Früher war alles besser

Internet, I have a confession to make: I still buy CDs. Go ahead, laugh at my old-fashioned ways. You know what else? I have never bought music in a non-physical format, either. I have downloaded a handful of songs via file-sharing several years ago, but my main purpose there was to discover new music. I can easily do that with the help of myspace, official band websites, free custom radio services and various internet music stores these days, so no more need for me to participate in file-sharing. Because I do believe that it's wrong to become to possess music without paying for it. But anyway, what I really want to talk about is the devaluation of music. And by that I don't really mean the fact that a lot of music is being illegally acquired by listeners, but to a much larger extent the way in which music is being listened to and consumed, and not always appreciated consciously.

I've been trying to figure out the root cause of this devaluation, but I think that it's just a matter of perception. As in I perceive there to be a devaluation, but it probably is not really happening. It's just that people now have the means to listen to and acquire music in a way that best fits their listening habits. Personally, I like to listen to whole albums and focus on the music, immersing myself in it as much as I can. I don't like listening to music I don't know in the background. I don't listen to music on my commute because the noise and all the people are too distracting. I usually have a song in my head that I'm whistling actually.

But enough about me. I think that a lot of other people, maybe even the majority of them, are happy with listening to just single songs, and mixing up their favorites while doing so. They're the ones with the iPods etc. Now when CDs and records were your only option, singles were a very cost-ineffective way of buying music, because albums had a lot more songs on them, and cost less to buy per song. For example, back in the days, a CD single was about 10 Deutsche Mark, and album about 30. So if you bought 3 singles, you'd have about 6 songs, and usually 3 of them were just filler or a remix or something, depending on what kind of music it was. If you got the album, you got at least ten songs most of the time, with a good chance that there is some more enjoyable stuff on there. With the current MP3 pricing structure, there is only a very slight advantage to buying a whole album, if there is one at all.

Does this lead to musicians becoming more song-oriented and moving away from things like creating coherent song collections, arranging the songs on an album in a structured way or even concept albums? Who the heck knows? I think most popular-type music has always been song-oriented. And I don't want to start a debate about whether this is because people naturally respond to and enjoy that kind of format for music, whether it's just out of convenience, or whether it is a result of the song format being pushed on people through various marketing channels. That's irrelevant and I'd be talking to myself anyway.