Subject: Music downloading creates listener apathy

I found this interesting article:
Music downloading creates listener apathy

I thought that their research was somewhat limited, but I think it points to a larger issue.

"The academic's assessment follows a warning last week from rock legend Pete Townshend, The Who guitarist, that listening to rock music on an MP3 player through headphones could cause deafness."

There's a little knob thingy that can lower the volume. Duh, Peter.

LOL rich!

Hey, weren't they the guys who's band was louder than a jet?

and he's worried about HIS hearing.

Of course, he fails to warn people of the dangers of having Child Pornography on your computer... although maybe he didn't HEAR of those at the time.

HAH!!

I don't know about how.But the whole B-Spears Etc. thing.Cou[pled with were your hat sideways and listen to rap. CUZ that just says it all. It is the whole enchilada. The "attitude" thing the ruff and ready mentality. Teeny brains. No hint of much of anything. The new generation are being spoonfed by the generation before them. Yes the money gobblers are having their way with the youth of today. The sad part is their parents are just as vapid.Most likely due to the fact that they ARE the money gobblers. And have NO IDEA how to raise children. NONE.God I work in peoples houses as a painter. I SEE first hand the pathetic parenting skills. I feel sorry for them. And the world will not be a better place ANYTIME soon due to it. Crap in=Crap out. Hey just download REALPLAYER.Check out the new artists video stuff. Man ain't NOTHING there at all. Pathetic is way to kind a word. But hey.The powers that are allowed to be "Will BE". Sad. The American dream has long been gone. If anyone even remebers that. Maybe a google search?? Taylor

The article makes sense to me. I think attitudes toward music have changed, even during my (very short) lifetime. I can remember when the release of a new album was an event. Trying to find the album, trying to find a radio station that played cuts from the album. Now, new music is available worldwide at the click of a button. In fact, my own new album is available by clicking below. Don't be apathetic!

I think the apathy was already there. Downloading just makes it easier to be apathetic.

Taylor, that's a sad post, but unfortunately very very true.

Is the event of 60,000 people to see the Beatles play in a stadium for 30 minutes and not being able to hear them play an example of the long ago "serious appreciation" of music whose passing this article laments?
Or is it the event of 5 stoners listening to the latest Alice Cooper album while nodding out in some dank basement in 1974 a better example of the nostalgia of "serious appreciation" of popular music?
These kids today just don't know how to appreciate music "seriously" like the good old days.
P.S. Well, maybe it's standing in line in the rain for two hour for the release of the latest Blondie album that sold out two customers ago. I miss those days.

I certainally do miss the excitement of buying an LP, taking it home, putting it on the little stereo in my room and listening to it while reading through all the lyrics and examining every inch of the cover, back and interior for hidden meanings. Even when I switched over to CDs, I would put them on my little portable player and go through the lyrics and really get to know each song.
These days, however, I get so many albums - downloads, copies, friend's ripped to my ipod, that they no longer have that 'specialness' of something I've spent my hard-earned money on. I don't take the time with each one which is a shame. I miss it. I just put everything on my iPod and hit shuffle...
Dave Kusek and Gerd Leonhard in their book, "The Future of Music : Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution" propose that music will become a 'service' like electricity, gas or water where you pay a monthly fee and then you can stream music into devices in your house or car or portable device. It's a little far-fetched, but not out of the realms of possibility. I think if it ever happens, music will become more devalued and apathy will increase. As to how we musicians will make a living, I have no idea.

I'm not sure it's true that kids these days appreciate music less. I teach in high school. Many of them live music. It's everything to them. I think if you're looking for a culprit, wondering who stole the passion out of the industry, look at radio and its consolidation. Radio, for the most part, currently pumps out highly polished drivel. And somebody buys it in their local stores or online. If you ask me, it's not the kids, it's the 20-40 age group. They are the ones with the disposable incomes.

These poor kids are deprived of the joy of watching current bands develop and build followings and loyalty over the course of years. That type of band/music doesn't seem to exist anymore, is not fostered by the industry. I see more Doors/Hendrix/Zepp/Floyd shirts now than we probably wore in the 70s (of course I was only 12 at the end of the 70s and wore hand-me-down Star Wars shirts).

