Buying Music

A friend of mine called me to talk about his music buying and listening habits. He had bought 14 albums on itunes in about two months and yet he only really listens to two of them. He was wondering why this was. It didn't seem he had such a low success rate when he used to buy actual cds.

This got us talking and thinking. When we used to buy cds, you'd put in in your player at home and or your car and listen to pretty much just it right after you bought it. But now it seems new purchases are just added to your itunes collection and don't get the focused listening as things had in the past.

A new purchase now almost is partly just to get your overall song count higher. You have the goals of how many songs you own. 10,000, 15,000, 20,000... Are we changing into music collectors rather than music lovers? IS it a bad thing to have purchasing music be so easy?

I also think part of it is in the days of buying cds, if you gave it a few listens and really didn't dig it, you could sell it or trade it. Now if you don't like your purchase you are stuck with it. And they become nothing more than numbers in your collection.

And buying many albums at once also stops me from giving things a good undivided listen. There is such a difference in going to the record store and dropping your hard earned cash for several cds. But it is so easy to put albums in your cart on itunes and click one button and, POOF! you have 48 new songs.

I like having my entire collection in digital form, but I think I need to change my listening habits to appriciate my purchases fully.