I. Prologue
Everyday I open my phone and hit play on like fifteen different songs before finally settling on a song that I’ve already heard five hundred times. Whether you use Spotify or Apple Music or YouTube Music or Amazon Music or Tidal if you’re weird, you have access to millions upon millions of songs. It’s fantastic. You can discover songs that come from all across the globe and across genres. You can go from listening to the Bee Gees to Chopin to Korean trot songs in just a few taps of the screen. Even if you aren’t subscribed to one of these streaming services, you can just go to YouTube and listen to literally ANYTHING. But maybe it’s not all amazing. Was the human mind ever meant to handle this much information?
II. The Shadow Over Streaming
Professor Caldwell set the package on her desk. It was from her aunt and uncle. They went missing in Patagonia a few months ago. She feared the package. Upon opening the box, she found that the artifact inside was small. Much smaller than the box suggested. It was an odd pill shaped object almost like a futuristic floss case. There was no note. She opened the pill and found that they were headphones. After slipping one in each ear, music started to play.
It’s a beautiful thing that you can listen to literally millions of millions of songs, but like are you actually though? Like the normal person maybe has a few thousand songs saved. Only the truly devout music listeners are going to listen to thousands of songs. But is it even possible to fully comprehend 1,000,000 songs. As much as this access to the discography of humanity can bring us songs that we never would have found otherwise, it is I think the intense choice of songs that eats away at precious time. It alters the way we listen to music. When grandma and grandpa brought home the newest Platters album from the record shop back in 1956, they gave it a full listen. Even when you could make your own playlists on a cassette or CD, there was something special about selecting and crafting the perfect playlist. Today, you can have a Spotify playlist that is 10,000 songs long. There is no careful consideration. And don’t lie to me, there is no chance you are sitting down for 800 hours to listen to all those songs. Our modern day interaction with music is cursory. We skip tracks and change playlists with no hassle. Music used to be something that demanded attention. Maybe a hassle is sometimes what we need.
Professor Caldwell looked at her wrist. It had been at least seven hours. Song after song, she listened. With this knowledge came power. She wanted more. She continued to listen.
III. Take Me Back to Takadanobaba
The weather in Tokyo was baking like every other day in July. I was up early to go to the Book-Off that was a short walk from where I was staying. In a few hours, I would board a train to Osaka. The night before I had seen a MiniDisc player in the display case: it was a Sony MZ-N910. It cost about $70. I thought it was cool but hadn’t known anything about MiniDisc players other than that Murakami Haruki uses one on his runs. After some research however, I realized that that was a bargain. The player was light blue and in perfect aesthetic condition, worth it for that alone. I bought the player and rushed back to my room. I had to catch the bullet train for Osaka.
The MiniDisc was Sony’s futuristic answer to the portable cassette. While the cassette had poor audio fidelity and the CD was unreliable in a portable format, the MiniDisc was the best of all worlds. Durable and portable like a cassette. High fidelity like a CD. The MiniDisc was the 90’s vision of the 21st century.
Steve Jobs, however, had a different vision. The first iPod came out at the start of the century and boasted its ability to be a thousand songs in your pocket. It was clear that the age of physical portable media was coming to a close.
When I returned from my weekend Osaka trip, I headed to a Bic Camera. I bought a mini USB cable and a box of new discs. Plugging the player into my computer, I tried putting songs on the blank discs. Recording worked. I unplugged it and played it back. Playback worked perfectly too. Included with the player, I even got a remote and an additional battery compartment. The player was beyond fantastic.
IV. The Point
Once more, she came to. Her cheeks were warm. Her watch suggested that five more hours had passed, but that made no sense. It should’ve been morning. How long had she really been listening? A day? A week? She had no way of telling. Tears were flowing down her face. The knowledge was becoming unbearable, but the music kept going. She knew that she must’ve listened to thousands upon thousands of songs. The outside world was collapsing into some macrocosm of itself. Her head was heavy. Dense with musical knowledge.
If you consider yourself a practical person, then continue to use Spotify or whatever. My appeal here will have no effect on you. But for everyone else, I ask you to consider how you listen to music.
Not only is our modern relationship with music relatively shallow, it is muddied down by infinite distraction. The fact that all of our music exists on an app on our phone is a wonderful convenience. And yet, it’s a curse. You open your phone to change songs. Your friend sent a message. Your other friend sent a brain rot reel about fish. You meant to check your email but end up looking through your playlists settling on nothing. Spotify and its ilk are at once a gateway to the wonders of human musical creativity but simultaneously lead us down paths towards distraction. What we gain in convenience, we are ironically losing in efficiency. The convenience of the smartphone has pushed our music into the background along with everything else in our lives.
So why should we use the MiniDisc or other such old devices and formats? It can change how you listen to music. When you get a MiniDisc, you have to put your own playlist on it. Unlike a Spotify playlist that can hold thousands of songs, your MiniDisc has about two hours worth of music. On one hand, this is a major hassle. So many songs we love and we only have space for about twenty. But it is your job to curate the perfect playlist of songs that you know that you love. When done right, all you have to do is sit back and enjoy. Your phone and all of its distractions can stay tucked away. By avoiding streaming, music ceases to be one more aspect of the indecipherable background noise of modern technology. We are able to give music its due attention as an artform.
Professor Caldwell woke one final time. The music had stopped. The earphones were on her desk. She couldn’t move. Her vision was fixed forwards. What had happened? She made a great effort to move. The wood floor screeched. She tried moving her arms. The sound of piano keys. She tried moving her left arm. The gurgle of bass notes. She tried moving her right arm. The shrill taps of the upper treble clef. She tried to open and close her mouth. The sound of a wood lid snapping shut. She began to panic and heard only the cacophony of an insane pianist! Oh, the abject horror! The esteemed professor tried to bear the knowledge of all musicality and only succeeded in becoming a wooden instrument! Was this the fate of her aunt and uncle? How could the human mind possibly handle such a wretched burden? Perhaps, it was best left well alone…
