The New Republic considers the downfall of rock snobs!

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And the iPod made it all possible! Sample non-shockah text:

Speaking of book-collecting, the philosopher Walter Benjamin spoke of "the thrill of acquisition." But, when everything's instantly available online, the thrill is gone.

Benjamin also savored the physical element of building a collection--gazing at his trophies, reminiscing about where he acquired them, unfurling memories from his ownership. "The most profound enchantment for the collector is the locking of individual items within a magic circle in which they are fixed," he said. But there's nothing magic about a formless digital file. I even find myself nostalgic for the tape-trading culture of Grateful Dead fans--generally scorned in the Rock Snob world--who used to drive for hours in their VW vans to swap bootleg concert tapes. My older brother still has a set of bootleg tapes he copied from a friend some 20 years ago during a California bike trip. Having survived global travels from Thailand to Mexico, the tapes have acquired an almost totemic quality in his mind. I feel the same way about certain old CDs, whose cases have become pleasantly scuffed and weathered during travels through multiple dorm rooms and city apartments but still smile out at me from their shelves like old friends. Soon our collections will be all ones and zeroes stored deep in hard drives, instantly transferable and completely unsatisfying as possessions. And we Rock Snobs will have become as obsolete as CDs themselves.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 19:24 (twenty years ago)

I mean for god's sake, I'm CELEBRATING exactly what he describes towards the end there for the sole reason that's a lot easier to move all that stuff around! To heck with Rock Snobs, death to Pack Rats!

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 19:25 (twenty years ago)

the thrill of acquisition is decidedly NOT gone

― j blount (papa la bas), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 19:30 (twenty years ago)

It's just moved to 100-copy CDR runs.

"And I didn't have to get on SLSK for it MAAAAAAAAAAN."

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 19:31 (twenty years ago)

Even worse was the girlfriend to whom I gave an iPod. She promptly plugged it into my computer and was soon holding in her hand a duplicate version of my 5,000-song library--a library that had taken some 20 years, thousands of dollars, and about as many hours to accumulate. She'd downloaded it all within five minutes. And, a few months later, she was gone, taking my intimate musical DNA with her.

This, too, seems like a good thing. Used to be, at best you could turn a friend on to a CD or two. Now, in minutes, you can actually overwrite their lame-ass library with your own Archive Of Genius. It's like throwing out all of their bad CDs...

What a rush.

― rogermexico (rogermexico), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 19:34 (twenty years ago)

it takes longer than five minutes to dl 5,000 songs.

― j blount (papa la bas), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 19:36 (twenty years ago)

You weren't saying that when you jumped for joy at finding that Billy MacKenzie cd!

― Last Of The Famous International Pfunkboys (Kerr), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 19:41 (twenty years ago)

i still like to buy CDs, records, and cassettes.

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 19:41 (twenty years ago)

You weren't saying that when you jumped for joy at finding that Billy MacKenzie cd!

The exception that proves the rule! (Cause one CD is easier to move than a thousand. ;-) )

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 19:44 (twenty years ago)

you're only a rock snob if you don't share.

― hstencil (hstencil), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 19:47 (twenty years ago)

Am I in the wrong here?

― The Brainwasher (Twilight), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 19:48 (twenty years ago)

So wrong. Who cares if they have your music. It doesn't change a single thing. You either enjoy discovering (discovering, not acquiring) new music, or you don't. And just because your friend has Pacific Ocean Blue on her hard drive doesn't mean she's going to appreciate it or that she's going to have any clue as to what it is. You'll still have your secrets. But I gotta say, I've given out hundreds of gigs of music to friends in the last year or two, and it's much, much more satisfying when they look you up and say they've gotten into some obscure corner of your collection. Don't hide your light under a bushel, man!

― Billy Pilgrim (Billy Pilgrim), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 20:00 (twenty years ago)

My friend rather cleverly started calling Andre 3000, "Andre 'Bean-hya-mean" in honor of Walter (and Andre).

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 20:01 (twenty years ago)

I never really thought "rock snobbery" was about what you owned--it's what you know. It's about knowing what's singular, what's 'important', what's interesting, what's influental, what's obscure.

You can give all the 12-CD people a great collection but they will still be clueless and probably won't give a shit in the first place about your Sparks or Beefheart records. So yeah, nothing's really going to change.