At the risk of sounding some grumpy old git, the problem with modern music is that it's 99% musak. By that I mean it's something to slap on in the car, in the kitchen, on the iPod while jogging, with banal lyrics, plastic production.

It's the James Bluntification of popular music.

I too loved that feeling of getting the new album you'd waited ages for, locking yourself up in your room listening to it studiously on headphones, listening to every word, every note, only emerging to scowl at mum and dad and get a glass of weak orange drink.

Mainstream or alternative, it make no difference as they have both been utterly colonised by corporate bean counters. When was a kid, alternative meant torn up jeans and crappy old boots and anarchic attitudes, now it's being some NuGoth in £300 of freaking fetishwear and whinging all day long on your sodding myspace blog instead of doing anything remotely interesting, all the while listening to music that sounds like someone doing DIY with their Black and Decker hammer drill.

And what is emo anyway? I's assumed it was because these skinny kids with anti-fit designer skate clothes and wonky haircuts resembled comic, Emo Phillips, but someone told said it was an emotional form of punk.

I just don't know anymore... I'm going to grow a beard, drink more real ale, and get a subscription to Record Collector.

yeah, I agree. It too easy to be nostalgic, and think that because you don't like the modern music then other people can't like it as much as you used to like the music you listened to.the truth is, that as we get older our priorities are likely to change, and music will not be quite as important as it once was.

As for downloading, there are plenty of positive aspects as well. How else would we get to have people all over the world listen to our music? People have worried about the impact of technology on music ever sincethe first sound recording. In my opinion, These are relatively exciting times for music,and I wouldn't want to be living in any other decade (or century).

Time to mount an attack against the Vapid Ones in Control:

Well, I'm torqued and I'm primed. I'm not out of time.
There's plenty of years to make hay!
My engine's all tuned. I'll fix what is ruined.
On this highway, I'll do it my way!

Those clear skin beauties, those punks and those snooties:
seems like they're all in a coma.
Get real, you Don Juans, you fakes in salons.
Arrivederci to your aroma!

Well, here I go!
Grease monkey sweat! Grease monkey sweat!
As honest as the the day's long. As real as my back's strong.
Grease monkey sweat, grease monkey sweat.

Forget all that's stale. Check out my wail.
This classic chassis is passing.
I got a voice to caress, a real largesse
and a mojo without all that sassing.

Part of the reason for this change of season.
Is to move me up from arrears.
Riches elude me, meekness has screwed me,
Time to shift up to higher gears.

Whoa!
Grease monkey sweat! Grease monkey sweat!
From every pore I cry out until the slickers die out.
Grease monkey sweat! Grease monkey sweat!

Seems that my innocence might be deliverance,
we humble will eat our pie.
Some gilded chariot, some long strong lariat
will lift me up to the sky.

I'll ride on this rail until I fail,
until my steam runs dry.
I wonder when my ship will come in.
I wonder when I will fly.

Let it fly!
Grease monkey sweat! Grease monkey sweat!
Drippin' with emotion. It's a tonic and lotion.
Grease monkey sweat! Grease monkey sweat!

Clear your channels. Slip on your flannels.
Ohhh, grease monkey sweat! Hmmm, grease monkey sweat!
Grease monkey sweat!

The article is kind of frothy. There's not much real ' news' there -as in how was the research done, who the target audience was, etc.
Actually, if you think about it, there have always been aspects of 'commodity' to music. It wasn't until the 'Romantic' era in music that musicians were seen as 'artists' in the sense of the word we use it today. Musicians were craftsmen who were hired to do the job of entertaining the nobility or of providing music for the church liturgy. No more special than the carpenter or the blacksmith doing their jobs.
The whole idea of recorded music is only 150 years old. The radio isn't even 100 years old. Now, downloading music is the next wave. It's just one more new way of delivering music.
Downloadable music isn't creating apathy. Derivative crap in the guise of music is what's creating apathy.

you know what, that's not far-fetched because it's called XM Radio. scary, huh? but it comes at a price... and a lack of the radio personalities you might love, and the humour, and the local events.

that part about townsend warning about deafness... no really?! have these guys forgotten that personal players have been around for years? same problem, only now it's reallllly common. people get deaf from enough concerts, too. telling someone hey you could get deaf from listening to an ipod, or going to a concert, is NOT going to change their behaviour.

