In Empire Records, a ’90s Renee Zellweger starrer about a group of twentysomething misfits working in a dying independent record store, the enemy is The Man — corporate America, major record label chains like Tower Records. Close to 20 years later and that notion is about as dead as Renee Zellweger’s career. The Enemy is not Tower Records; it’s not even William Miller. In 2011, the record store’s Enemy is the listener himself.
It’s a novelty nowadays, the idea of actually buying records in a record store. The steep decline of the record industry tells the story of how Napster, Limewire, and later iTunes killed the record store star. Today, music is cheaper, faster, and easier to purchase. One click on iTunes (if you’re one of those law-abiding listeners) or btjunkie (if you’re everyone else) and the album of this week’s dreams is on your desktop, nice and toasty like tomorrow morning’s breakfast.
This month, we face the consequences of our collective actions — the long-time-coming death of the compact disc. Side-Line music magazine reported that record labels are planning to abandon the format by the end of 2012, abandoning the dying beast for healthier, plumper animals like online and streaming formats. Attempts to get statements from top labels were futile but the magazine stands by its story. “We were approached by several people working with major labels, who indeed re-confirm that plans do exist to give up the CD. We keep on trying to get an official confirmation,” they wrote, “but it seems that the matter is very controversial.”
Life without the CD. It’s not so bad, right? I mean, why cry over something you haven’t cared about in the last decade? The death of the CD, however, signals another death — the death of the listener.
I stopped listening to albums the way people listened to new Bob Dylan records four decades ago. It used to be that buying an album was a commitment. After scouring a record store for hours, you would pick an album or two and promise to give it a real shot. You would pore over the liner notes. You would analyze the lyrics. You would study the album cover, why the artist picked this photo, what it’s trying to say about the piece of art (because as everyone from The Beatles to Death Cab For Cutie have long proven, the album is art). You would give it a shot — if it’s not great on the first listen, you’d give it a few more spins (Maybe it’s a grower?).
Today, if an album doesn’t tick off the checklist in a listener’s head (Melancholy guitar strumming? Tuneless-but-tuneful singing?), it’s easy to throw it in Trash (the app, not the can). Recently, I downloaded the new Gotye album. After a listen, I only liked three songs. I deleted the rest. After all, it’s no big deal. They’re just files on my computer, with about the same sentimental value as the to-do list RTF file I had on my desktop an hour ago.
The music world has adjusted, anyway. Today, few big stars bother putting together albums; they just make compilations. Rihanna’s new album isn’t a new album. It’s just the latest in a growing line of “Now! That’s What I Call Rihanna Music” compilations she’s been churning out since mid-decade.
We’ve changed also, of course. Take the case of another pop star, Katy Perry. She’s one of the biggest pop stars on the planet but when she’s not on the radio, you kind of forget about her. This is the new frontier — when it’s not on, it’s nothing. This is music that you don’t commit to. It wafts through the air like smoke in a club — gone after you get last night’s shirt laundered.
I’ve been listening to “Blood on the Tracks” for nine years now. It doesn’t get old. It only feels more and more like home.