A piece I am proud to present, which was written two weeks back now. One&Other gave me some wriggle room and - following the HMV crises - allowed me to write something that I hope will provoke discussion:
“For
a collector – and I mean a real collector, a collector as he ought to
be – ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to
objects”. Walter Benjamin, 1992.
Yesterday I sat in my usual pub, in my usual chair by the fireplace. I took a swig of scotch and tensed as the burn caught the back of my throat. Across the room two of the regulars were locking horns. After several minutes tones elevate and hands flail, moving light-hearted gents’ banter into a full-blown war: in one corner, the traditionalist – unkempt and sporting a Genesis t-shirt and a Walkman held together with tape; in the other corner, the modernist – white ear buds hanging from his shirt collar, using names like ‘Spotify’ and ‘Apple’ as verbal cannon fodder. The fact is that debates over the format and distribution of music have moved beyond the realm of barstool chatter to serious academic exchanges, and as such, my mind was in two camps when I was asked to write this article. My first thought was that somebody somewhere must have placed a serious bounty on my head in approaching such a contentious topic; the second was simply ‘where the devil am I to start’? It is very easy to sound evangelical when discussing physicality in record buying, however, and without wanting to come across too academic, I will endeavour to avoid too many jingoisms. That said, as I sit now in a room replete with CD cases, dust jackets and cassette boxes, I suppose it is fairly obvious on which side of the fence I reside. When HMV announced its administration earlier this month, my personal Facebook and Twitter accounts were rife with sobs from friends – those who defected to online outlets still found themselves mourning the loss of Britain’s most recognised multimedia store. It has always been de rigueur amongst music diehards to belittle the franchise for its commerciality and unashamedly mainstream focus, but because of that very position in their consciousness, its demise has been a hammer blow to both high-street and independent record buyers alike. For those of us who still enjoy filling our shelves, we appear more determined than ever to cling on to high-fidelity means of music consumption.
In record purchasing, ownership is a highly tactile, conspicuous experience. The act of physically ‘picking up’ your item and paying for it – or vice-versa, if you’re using a website – is a strangely personal one; the £9.99 exchange leaves you with something you can touch, an acquisition an experience in its own right. Whatever your poison, an album sleeve potentially colours your listening – from the fantastical landscapes of Roger Dean [Yes] to the stark brilliance of Peter Saville [Joy Division], the listener can choose to envelope themselves sonically and visually within something tangible, that really is theirs. A far cry came in September last year when the Sunday Times published an article challenging our ideas of ownership in digital music consumption. Silver screen veteran and known music collector Bruce Willis allegedly sought legal action upon discovering that his extensive iTunes library would revert to Apple when he dies, unable to pass it on to his family. Though the lawsuit was promptly dispelled as folklore, the article provoked quite a reaction with readers learning that those files and folders didn’t actually belong to them.
When discussing purchasing, I used the second adjective for a reason: coined by economist Thorstein Veblen in 1899, ‘conspicuous consumption’ is something increasingly practised by high-fidelity listeners as we find ourselves fighting against the digital market. I am certainly guilty, with the mere mention of ‘download’ forcing my hand toward the nearest shop like some unwieldy defence mechanism. Satirically depicted in Nick Hornby’s ‘High Fidelity’, the image of the collector has become one of near introversion: scribbling names, thoughts and dates in a little black book, unwilling to accept the ever-changing outside world. That is the cliché, and it can be construed as shallow to some.
Philosopher Walter Benjamin, from whom I take my tagline, postulated that our collections form a ‘material biography’ – that our dusty shelves reveal something unique about us as people. Indeed, my own personal record collection maps a trajectory that underpins the best part of a decade. Record ownership is profoundly social, a game of join the dots if you will. In my first year of university, I played a record by Pink Floyd to a guy I met at a mixer; the next day he came in with a CD case in his hand, threw it down onto my bed and said ‘dig this, man – David Gilmour produced it!’ Like a scene from ‘High Fidelity’, this is a record I can date with a snapshot of my personal history; a reminder of my first days as a freshman. Numerous sociological studies have been conducted to show that digital music libraries can also house such biographies – Marjorie Kibby’s ‘Collect Yourself’ warrants further exploration. However, there is nothing as ephemeral as that which can be erased by pressing a key, casting it off into a silicon no-man’s-land. Record or even CDs can decay physically just like their owners – scuffs, worn jackets or a mysterious stain – but ultimately continue to turn with the aid of the right mechanics.
