Ok, here’s a thesis – streaming music is basically, like renting a house instead of buying it. But you don’t have to fall in debts to buy the latest album, so why streaming is so popular?
For once, rest easy millennials. It’s not your fault. You’re not responsible for ruining this market. Who is then? Let’s take a look at physical copies and see what makes them so cool nowadays.
Too physical
(Nine Inch Nails had a song with that title and we wanted to use it as a paragraph one day.)
Owning a copy of a record makes you a sole owner of the source of pure joy which is the harmony of sounds. Awesome to be in charge of such things in life. As long as your CD or whatever is in good shape, you can get back to it and play it to your heart’s content. The best thing (and the one that makes is so similar to renting a house) is the fact that you eliminate the middle-man: Companies that charge you for access to the piece you love. So you own your very personal place forever and you can do with it as you please. (Paint it black?)
Another up-side is the growing nostalgia-driven hype for going back to the roots. Take the return of the vinyl. Visiting the local music store to buy an album, swap stories about your latest skateboarding tricks or gossip about those punks that skate in the city park just to show-off… Sounds familiar? Good times. We as a species are bound to grow nostalgic because we tend to remember the good things about the past. That’s why it seems so better than the present. That’s why don’t remember that, the trip to the local music store was fraught with unwanted encounters. You could have met a teacher, whose class you skipped, or your ex. The weather could be really bad on your way there. Finally, the album you went to buy wasn’t there anymore, because your schoolyard arch-nemesis bought the last CD!
Welcome to the future old man!
Music streaming allows access to a nearly unlimited amount of music for a small monthly fee. That covers both the streaming platform and royalties for the authors and hurts your wallet less than a weekend spent partying with your friends back in the “good old times”. The musical abundance leads to learning new bands or even genres. Lastly, (but not… leastly?) we are now so accustomed to the variety that we feel better to have lots to choose from rather than being restricted by limited choice. (So, millennial are to blame?)
You leave off to work, buy coffee at a place where you school arch-nemesis works and is bound by law to wish you a good day. You pass some skateboarding kids trying to pull off some of the tricks that you made with ease. (you scoff as they are clearly the fake-boarders, skating in plain sight, so everyone can see them) You get to work and continue to listen to whatever you feel like today. Not just the one album of one band, that you bought. Well, you can ride around with one of those CD file-like things to keep your
You pass some skateboarding kids trying to pull off some of the tricks that you made with ease. (you scoff as they are clearly the fake-boarders, skating in plain sight, so everyone can see them) You get to work and continue to listen to whatever you feel like today. Not just the one album of one band, that you bought. Well, you can ride around with one of those CD file-like things to keep your favorite music with you, but that just makes the risk of losing your car that much pain.
To stream or not to stream?
That isn’t really the question. There are tons of pros and cons for both. Most of our parents had those towering sets of HiFi stereos back in the day. Those things had huge speakers, equalizers, cassette slots, CD slots, a gramophone and lots of buttons and lights. Our dads seemed to prize those more than our lives and we had to admit, those things sounded good. Today, we have one here at the office. We all use music streaming platforms on a daily basis.
But this nostalgia-fuelled relic of the good old times has a new role now. It’s an altar. Whenever there is a need to listen to some classics or just a desire to feel that warm tingling at the corner of one’s eye. We bring our beloved albums, the ones we bought in appreciation of the very music they consist, and play them on that stereo. It may be the lamps inside of that thing, it might be the memories of the good times, or the “different” feel to it, but it still warms our very souls. And still sounds soo
Whenever there is a need to listen to some classics or just a desire to feel that warm tingling at the corner of one’s eye. We bring our beloved albums, the ones we bought in appreciation of the very music they consist, and play them on that stereo. It may be the lamps inside of that thing, it might be the memories of the good times, or the “different” feel to it, but it still warms our very souls. And still sounds soo goood.
