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Brucie Brown is a regular forum contributor, he works in accountancy yet claims not to be boring. He lists his main intersets as music and football and is a life long Liverpool "Champion's League Winners 2005" supporter. His favourite band are the Kinks.
His current favourite piece of kit is his iPod simply because it is the one that gets the most use.
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With the emergence of the iPod and other digital audio players music is available to us hours 24 hours a day and seven days a week. I find the effect to be, like so many things, a two-edged sword. On the one hand having a music collection on call night and day is very useful and has kept me sane through many commuting journeys; on the other it has made me tire of certain albums and songs having heard them too many times. Of course though I think I have a few albums that have probably never even been listened to and I'm willing to bet I'm not the only one. So what are the key issues in this situation, what are the possible repercussions and ultimately has iPod culture had a positive effect?
The argument
With the music being available to me at all times (and me taking advantage of this) I have found I have to constantly seek out new music to entertain myself. Not only am I seeking more music but I'm seeking more different types of music. The knock-on effect is that while I tire slightly of some old faves, I am more willing to have my eyes opened to other styles and genres that perhaps before I was resistant towards. As a result I'm buying more music than I would otherwise and listening to a greater selection.
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| Has iPod culture really changed music for the better?
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This can only be a good thing, not just for the record companies making money off me (!) but if I'm being turned on to more music in this way I'm sure others are too. Therefore, on a larger scale, iPod/DAP listening trends may result in facilitating musical diversity and increased sales. While the MP3 format seemed to threaten the music industry, perhaps now it will serve to reinvigorate it as more people buy more diverse recordings and as a result record companies sign more diverse artists. Err, assuming file sharing doesn't make the whole industry implode and disappear that is.
The other concern is that the dominance of compressed digital music will lead to a drop in the search for ultimate fidelity. To this I say, sure, for many people this will be the case but this has ALWAYS been the case for them. Apart from that, as massive memory storage becomes smaller, lighter and cheaper so there becomes less need for compression in digital music, negating the concern that it promotes low fidelity. Regardless of whatever formats are around and what kind of quality they can offer, there will always be a core of people who are committed to obtaining ultimate fidelity. Like any other interest/hobby there will always be people who take it seriously and enjoy what other people find inconvenient or unnecessary.
The playlist phenomenon has changed the way people listen to music and while this is a good thing in so many ways it also has brought potential problems. For example it does sometimes mean that an album track can be listened to maybe once or twice, decided that it isn't liked, excluded from playlists and forgotten forever. As such sometimes I must be missing out on possible 'growers'. A further disadvantage of the playlist is the tendency to create multiple playlists so that I never get too bored of certain groupings of songs. Sounds like a good plan and it is, in theory. In practice I just listen to one playlist over and over which I'll listen to until the death and later come to detest as a result!
The verdict
In general terms though I tend to have a wider range of listening with the iPod and the availability of shutting out the outside world and listening to my favourite music whenever I want is fantastic. There is no doubt iPod has changed my, and many other's, habits in listening to music and that it will continue to for many more. I believe it increases people's consumption of music and widens their tastes. It will turn more people on to music and hopefully into high quality audio hence popularising and pushing forward our hobby. As such I think we need to welcome iPod culture with open arms.
Do you agree with Brucie or are his opinions way off the mark?
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