Re: [microsound] industry loses big

[dbuchwald <dagmar.buchwald@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jonathan Hughes wrote:

>
> Ultimately, the free-for-all downloading of music ultimately cheapens the
> music (and not just on monetary level). Instead of being something that's
> actively sought out, enjoyed, and valued, it just becomes an item to
> collect.

That's a very interesting point and food for thought.  I must confess that you
are right.  I used to buy CDs -- not that I had enormous amounts of money to
spend but I could afford buying CDs and since I had to economize, the hours I
spent at the record shop listening to the stuff, deciding which one to buy and
which one, sadly, to leave behind, only to come back a few days later and buying
it after all (making a note in my mind -- economize somewhere else), somehow
this gave each CD a history of its own: how it was bought, how long I pondered
over buying it, how much it meant to me after all.

At the moment I can no longer afford buying CDs.  There were the glorious
napster days hunting after stuff that I used to own as a record and had sold
cheaply in a wild moment of "I will change my whole life from NOW".  Again the
downloaded stuff achieved some kind of halo -- what was the title of that
track?  Is it anywhere in a bitrate that doesn't hurt the ears?  O this 56k
modem, downloading only on Sundays when I didn't have to pay for the
connection.  O my, download broken off at 95 percent, shit, same procedure ...

Then there was the flatrate, the DSL-connection, the pang of excitement finding
mp3-labels, downloading stasisfield, .term, tu'm stuff, hunting the net for more
mp3-labels.  It was too good to be true, but, and that is the weird thing, I
found some true treasures, but after a while the collector spirit took over.  I
can't listen to everything I download, I don't do it.  I just download as if
there was no tomorrow: more, more, more.  The personal story about how I got the
track is lost.  The tracks begin to blur with each other.  I play whole folders,
not individual trakcs.  Some folders have a distinct profile in my mind, but
there are simply too many of them.

Reminds me of the books I xeroxed from cover to cover.  Very few of them got
special treatment: their own binding, annotations, underlining, carefully
handwritten front cover.  Many just vanished in boxes and never aquired the
'face' a 'real book' has.

But isn't it a real shame to be so conditioned by capitalism that only those
items I have to strife for and economize and have to put some real energy into
getting are really WORTH something?  And is it a capitalism thing or some kind
of all too human character trait?

Dagmar

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