With everything going HI-TECH, what is, left, for those of us, who’d, enjoyed the older things, huh??? Translated…
When was, the last time you sat down, and really, listened, to your, favorite music?
Recalling back in high school, buying and listening to CDs, was something sacred. From looking closely at the album covers, to studying the songs, and the musicians, to opening the CD up, to placing it into my discman (back then, you’d had to have the 10-second shock absorbent qualities to be “in”), and, we could always, play the same album, over ten times repeatedly, to the point, that every note became, second nature to us. And slowly, my high school classmates started buying those, high-end burners, and, although a burned CD cost only $100N.T.s, but, we were all, having a great time, burning the CDs. And, the MP3 Incident at Chenggong University, seemed to be, the dividing line of the physical music CDs, turning digital.
And, in a blink of an eye, over a decade had, passed by, and the digital music became, popularized, and, the streaming services became, the hottest way to listen to music in these past seven, to eight years. And, although, the vinyls started being synonymous with, retro and fashionable, but, it’s, very pricy, and takes up, a whole lot of space, and, slowly, it’d become, replaced, by the needs of the markets.
On the Jazz Festival last year, the recording studio, ECM in Munich, Germany, started going digital too, and, that was, the turning point, in digitizing music. That old brand that was set up in 1969, was the longest fighting Jazz record company that fought the digitization of music. Manfred Eicher who was, the founder of the company, was so picky of the sound quality, made the records, fitted, to the pickiest ears, plus the delicate designs of the album covers, those who are buying the ECM records, are like, selecting from the works of art. And, in the years that digital music started, taking over, ECM was, unaffected, it seemed. And yet, at the end of last year, ECM had announced its, merge with Universal Records, and, started, digitizing their precious assets for these past decade, to stream it online, it’d, broken the expectations of many of its, fans. A lot of the music lovers all felt loss, over that sacred feelings of shopping for the ECM records, and, they’d all felt, awful, for losing that last piece of nirvana in jazz music.
The convenience of digitizing music, sure had its, advantages. To the individual, there’s, no need for the space, to store all those CDs (although in certain corners of the world, the companies that streamed the music online still had a hard drive with all your information recorded), there’s no need to worry, the physical music getting too moist or destroyed. You can access the music, anywhere you are, anyway you like, you no longer needed to, haul along all those albums out, to be able to, enjoy an assortment of music. But, as music became too easily accessed, it’d, lost that quality of listening to it too. In the past, an album that you don’t really like all the songs on, after repeated listening to it, you’d, grown, fond to the sounds. And now, music is, disposed of, easily, before the music had, entered into your hearts, it’d gotten, discarded, thrown away already.
Perhaps, that ad by Takeshi Kaneshiro was true, as the world gets faster, the heart should, be slower. Perhaps, to completely, read through one volume of book, to listen to an album, from the first song to the very last, is the only way, to enrich our minds. In this brand new year, why don’t you all, give yourselves, a “slow” start?
And so, quality and that feel was, sacrificed, for convenience, and that, would be how things are, trending now, because in this day and age, we just, don’t have the time, to sit and relax, and listen to music leisurely, we’d, had our music inside our MP3 (are people still using that? Or am I, already, OUT-of-DATE???), with a wide varieties of tracks saved, and this, is why, the CDs are, going extinct, just like physical books are too!
Life, the Obstacle Course 