i think we've all reached the conclusion that the real cause of this is not what those geniuses say, but the kind of cookie cutter, useless crap pumped out by capitalist record labels. what's there to really appreciate anyway? and is apathy really a problem? obviously we're not buying less. really appreciating music comes from 1) finding and listening to great music and 2) if you can, learning how to play it. that's when you realise how well constructed and complex a song is.

thanks rschletty--a reminder of the poetry lacking in much of today's music. i listened to a couple clips from some girl on myspace whose music is overproduced and no different than anything else in her genre. the best stuff i heard was a girl with a guitar and a mac, or a guy with a beard and a guitar, just pouring their hearts out. that's where you appreciate it... where it hits you in the heart.

my ipod is simply a means of enjoying and appreciating my music more often. i had a discman before so really, my listening hours have not increased (decreased, perhaps now, with a day less school per week), i just have more variety.

and besides, sometimes you only hear certain nuances through headphones.

I agree with the sentiment of your statement about music not being an art form until the 'Romantic' era, but the same could be said for painting and sculpting. I DO think we are on the cusp of a revolution the same as the Armory Show did for art in the 1900's. Macjams, itunes and the iPod are doing the same for music. Now, you can not only record your own music but distribute it, and broadcast (podcast) it without need for corporate intervention or controls. "Art for arts sake" is is now applying to music.

With that being said, I think the apathy comes from the frustration of getting an album with one song you like. We like to look back in nostagia at those days, but I remember how pissed I was when I spent my paperboy money on a hair-metal band's new album that totally sucked, but I bought because I saw their video on MTV. Now I can pick an choose individual songs that are to my liking, I don't think that is apathy.

Here's why I think the article makes a good point: when music is available everywhere, all the time, it tends to become part of the landscape. Satellite radio, iPods, cell phones, radio, TV, supermarkets, elevators. It is in danger of becoming Muzak.

For instance, the Jimi Hendrix album "Are You Experienced?" was an event. Now, you hear the same music in car commercials, rolling your cart down the shopping aisle, before the movie starts. It has become part of the landscape. Why would anyone sit down now and listen closely and carefully to "Are You Experienced?" I hear James Taylor in elevators.

I think technology has contributed to music losing its magic. Not because the music being produced is better or worse than before. But because it is everywhere. It is consumed. Usually while doing something else: jogging, driving, reading, flying. My kids, who are teenagers, never sit down and listen to an album. They listen while doing something else.

Is this good or bad? I don't know.

I pretty much agree with you, Tom, but for different reasons. I don't think it's so much technology as it is licensing that's putting music everywhere. I remember when The Beatles "Revolution" was used in a shoe commercial and the firestorm that caused. I was working as a newspaper music critic at the time and wrote something similar about how using something classic for crass commercialism took something special away from the song. And it does. Modern English's "I Melt With You" is considered by many to be an anthem of my generation (the 80s teens). It's one of my all-time favorite songs. But now, anytime I hear it, I not only remember it's special place in my own existance, but I also think of Burger King. So something special has been tarnished.

True, technology has made it possible for music, and of course sales pitches, both subtle and crass, to intrude more into our lives, but it's the quest to squeeze every penny out of a song, a piece of art, that I feel is really contributing to any kind of listener apathy.

I often find myself hearing, but not really "listening," to music (with the exception of MJ songs, of course :D ), just like you describe your kids doing, Tom. (I do the same thing with TV now as well.) There was a time when I got a new album that I would know each of the songs by name, where they were on the album, and most of the lyrics. I would "hear" in my mind the beginning of the next song before it began playing. I knew when the album was almost over (or when it was time to get ready to flip it to side "B," and for you youngsters, there used to be something called 'vinyl'....) Now, often, it's background. I don't know whether that says more about me or more about how technology or the industry has changed. Of course, nowadays, I don't have to save up my grass cutting money to go out and buy the latest Duran Duran album.....

One other thing that comes to mind has to do with the "event" of buying a new album. I used to love bringing home a new album, putting it on the turn table, and like many others have said, sitting there and going over every inch of the album sleve, front to back. But, while it was a "big" event, it also lead to more than one really big disappointments. How many times did we rush out, save up for, wait in anticipation for, that next album by whoever it was, only to be sorely disappointed once we listened to it. But I guess maybe disappointment could be considered better than just plain old apathy...