― Keith C (lync0), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 21:40 (twenty years ago)

"Soon our collections will be all ones and zeroes stored deep in hard drives, instantly transferable and completely unsatisfying as possessions."

not if you don't want them to be! I mean, duh.

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 21:42 (twenty years ago)

I never really thought "rock snobbery" was about what you owned--it's what you know. It's about knowing what's singular, what's 'important', what's interesting, what's influental, what's obscure.

Amen. Although a record snob without a record collection is pretty lame.

― poortheatre (poortheatre), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 21:48 (twenty years ago)

Is it? If the point is *knowledge* and information exists in a new format, then... (Of course the trick is not to be a snob with the knowledge -- informative but not snooty!)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 21:54 (twenty years ago)

well. i've got no problem with the sharing or the death of snobbery or whatever. and since i'm dirt fucking poor and not a critic, my source for music is totally the interweb. but i will admit that there's not the same thrill of opening the wrapping and reading the liner notes and putting the disc on when you can ~~get~~ steal pretty much everything online.

i mean, i'm more than okay with these developments, but there is something very cool about buying an album.

― mookieproof (mookieproof), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 21:55 (twenty years ago)

if ILM proves anything, it's that the Internet has effectively killed musical snobbery!

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 21:57 (twenty years ago)

no it doesn't!

― mookieproof (mookieproof), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 21:59 (twenty years ago)

i bought a sealed copy of kilroy was here by styx and a double album by pentangle at the thrift store the other day. grand total: 50 cents. you can be dirt poor and read liner-notes.

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 22:01 (twenty years ago)

you might have more trouble with more recent releases, though, eh?

― mookieproof (mookieproof), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 22:02 (twenty years ago)

no it doesn't!

; )

scott is right though...vinyl is the people's champ for the cheap consumer! tons of awesome records for next to nothing!!!

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 22:06 (twenty years ago)

I never find these caches of super-cheap records. Even Half-Price Books charges 5-7 bucks for vinyl in good condition.

― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 22:23 (twenty years ago)

The thrill of acquisition isn't gone. I had an album in my Soulseek wishlist for 8 months, and all I got was a Japanese speedcore single. Then, two nights ago the whole album came up, black and ready to download. It made my day.

― WillS, Wednesday, 24 August 2005 23:13 (twenty years ago)

I never find these caches of super-cheap records. Even Half-Price Books charges 5-7 bucks for vinyl in good condition.

DOLLAR BINS!!!

I spend like at least $50 (many times up to $100) on records in a week. That needs to stop BUT.. they are some of the only things I own currently appreciating in value.

― Ian John50n (orion), Thursday, 25 August 2005 04:19 (twenty years ago)

I feel the same way about certain old HARDRIVES, whose cases have become pleasantly scuffed and weathered during travels through multiple dorm rooms and city apartments but still smile out at me from their shelves like old friends. Soon our collections will be all ON IMPLANTED MICROCHIPS stored deep in OUR BRAINS, instantly transferable and completely unsatisfying as possessions. And we Rock Snobs will have become as obsolete as HARDDRIVES themselves.

― jhoshea (scoopsnoodle), Thursday, 25 August 2005 05:02 (twenty years ago)

Like many of you, I have zillions of CDs as well as zillions of illegally obtained mp3s. For some reason, I always say "I have that" when I'm asked about a CD I own in physical form, while I say "I've listened to that" when I'm asked about an album or songs that I only possess as mp3s.

Even though I realize it is a bullshit stance, I really have trouble with people speaking as if they own music when they only have listened to the songs. For me, you have to have read the liner notes and understood as much as you can about the songs' creation. This is still the trouble for me with paying for digital files: no notes.

― southern lights, Thursday, 25 August 2005 14:21 (twenty years ago)

But an awful lot of CDs I buy come with paltry inlays - one sided, no lyrics, no liner notes, a couple of pretty pictures if you're lucky. If I want to understand as much as I can about the songs' creation I head on t'web.

― ledge (ledge), Thursday, 25 August 2005 15:11 (twenty years ago)

actually scratch that..cassettes are really where it's at for bargains nowadays....man, you can find tons of classic late 80s rap for like a dollar a piece.

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Thursday, 25 August 2005 15:13 (twenty years ago)

I generally have no interest in reading sleevenotes or learning about why a song was created, context for me seems as likely to spoil as enhance something.

― Tom (Groke), Thursday, 25 August 2005 15:20 (twenty years ago)

I say "I have that" in reference to things I only have in digital form.