The wealth of music open to the digital user is unprecedented – between legal and illegal sources there exists a boundless, readily available catalogue. Whether it is the instant gratification this medium provides, or perhaps that you have access to hours of music without risking disappointment, the appeal is easy to see: ‘every song you have ever owned in your pocket’ is enticing and liberating, waving goodbye to your cluttered, cobwebbed storage spaces. Having no fixed location frees us to take our music on the move, creating a mobile, ‘imperfect sanctuary’ in which to reside as we traverse our environments.
The choice afforded by your friendly neighbourhood record shop is always going to trumped by, say, the Apple store, but like the self-service supermarket, an interface can only take us so far before we require the services of a sentient being. Software can offer us suggestions, but it cannot ‘recommend’ to us in the same way; your local record junkie is always on hand to say ‘hey man, if you like this band, try the guitarist’s new solo album’ – if the projects are stylistically different, it is unlikely that a buzzword-based computer system will make the connection.
Operating economist Nigel Thrift’s ‘technological unconscious’, it is only when you begin to analyse the complexity of the processes involved, that user-friendly cracks appear. If these processes fail – power cuts, computer viruses and the like – our collections become dormant and isolated. I will never forget the week I spent carefully ordering my CDs and vinyl onto a portable hard-drive, only to be met with the message ‘your disk has corrupted and is unable to complete this operation’. Suffice to say I haven’t bothered a second time. My record collection is my back-up, my hard-drive – when my mp3 player packs in, I will still have a ground zero to return to. Call me shallow, but I like having something I can point to, something of which I can say “I bought that. I sat down and listened to that on this stereo, with these headphones”. Above questions of ownership and tangibility however, stands the true vernacular; we simply enjoy collecting and sharing things.
I believe it is too dramatic a leap to say that the record as an artefact is dead, and while file-based formats continue to supersede, a vast cottage industry exists for those willing to investigate. Giving new salience to Benjamin’s ideas, I move to suggest that combined, these formats serve two distinct purposes: my digital collection is the functioning offspring of what is on the shelf – I can take it out with me and listen on the move, but always return to the original at the end of the day. This is the true collection, the one that I continually nurture and love.
Yesterday I sat in my usual pub, in my usual chair by the fireplace. I took a swig of scotch and tensed as the burn caught the back of my throat. Across the room two of the regulars were locking horns. After several minutes tones elevate and hands flail, moving light-hearted gents’ banter into a full-blown war: in one corner, the traditionalist – unkempt and sporting a Genesis t-shirt and a Walkman held together with tape; in the other corner, the modernist – white ear buds hanging from his shirt collar, using names like ‘Spotify’ and ‘Apple’ as verbal cannon fodder. The fact is that debates over the format and distribution of music have moved beyond the realm of barstool chatter to serious academic exchanges, and as such, my mind was in two camps when I was asked to write this article. My first thought was that somebody somewhere must have placed a serious bounty on my head in approaching such a contentious topic; the second was simply ‘where the devil am I to start’? It is very easy to sound evangelical when discussing physicality in record buying, however, and without wanting to come across too academic, I will endeavour to avoid too many jingoisms. That said, as I sit now in a room replete with CD cases, dust jackets and cassette boxes, I suppose it is fairly obvious on which side of the fence I reside. When HMV announced its administration earlier this month, my personal Facebook and Twitter accounts were rife with sobs from friends – those who defected to online outlets still found themselves mourning the loss of Britain’s most recognised multimedia store. It has always been de rigueur amongst music diehards to belittle the franchise for its commerciality and unashamedly mainstream focus, but because of that very position in their consciousness, its demise has been a hammer blow to both high-street and independent record buyers alike. For those of us who still enjoy filling our shelves, we appear more determined than ever to cling on to high-fidelity means of music consumption.
