I was all up for swapping my Teac for a DAT player. Luckily I thought I’d wait until there were a decent selection of records available on DAT… Which never happened. That saved me from buying a Digital Audio Paperweight, and was the reason I thought twice about MiniDisc. Of course burning your own CDs became easy shortly after.
None of which ‘killed music’ like the record execs told us it would. Remember the skull and crossbones with a cassette as the skull that was printed on the inner sleeves of albums? Now it’s online streaming, some bands even give music away (although probably those like Radiohead who can afford to as a gesture or unknowns going for exposure). For me, the sad thing about streaming is its changed how people listen. The Hotmetalette says “why pay for an album when you only want one song?” but whilst that might apply to bubblegum pop, it misses the point about the album as a curated art form designed to be experienced as one. And even where the album is nothing more than a collection of thematically unrelated songs, I’ve lost count how many albums I bought for the one song you knew, and ended up liking pretty much every other track on the album more, after the catchy number you bought it for has lost its appeal.
I think that is why “home taping didn’t kill music”. You’d tape a few songs off the radio, or your mate would record his latest favourite mix tape and give it to you to demonstrate his impeccable taste, and before you knew it, you’d discovered a load of music you would not have bought because you had never heard of it, but you’d be down Our Price or HMV on Saturday morning with your brown envelope from Friday night in your hand and come out with 2 or 3 LPs off the back of having been given a C60 with ‘pirated’ tunes. And you’d be excited. Now it’s streaming, music is literally consumed like water, electric and gas. Another monthly payment, hit shuffle, ignore. I’m equally guilty of that, I’ve got an Innuos which holds all my CDs, but also streams and plays Internet radio. Sounds at least as good as a good CD player, but I find my attention wanders and it becomes background noise that I find myself consuming rather than mentally engaging with. If I can be bothered to dedicate listening time I play vinyl on my TW Acustic Raven and it’s a completely different experience, just because you go through your record boxes, choose something you want to listen to, cue it up, and for the next 20 minutes or so you listen, until it’s time to turn it over.
I have heard there are even hipster DJs who run nights where everyone sits and listens to an album all the way through like the artist (maybe) intended, as if this is some kind of novelty. It may well be a novelty if you are below a certain age, but years ago that was what most people did.