― jaymc (jaymc), Thursday, 25 August 2005 15:23 (twenty years ago)

dollar bins used to be ubiquitous. Now more often then not it's more about 2, 3, or 5 dollar bins. But there's always the Salvation Army...my most recent Salvation Army finds at a dollar a piece include the Change lp w/ Paradise and a Paul Haig LP.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Thursday, 25 August 2005 15:24 (twenty years ago)

Something I've noticed is that I forget now what I have and haven't got, on whatever format, so I tend to say, "I know".

― Tom (Groke), Thursday, 25 August 2005 15:25 (twenty years ago)

After I started buying records in the mid-eighties, the thrill of owning a physical copy of an album started to pale very quickly since most of the catalog stuff I was buying just looked like such shit (Let's hear it for The Best of Bobby Bland, Volume 2!!!) or succumbed to the deeply stupid practice of having a interior gatefold sleeve with no purpose for existing other than to show one dumb photo (NEIL YOUNG, DO YOU LOVE DEAD TREES?). Compact discs only made the situation worse.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Thursday, 25 August 2005 15:37 (twenty years ago)

The exceptions (like ultra-gorgeous box-sets, Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab vinyl, etc.) were always expensive as fuck -- with prices like those, they damned well better be exceptions.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Thursday, 25 August 2005 15:38 (twenty years ago)

Furthermore, I do have a sentimental relationship for some of my MP3s, like a terrible vinyl rip of one of Jorge Ben's versions of "Taj Mahal" I couldn't place for years (just found out it was on an 1977 album of his), or the full sonic contents of the long OOP CD-ROM for Carl Sagan's Murmurs of Earth that I d'led from USENET at work back in 2000 or so. (Never doing THAT again, no sir. For real.)

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Thursday, 25 August 2005 15:43 (twenty years ago)

thrill of acquisition as benjamin talks about it, as I understand it, is as a process rather than an end

so maybe in that sense the thrill of acquisition has been lost but the thrill of being in 'possession' of the music gone? no way! I still get it!

― cozen (Cozen), Thursday, 25 August 2005 15:49 (twenty years ago)

and in fact thinking about even under the first definition of the term I still love going record shopping

― cozen (Cozen), Thursday, 25 August 2005 15:50 (twenty years ago)

Fuck it. More than anything else involved with rock snobbery, I love getting people into things that they wouldn't have heard otherwise. So somebody doesn't appreciate the old jazz side or the fantastic psych track? So fuckin' what? If they play it more often, if they think "Oh yeah," when they hear about that artist, if other music reminds them of it and they seek out more music that they wouldn't have listened to otherwise: GOOD! I want to hear more good music myself, and I realize that there's more music out there than I'll ever be able to hear. If I can improve someone else's musical taste, maybe they'll turn me on to something. Or maybe they'll support a band that I like, making it easier for them to put out another album. Or maybe they'll start a band themselves.
The only problem I have with mp3s is that they do have shitty fidelity. But hey, if I keep going to shows, even with earplugs, my hearing will get worse and worse anyways and it'll be the song I remember...

― js (honestengine), Thursday, 25 August 2005 16:20 (twenty years ago)

Hey, Michael:
http://www.wfmu.org/Playlists/Doug/doug.000623/bland.gif

― Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Thursday, 25 August 2005 18:59 (twenty years ago)

The only problem I have with mp3s is that they do have shitty fidelity

This ain't the thread for the old which encoder/bitrate argument, but suffice to say compressed audio files don't need to sound bad.

― rogermexico (rogermexico), Thursday, 25 August 2005 19:06 (twenty years ago)

(xpost)

Sadly, though, I can't find a pic of The Best of Bobby Bland, Volume 2 anywhere on the net to explain just what I mean.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Friday, 26 August 2005 01:00 (twenty years ago)

Roger: They don't NEED to, but 99.999999% of the ones that you're going to find on an iPod will.

― js (honestengine), Friday, 26 August 2005 01:56 (twenty years ago)

i'm sentimental about certain mp3s too!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 26 August 2005 02:05 (twenty years ago)

Wow, this article really commits the physical fallacy, which is thinking of goods and services as having intrinsic values independent of markets. That's a complicated way of disproving the notion that because someone "has" your record collection physically that it's of the same exact value to both of you. It'd be like thinking that if someone was able to form a rock band called "the Beatles" today without any legal trouble that they'd be any more likly to score #1 hits or write good tunes. Just because someone has "your music" on their Ipod doesn't mean that they have the same knowledge of it. What your music collection has is your own personal preferences stamped all over it.

