SPOILT BY CHOICE?

I was sitting in a coffee shop the other day, listening to Spotify. There in front of me was access to 20 million tracks, and I was thinking, ‘Is this a good thing?’ I remember many, many years before streaming sites, spending ages researching bands, and then (with excitement) planning my trip to the local music store to buy the cassette tape then CDs, using my hardearned cash. Then taking it home, and in exciting anticipation of playing it for the first time. Sometimes, I would spend weeks just listening to that one album (New Jersey by Bon Jovi springs to mind, as I wore the cassette tape out).

Now, we have so much choice, which is great for discovering new bands, but I noticed that with a lot of music I give the album one or two listens (if that) then move on. When faced with so much choice, sometimes I feel lost. Yes, if the band is really good I do still go out and buy the CD, but I think certainly for me the excitement and anticipation of the past has been lost in having so much choice. Dan Horne, Stevenage

Yes, unlimited choice can be a double-edged sword, can’t it? It’s certainly changed the way we listen – maybe to the detriment of our relationship with music, which has arguably become twitchy, casual and devalued by unlimited digital access. The editor of this magazine remembers, in formative years, listening to John Martyn’s Solid Air on vinyl with the lights off and being too lazy to get up and physically skip the tracks he liked least. However, such uninterrupted listening meant that he grew to appreciate and even love the songs that didn’t at first appeal. The physicality of vinyl – of lifting the needle and turning the record over – meant you had to engage in the ritual of listening to music a bit more. It made you hesitate to skip to the next hit, but linger on music that you didn’t at first appreciate but might come to in time. Compare that with iTunes or Spotify – where it’s so easy to restlessly jump from track to track that we’d argue few people listen to albums that way today. Maybe we should try to put the future behind us!