The Intangible Losses of the Move to Online Music Acquisition

There is no doubt that online music purchasing or sharing sites, such as itunes or etree.org respectively, have empowered new generations with unparalleled access to one of the most sacrosanct art forms in history. Lower prices, easier and larger access to diverse genres, and instant gratification are just a few reasons that can be offered for the idea that there is a net gain for individual music listeners. However, I argue that the mainstream discourse concerning the merits of the process of digitalization of consumer music, as found in Rolling Stone and other prominent publications, ignores several intangible sources of loss to listeners.

Sources of Intangible Loss to Individuals

The scope of this paper does not intend to create an exhaustive list nor to address what intangible gains digital acquisition may offer. Instead, it seeks to examine three sources of loss to individual listeners which are easily obscured in the race to embrace music downloading.

1) The Loss of the “Record Store”

As the recent closing of Tower Records shows, digitalization is moving the locus of music acquisition from a physical store to a personal computer. Record stores are, however, not just physical warehouses for commercial transactions; they are part and parcel of the musical experience itself.

Movies such as “High Fidelity” and “Empire Records” showcase the value of personal exchanges, such as the sharing of stories or suggestions between patrons during the purchasing process, which give added meaning to the listening experience. Intangible value derived merely from the physical acquisition experience itself is lost due to the absence of human contact through digital acquisition.

For example, a suggestion from an ex-hippie store owner may not only carry more weight with a rock fan than reading remote message board suggestions, it may be part of enjoying the musical experience itself. Thus, a listening of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963) might be more thoroughly appreciated by a young consumer in light of listening to the hippie’s tales of Dylan’s importance to the political movements he experienced first hand. Similarly, online discussions via message boards might not be able to adequately replace the value of body language in an in-person debate about whether Clapton or Hendrix was a better guitarist. In this sense, it might be hard to replace the record store as the locus for fan related interactions with online forums filled with anonymous personalities behind avatars.

I concede that many in-person facets of the acquisition process may have online equivalents, but such equivalents, lacking the sounds, colors and textures of a record store, may not preserve the complete musical experience as it stands today.

2) Loss of the physical album

The physical act of holding an album differentiates in-person purchasing from internet acquisition. First, finding an item “in stock” on a check out screen or “active” on a peer-to-peer site may not approximate the excitement of discovering a sought after album at the bottom of a bargain bin or finding the last copy of an album on a shelf because of the added sensory perception of touch absent in the online process.

Second, viewing an album cover online can inhibit a consumer’s ability to have a proper first impression of album cover art. Cover art is usually carefully chosen by the artist and it is, in most cases, meant to add a visual component to compliment the audio portion of the experience to complete one unitary work of art. A consumer only gets one first impression and a case can be made that the shock of walking into a record store and finding oneself face to face with a naked 13 year old girl on the cover of Blind Faith’s self titled 1969 album cannot be approximated by finding a small jpeg image of the same picture on itunes. Further, many commercial websites have strict decency standards which preclude some artist’s album art from being properly displayed whereas many independent record stores do not follow such guidelines.

Finally, a physical album is a permanent and tangible piece of art. Downloading music does not allow an individual to open an album jacket and view lyrics, liner notes and credits, nor does it protect her from a hard drive crash which wipes out her music collection.

3) The loss of the musical album

An album is the product of a careful process of selecting which songs to place in the final product and in which order the listener hears them. Often, the artist’s creation is necessarily dependent on the consumer’s appreciation of the entire entity.

Taken alone, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” cannot approximate the full experience of listening to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in its entirety. Perhaps the Beatles intended “Lucy” to prepare the listener, sonically or mentally, to appreciate the final, single note of “A Day in the Life,” which lasts for 42 seconds; a feat much harder to accomplish without the benefit of album context.

Further, online sources allow individuals to download a single song from a concept album, a work built around a single developing theme, which was expressly meant to be appreciated in its entirety according to the artist. Downloading a single song from The Who’s “Tommy” or Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” is tantamount to watching only one scene from The Phantom of the Opera; it may be fun, but it does not convey the full experience as designed by its creator.

Conclusion

Ultimately, online downloading may lead to a net gain, in both monetary and non-monetary terms, for individual listeners. However, the debate over this premise must acknowledge that the art form as it was known pre-downloading might not be the same art form once it is nearly universally acquired digitally. In order to truly understand the ramifications of moving to a download-centric consumer music model, intangible losses to individual listeners must play a role in the overall calculus.