― Cunga (Cunga), Friday, 26 August 2005 03:15 (twenty years ago)

I was also gonna say that it is the actual knowledge of the music in the collection that is usually what is valuable to the owner. The mp3s are just the physical forms that they now come in. Transferring digital music to other people really doesn't give them anything (except less HD space) unless they listen to it and gain the knowledge themselves.

― Cunga (Cunga), Friday, 26 August 2005 03:40 (twenty years ago)

Hmm, interesting idea Cunga. I sometimes think about the idea of the social audience we think we might have when we have a music collection (when we don't at all). In other words, are music collections sometimes partly imagined with the view of another observer (who probably never arrives?).

For instance, it seems that there's a moment of social-ness in a store like Other Music that gives context to the purchase at the time, but that disappears when the album enters your shelf...

― paulhw (paulhw), Friday, 26 August 2005 12:28 (twenty years ago)

bump

― bump, Monday, 5 September 2005 22:29 (twenty years ago)

one year passes...

http://www.salon.com/books/review/2006/10/23/levy/

― J (Jay), Monday, 23 October 2006 13:51 (nineteen years ago)

I was recently feeling a bit like that author about eMusic - as awesome as it is, it's nearly obviated the need two of my favorite things - going to record stores and trading mixes with my best friend (who now also has eMusic).

― A-ron Hubbard (Hurting), Monday, 23 October 2006 14:10 (nineteen years ago)

Was sad to hear that Spencer Ackerman, one of the TNR's best writers (and rock snobs), has since become "Too Hot for TNR"

― marc h. (marc h.), Monday, 23 October 2006 14:30 (nineteen years ago)

Is it just me or is there a slow-to-start digital music backlash going on?

― Hoosteen (Hoosteen), Monday, 23 October 2006 21:49 (nineteen years ago)

There's always been one! And it's always been pretty boring in terms of not recognizing the dynamic at work. What one group sees as some sort of 'destruction of the real experience' is a new group's way of hearing things, a way that they know as a baseline, not as something 'new.'

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 23 October 2006 21:51 (nineteen years ago)

Exactly. Isn't it true that "in the beginning", many musicians felt threatened by the phonograph-radio combination because they believed it would be the end of live entertainment?

― shorty (shorty), Monday, 23 October 2006 22:35 (nineteen years ago)

i just wish mp3s fucking sounded better, that's all.

― M@tt He1geson: Real Name, No Gimmicks (Matt Helgeson), Monday, 23 October 2006 22:36 (nineteen years ago)

like i'm sure they can come up w/something way waaaay better than mp3 and aac encoding (they probaby already have i don't keep up on this stuff) that's just as small in size, so i'm really hoping hard copies of everything like cds, etc, will last until that becomes the standard, so everything can be re-ripped...also i hope there is always records cuz i love records....

― M@tt He1geson: Real Name, No Gimmicks (Matt Helgeson), Monday, 23 October 2006 22:38 (nineteen years ago)

vinylicious.

― Hoosteen (Hoosteen), Monday, 23 October 2006 22:49 (nineteen years ago)

physical fallacy, which is thinking of goods and services as having intrinsic values independent of markets.

I was wrong about the definition of the physical fallacy here but I still agree with myself that he does committ it.

In other words, are music collections sometimes partly imagined with the view of another observer (who probably never arrives?).

I think they definitely are. David Reisman once observed that most people listen to pop music with an imagined "other" being present with them and I think most people listen and collect with an imagined audience in their head.

There are all sorts of funny things that come into play with music and economics that I never thought about before until recently. The economics of expectations and the "winner's curse" is another one that happens a lot. An example of expectations playing a role in how you enjoy music would be like when you're in a setting where you would expect to NEVER heard a certain artist, genre or song and you actually hear it/them come on the radio. I'm usually so pleasantly surprised by the surprise of it all that I'll enjoy the song more hearing it come from this unanticipated place than hearing it on my own and for the 1000th time.

It's like when you're flicking around the radio and your favorite songs comes on and you get all excited about it, even though you wouldn't necessarily put it on on your own.

― Cunga (Cunga), Tuesday, 24 October 2006 01:44 (nineteen years ago)

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