My stereo system, from 1991, finally just stopped working about a year ago. I had a dual deck cassette player, CD player, receiver, and six speaker set-up that was in my corner library. I did not have a record player. In fact, I have never owned a record player. Until this Christmas.
As a Christmas gift my wife gave me a Victrola 6-in-1 Bluetooth Record Player & Multimedia Center. I can listen to my CDs, tapes, and now, for the first time, listen to records.
During Christmas break I visited our new used record store downtown to buy a LP. I was hoping for a Prince record, but they didn’t have anything at that time. I ended up buying Poco’s Legend album, which has one of my all-time favorite songs, “Heart of the Night”.
When I got home, I immediately put the record on (Side two though because that side started with “Heart of the Night”). I’ll be honest, I was excited. I dropped the needle down, heard that hollow crinkling sound and smiled. Then the first notes of “Heart of the Night” started to play… and I was hooked.
My record collection is at five albums, and yes one is Prince’s “Around the World in a Day”. Many of the times I am just chilling on the bed when I listen to any of the albums. Those moments remind me of doing the same in my teenage years. Most of the time with my best friend at his house listening to cassettes. I remember the trips to Casper to buy music.
The other day as I was flipping over an album to the other side, I thought about the change in our culture around music.
Like many kids, my children listen to music as they do homework, headphones on, YouTube or Spotify playing their playlists. All my children have CD players in their room. Their music collection isn’t vast, but they ask for music as gifts. We definitely listen to music in the car, I mean we spend a lot of time traveling and we have some fun playlist we listen to.
But, what is missing in their life is the personal cost of time and care it took when I was a teenager, and now revealed in what it takes to listen to an album.
Here is what I mean, to listen to an album I must take it out of the sleeve. Place it on the player, physically move the needle and when the side is done, I have to flip the record over. To listen to a record I know I have to invest time and care even to enjoy the music.
There is so much missing from the musical experience today. It was hard to find hard facts, but for streaming revenue a song only has to be played between 30 and 50 percent of the length. Another stat I came across was that listeners only complete 50% to 80% of a song when it is on a playlist. Completion rates were higher for album plays (GEARNEWS).
Music doesn’t mean the same to my children that it does for me. And part of the reason is that they have not invested anything in listening to music. Like anything in life, when we invest our time, our energy, our hearts, it means more to us.
Every physical form of music, LP, CD, cassette, and even 8-track cartridge, has a physical, emotional, and time cost associated with it. Each form is unique in those costs; fastforward / rewind for tapes, dropping the needle down, switching tracks if we want to hear a certain song.
But I think the most interesting factor is the commitment to listening. Every form can be background music, every form can be heard while just chilling in the room, but the physical forms will have a stopping cue, a moment that you have to physically change the format. Even CDs will end. But the deeper aspect is the anticipation of that favorite song coming on, even if we are using the music as a backdrop, we know that a particular song will be next, so we may choose to stop washing dishes to dance or sing along with the song.
The full experience of listening to music in physical form adds a depth to the moment that digital music usually misses or fails to create for us. And in that depth, we can remember other moments, feel a range of emotions, and share, like best friends chilling on the floor waiting for THAT song to play, a rich and wonderful time with someone.
I like digital music. Again, we have travel playlists we listen to in the car, but we don’t skip songs. We sing and, yes, dance to our favorite songs. But, my new Victrola has Bluetooth capabilities that I have not used. I would rather put a record on…
It is all Connected 