to different, possibly incredible music. I always though it very cool to be turned on to new music by whatever kid in the neighborhood or after school had on his portable tape or cd player.

Yes, I was one of the music geeks that made mix tapes for the long bus rides to and from track meets in high school. I imagine that with the new technology, a lot of bus rides and time-killing on college campuses is now like the airport: anyone who cares at all about music has the two earbuds in place and could care less about interacting with their fellow humans.

I also miss the part of party situations where someone would have to be pro-active about the music selections and kind of hover near the stereo to change the tapes and cds, mixing in requests with themes and kind of reading the room to see what would go over well next. In short, DJ skills without having to know how to scratch or know what key a song is in.

I'm wistful too about having a rack stereo loud enough to reach through the whole house while cleaning, showering, or anything requiring moving from room to room. I don't even bother with my cruddy PC speakers. The speakers on the TV are better but I would need to use the DVD player and hijack the cartoons or Monster Truck videos from my little fella.

So, yeah, Pods and kids have done some damage...

Yes great albums are still being made and always will be.

But is the average "young person" buying/downloading entire albums these days? I do not have stats but I would guess no. I bet the majority of people here can name an album(s) that changed their lives when they were younger. Can they same be said today? I'm not so sure. It is an interesting topic.

None of us have any data on this subject--that's what makes debating it so fun!

But I agree with this. We had our lives changed by albums, for sure. But remember how much you loved making/listening to mix tapes? If it had been easier to make mix tapes when I was kid, I would have done a lot more of it.

I had a friend in high school, and before we went out on weekend nights we would sit in his basement drinking beer and taking turns picking one song out of his album collection, trying to surprise each other with the great song we picked. I'd get up, play a song; he'd get up, put on his song, etc. This was like the most primitive form of shuffle, on manual mode--but we loved it. That was twenty+ years ago.

As a final note, I'll say that my thirteen-year old listens to Ben Folds CDs, back to front, on a regular basis.

The thing that bothers me how diminished my attention span has become, and how impatient I get listening to new music via mp3s At least with cassettes, albums and even CDs to a ceratin extent you had to nurse the whole album because it was a PITA to rewind/reset the needle/hit repeat and only listen to the songs you initially liked.

It's so easy to just *play*...nope...*click*...no...*click*....not feeling it...*click*...meh..*click*...this one's ok...*click*...ugh...*click*...this is alright...*click*...nah...*click*...this one blows...*click*....*click*...blech...*click*

Pfft, this album sucks.

Then it dawns on me that I just dismissed an entire album with only a minute's worth of actual listening time.

Hell, sometimes I find myself skipping around way too much with stuff I already like. I feel myself wondering "What the hell it is I'm actually looking for? I like this song, why am I skipping past it already? Am I just trying to get a quick fix from a song? Is THAT what I want, just a piece of a song?" I fully expect that someday in the near future we'll be reminiscing about singles as whatever social networking site du jour fills with responses to thsoe "what are you listening to?" threads that read like:

Intro to Shine on You Crazy Diamond pt 1
symphonic part from A Day in the Life
solo from Hot for Teacher
chorus from Smells like Teen Spirit
bassline from the Magnificent Seven
drumroll from In the Air Tonight
etc.

And that's when this little ditty finally get's revived: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NuPA7-lWUg

I can't speak for kids or for what will happen in the future, but I love my MP3 player.

I used to travel - whether a short trip, an errand, or a vacation - with a bunch of Case Logic cases full of cassettes and CDs, because I never wanted to find myself somewhere with that aching feeling for a particular tune or album or live bootleg and not be able to satisfy it. Now I carry in my pocket everywhere I go maybe 100 live concerts and another 700 CDs. Some days I listen to a playlist of one band, another day a single album, and other days I play "Karma Shuffle," where I shuffle the 10,000 songs and see what happens.

It has in no way diminished my appreciation for extended works, full-length CDs, or new music. In fact, I'm more open to new music, because I'm willing to throw it on the player without risk, and I can stumble on deep cuts or hits from the album in no particular order. I also like that when an unfamiliar song comes up I can evaluate it without really knowing what it is and forming pre-judgments. Instead, I kind of have to hear it and think about it first.

The only MP3s on which I really notice the degraded sound quality is ones I've file-shared, and which seem to have been compressed and decompressed a lot (I think), and they warble and pop and glitch out. Usually, I just get rid of them and rip or download clean, higher res versions.

And mostly my MP3 player is hooked through a sound system, so I'm not isolating the music any more than I did with albums in the old days. My friends and I (and family) still hunker down over music a lot.