This week I downloaded a new release in its entirety for the first time. It was Spoon's new work, in fact.
That's a milestone.
I've recently migrated all my CDs to iTunes, and I've subscribed to eMusic, and scanned it for things I've lost or forgotten, and found some gems, but never before did I substitute buying the tracks for buying the artifact.
Some thoughts about the consequences of this.
CD artwork never mattered a ton to me, not like LP artwork. So I don't mourn that loss.
Words trump numbers once again. "Listen to track 8, it's great" won't be in the lingo anymore. Once again I know song titles. And I forgot how great Trumans Water song titles were. "Yakboy=Nurterer".
Emusic trumps iTunes. Thanks to Jet Aspirin for that. I feel like I'm at the Gap or at the mall when I'm in the iTunes store. The eMusic selection isn't perfect, but it's a hell of a lot more fun to peruse. And no DRM.
How the hell does the artist know how many times someone really downloaded their song from a third party distributor like eMusic? I bet that one has kept Cory Rusk up at night.
"I just got the new record/album/CD by XYZ" is now "I just got the new release by XYZ".
We're all librarians now. Catalogers. And some of us poor ones. I mean, who the hell submitted all the Richard Hell albums to the track listing storage database with "(Album Version)" after the song title? People like that should be shot on sight in the new world order.
Questions for you. What was the first track you downloaded? The first entire release? The first artist you discovered browsing through a web music store like iTunes?
~Arum
listening to some Mission of Burma track
2 comments:
I still like me some artifacts. But, yeah, I've paid for some mp3's (primarily from www.bleep.com). First purchase: 2-track Brothomstates 12". First full-length: Battles EP C/B EP (ok, this is a beyond full-length packaging of EP's. Discovery through shopping... Frost Jockey? I've mostly been buying tracks/releases that are otherwise vinyl-only.
I, too, have been buying more music online. What I don't like about it is the details: who played what instrument? Who recorded it? Where was it recorded? Who wrote the songs? Etc. Etc. CDs never had the fetishistic properties of vinyl LPs, but they had basic information that is still lacking with digital releases.
More and more you're seeing "Digital Booklets" with downloads, but I'd like to see basic information encoded in the properties of the track itself.
I believe my first iTunes purchase was HIGH by the Blue Nile.
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