I love CDs. There you go I said it – I feel better. In this day and age not many people of our generation share this feeling. Apparently, CDs are outdated: better and often cheaper ways of obtaining music are vastly preferred nowadays. The space-consuming and old fashioned accumulation signs of one’s music tastes all over your shelves is a thing of the past and with the last highstreet music retailer, HMV’s future in doubt, it could say that those of us who still believe this retro way of listening to music is still superior are to be extinct sooner than we expected.
The reason that I think that it is such a shame that this medium is disappearing is the affect it has on the way we actually listen to music – not just how we listen but the way that we listen. When an album is recorded the artist thinks about the order in which the tracks are arranged and the way different tracks can be linked together, and we lose that with our iTunes on shuffle and personalised playlists.
Recently I downloaded iTunes and began the massive process of uploading my CD library onto my laptop and it has already struck me how lazy I am being in regard to listening to music the way the artist intended; I flick through songs or pick out odd ones from an album, something I swore I would never do. If CDs disappear will this be followed by the end of the album as we know it? Artists are revolutionising the consumer’s relationship with the musician: Kaiser Chiefs released a wide selection of tracks and allowed their fans to pick’n’mix their own album!
Perhaps I am just imagining a nightmarish Orwellian-esque future where we all have iPods implanted into our brains and through universally linked cybernet we download tracks just as artists have recorded them, but it does beg the question: if no hard copies of albums are produced, will the nature of the album change?
Obviously I’m sure this is just scaremongering on my part and the fact is that this decline is well documented and the nature of the album has not yet changed. How you respond to that is probably an indicator as to whether you privilege the artistic intention of the musician, or your own personal prerogative and tastes.
Regardless, since the fast decline of CD sales, there has been a slow but steady increase in vinyl sales; it seems the decline of the CD has caused a revival in its parent medium. So HMV’s future may be in doubt but I do not believe the prospects are bleak for those of us who still love albums, I am sure Amazon will carry on selling the shiny discs we so desire and if not, it might just be time to buy a turntable.