Stephen Whitt’s book

I really do feel very guilty for lacking on the blog posts. I’m not sure exactly where my paper is going, so Im trying to get a little bit of my thoughts out for each of the books in blog format.

Anyways, this is mostly what i can recall from the week we talked about Whitt. I bought a physical AND digital copy of this book.

I think i had a very different musical experience growing up than a lot of my other friends. While many of my friends fondly remember trying to download mp3s to turn into their ringtones off sketchy websites with a million pop ups, i was always too anxiety ridden to do so. 

i do however remember collecting cd’s and saving the songs to my computer, but still getting that small wave of anxiety doing so. even though i wasnt doing anything “wrong.” i thought all music must be bought. most of my friends had itunes giftcards, and id beg for ones for christmas just to be able to get new songs. whenever someone would ask me what kind of music i liked, what bands i was interested in, i never was able to make a long verbal playlist like my friends. i think it all really had to do with access.

now its a lot different. free streaming services have given me access to a wave of music at the tip of my fingers. my dad is in constant awe of the songs im able to find from his generation that “completely slipped his mind.” we talked about records i think in class the week we discussed whitt’s book. this wasnt in the book, but i began to wonder why some people my age collect records. i do, but i never really thought about w h y. perhaps were all just nostalgia junkies. we like to imagine how life was when we werent there. we see shows like stranger things and copy the style, the aesthetic of the time period we’ll never know how to exist in. i had a friend laugh at me a couple years back for saying i still buy cd’s for artists i really like. i dont see a problem with it. i like them, i want to support them. a friend of mine in class even had a conversation with our professor about cd’s after class. 

whitt talks briefly about the different forms of technology used to access music. homes used to all have a record player, and if you wanted to travel with your music you were doing it through portable radio. now we have music availble to us through our phones, through our watches, even. whitts book really made me wonder about the future of music, if things will continue to feel so free. will we be able to play music in our heads someday with the blink of an eye?