In record purchasing, ownership is a highly tactile, conspicuous experience. The act of physically ‘picking up’ your item and paying for it – or vice-versa, if you’re using a website – is a strangely personal one; the £9.99 exchange leaves you with something you can touch, an acquisition an experience in its own right. Whatever your poison, an album sleeve potentially colours your listening – from the fantastical landscapes of Roger Dean [Yes] to the stark brilliance of Peter Saville [Joy Division], the listener can choose to envelope themselves sonically and visually within something tangible, that really is theirs. A far cry came in September last year when the Sunday Times published an article challenging our ideas of ownership in digital music consumption. Silver screen veteran and known music collector Bruce Willis allegedly sought legal action upon discovering that his extensive iTunes library would revert to Apple when he dies, unable to pass it on to his family. Though the lawsuit was promptly dispelled as folklore, the article provoked quite a reaction with readers learning that those files and folders didn’t actually belong to them.
When discussing purchasing, I used the second adjective for a reason: coined by economist Thorstein Veblen in 1899, ‘conspicuous consumption’ is something increasingly practised by high-fidelity listeners as we find ourselves fighting against the digital market. I am certainly guilty, with the mere mention of ‘download’ forcing my hand toward the nearest shop like some unwieldy defence mechanism. Satirically depicted in Nick Hornby’s ‘High Fidelity’, the image of the collector has become one of near introversion: scribbling names, thoughts and dates in a little black book, unwilling to accept the ever-changing outside world. That is the cliché, and it can be construed as shallow to some.
Philosopher Walter Benjamin, from whom I take my tagline, postulated that our collections form a ‘material biography’ – that our dusty shelves reveal something unique about us as people. Indeed, my own personal record collection maps a trajectory that underpins the best part of a decade. Record ownership is profoundly social, a game of join the dots if you will. In my first year of university, I played a record by Pink Floyd to a guy I met at a mixer; the next day he came in with a CD case in his hand, threw it down onto my bed and said ‘dig this, man – David Gilmour produced it!’ Like a scene from ‘High Fidelity’, this is a record I can date with a snapshot of my personal history; a reminder of my first days as a freshman. Numerous sociological studies have been conducted to show that digital music libraries can also house such biographies – Marjorie Kibby’s ‘Collect Yourself’ warrants further exploration. However, there is nothing as ephemeral as that which can be erased by pressing a key, casting it off into a silicon no-man’s-land. Record or even CDs can decay physically just like their owners – scuffs, worn jackets or a mysterious stain – but ultimately continue to turn with the aid of the right mechanics.
The wealth of music open to the digital user is unprecedented – between legal and illegal sources there exists a boundless, readily available catalogue. Whether it is the instant gratification this medium provides, or perhaps that you have access to hours of music without risking disappointment, the appeal is easy to see: ‘every song you have ever owned in your pocket’ is enticing and liberating, waving goodbye to your cluttered, cobwebbed storage spaces. Having no fixed location frees us to take our music on the move, creating a mobile, ‘imperfect sanctuary’ in which to reside as we traverse our environments.
The choice afforded by your friendly neighbourhood record shop is always going to trumped by, say, the Apple store, but like the self-service supermarket, an interface can only take us so far before we require the services of a sentient being. Software can offer us suggestions, but it cannot ‘recommend’ to us in the same way; your local record junkie is always on hand to say ‘hey man, if you like this band, try the guitarist’s new solo album’ – if the projects are stylistically different, it is unlikely that a buzzword-based computer system will make the connection.
Operating economist Nigel Thrift’s ‘technological unconscious’, it is only when you begin to analyse the complexity of the processes involved, that user-friendly cracks appear. If these processes fail – power cuts, computer viruses and the like – our collections become dormant and isolated. I will never forget the week I spent carefully ordering my CDs and vinyl onto a portable hard-drive, only to be met with the message ‘your disk has corrupted and is unable to complete this operation’. Suffice to say I haven’t bothered a second time. My record collection is my back-up, my hard-drive – when my mp3 player packs in, I will still have a ground zero to return to. Call me shallow, but I like having something I can point to, something of which I can say “I bought that. I sat down and listened to that on this stereo, with these headphones”. Above questions of ownership and tangibility however, stands the true vernacular; we simply enjoy collecting and sharing things.
I believe it is too dramatic a leap to say that the record as an artefact is dead, and while file-based formats continue to supersede, a vast cottage industry exists for those willing to investigate. Giving new salience to Benjamin’s ideas, I move to suggest that combined, these formats serve two distinct purposes: my digital collection is the functioning offspring of what is on the shelf – I can take it out with me and listen on the move, but always return to the original at the end of the day. This is the true collection, the one that I continually nurture and love.
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