When the Apple iPod was first released I was one of the early adopters. I could already see this as a new paradigm for delivering and serving music and I wanted to be a part of the revolution. I have literally thousands of CDs that I have bought over the years. Many of these were repurchased from cassette tapes that I had before that. Even some of those were repurchased from 8-Track tapes before that.

I am not unfamiliar with the migration from one format to another. Each time I bought into the argument that the new format was better than the last and I would finally hear the music the way the artist and producer had expected.

I loved the clarity and durability of the CD format but I struggled with the idea of taking all of my music with me or even a good chuck of it necessitated having binders of discs with the accompanying cover art and liner notes.

It is not just the music that is important but also the things that go with it. Whether it is the album art that attempts to graphically connect the listener to the music or the notes booklet that contains the lyrics and words of the artists. All of these things together make up the listening experience for me.

When the iPod came along it changed music listening. At first it was just the songs. There was no way to even maintain the album art. The music became impersonal and was deduced down to a series of zeroes and ones. Before long, Apple recognized the need to have the other aspects of the music experience.

Album art was the first ancillary artifact to find its way into the equation. Sites sprung up that would allow you to search for album art and attach the graphics to the sound files through tags. Soon other tag data would follow with users having the ability to add additional information about their music.

Lyrics are a big part of the music listening experience. So many times with today’s music it is hard to decipher what the exact words are within a song. During my album and CD days I would reach for the liner notes that included the lyrics to the songs.

With digital downloads and CDs ripped into an electronic file, the liner notes have seemed to become less important; less important to everyone except the consumer. I still find myself wondering what the words are that are being sung.

The problem is, the music industry for whatever reason has decided that the lyrics are top secret and should be guarded like national secrets. They have made it nearly impossible to easily add lyrics to the music files.

Each time a new program or service attempts to make it easier for the consumer to add lyrics the music industry swoops in and shuts them down threatening legal action against the developer. I find it extremely frustrating and confusing as to why they would treat the music customer so haphazardly.

It is not like we are stealing the lyrics and reusing them in some way to cheat the artists out of their just rewards. We are simply trying to quickly and easily add lyrics to those music files that we rightfully have purchased.

There are now rumors running ramped around the Internet that the music industry is working on a model where they will charge the general public to access the lyrics. These lyrics files, which were included in the price of an album or CD suddenly, have become a hot commodity and a value add.

The customer is left frustrated having to go to numerous locations trying to find these simple lyrics files. It is decisions such as these that makes the consumer want to see the music industry fail. It is based on antiquated business models and no one seems willing or able to find a model that will work.

I have to believe that this is how the dinosaurs must have died. Their inability or unwillingness to adapt to the changing environment will ultimately kill them and the artists that they represent. On that day I will gladly dance upon their graves singing the lyrics that I had to search an hour to find and enter by hand.

I remember as a kid when my grandparents would come over to our house. I would be playing with some sort of technology gadget. My grandfather would sit down and begin questioning me on what the device was and what its capabilities were. I would explain the details as best as I understood them and we would talk about the various uses would be for the device. This inevitably would lead to my grandfather uttering a sentence that began with, “Back in my day…” followed by a dissertation of what society and more importantly technology was like when he was my age. I remember snickering whenever he started thinking there is absolutely no way I am ever going to do that. First off I never thought nor do I still think that the “good old days” were all that good. I am a technologist and an avid collector of gadgets. I am an early adopter and hence get involved with the technology before it is quite ready for primetime. Sometimes this is good and other times it can be quite expensive.

I had an 8-Track recorder for recording music and I own a Sony Betamax VCR because the technology was better than VHS. Not all my choices were wrongly placed. I have one of the early Blu-Ray players as I felt that technology had more capabilities than what HD-DVD could provide. I realized early on the power of digital photography and have a fairly large collection of digital cameras of various sizes and capabilities. I could make a nearly endless list of technology and gadgets that I have accumulated over the years. A few weeks back I began going through the stack of hardware I have accumulated trying to decide how to dispose of some of these relics. As I looked at each device I tried to categorize it. What I found was that I have an abundance of devices dealing with audio. These included phonographs, 8-Track players, cassette recorders, Walkmans, Mini-Disc players, Compact Disc players, and now several generations of iPods from the original all the way up to the latest iPod Touch.
I had not realized how important music had been in my life nor had I realized how many different formats I had migrated from to maintain my music collection. I initially had a collection of vinyl albums but those were migrated to 8-Track tapes due to the ease with which those could be portable. Those 8-Track tapes were in turn repurchased or migrated to cassette tapes to allow further mobility and to reduce storage space. My cassette collection turned into compact discs again reducing storage but more importantly to increase quality. This format put my music into a digital format and gave me a fairly sturdy medium to keep and maintain. From the CDs I would create Mini-Disc recordings to take with me and later would rip the songs into a format that could be transmitted to my iPod. To me compact disc was the appropriate trade-off between quality and storage. As iTunes began to grow and the MP3 format proliferated I refused to move to a totally electronic model. I didn’t care much for the quality of MP3 sound. Its lossy format degraded the sound to the point that I didn’t care for it at all. I chose instead to migrate my music to a lossless format such as Apple Lossless MP4, APE, or Windows Media Player lossless. None of electronic outlets were willing to provide this level of quality so I continued to purchase compact discs. I honestly don’t remember the last time I put a CD in my stereo system as a playback mechanism. Mostly I buy the CD then rip it into a lossless file and then store the CD for safe keeping. This has worked out quite well and I am content with the workflow I have developed.
Lately I have noticed that the CD and music sections of most major stores have begun to shrink. Beyond a few new releases the number of compact discs has begun to diminish. I still have a few older format media that I would like to move to CD and I am not having a harder time finding these as a CD. I can find the electronic MP3 songs but not a CD pressing of the album. I’m ok with technological shifts as long as it brings an increase to quality or somehow edifies my way of life but when technology changes for the sake of reducing the quality of a product I am not happy. Lately I have begun channeling my grandfather. Each time one of my kids comes to me with a new MP3 file they have downloaded that sounds muddled and of low quality I find myself starting sentences just like my grandfather, “Back in my day…” followed by a long explanation of how audio quality has declined since the invention of the CD. The next thing you know I’ll be telling stories about having to walk 20 miles to school in the snow and how we had to eat dirt because we couldn’t afford anything else. The most telling sign happened with my daughter Mallorie who at 22 is now feeling old. For the first time in her life she said, “back in my day Pluto was a planet” whereby I responded, “back in my day Pluto was a dog”. I guess everything is relative. I’m just not sure I am ready for my music to take a step back from a quality perspective. I’ll stick with the compact disc until someone can convince me that they can provide a high-quality lossless file in downloadable electronic format. Until then don’t take away my CDs sonny!