So I am officially on the numbers and symbols of the Alphabetical Ipod experiment, and it’s a good feeling. I just shifted to 1,2,3,4 by Feist, and I’m excited to close this chapter of my musical listening life. Just yesterday I purchased a new vinyl record, and have updated my itunes to include a bunch of new songs. I think it was fitting that as of 11:11 on 1/11/09, I listened to Less that Two by Steve Burns, remembered that I’d be finishing this silly experiment, that consumed the entirety of my recent iPod listening experience. Did I learn anything from trying to listen to all of the 7526 songs on my iPod in alphabetical and numerical order? Perhaps, that sometimes you can’t let yourself be overcome by rigidity. You have to loosen up in order to have a little fun.
Music can be a lot of things to a lot of people, and I would consider myself a music geek. However, I think that this project was liberating from the idea of shuffle at first, but then became something more, a constricting aspect of listening to music. What happens if you no longer can experience an album from start to finish, in the order that the artist originally intended?
I am a firm believer that when you only listen on shuffle, skipping to the next song, the value of the music gets lost very quickly. So what is the value of music then? It’s whatever you would consider it to be. How much would you be willing to spend for your favorite artist’s latest album? Now how much more would it be worth to you if your favorite artist hadn’t released an album in five years? What about ten years? What about if your favorite artist hadn’t played a show in twenty years and was returning to play a show in your hometown. Now what would you do if you had never discovered your favorite music artist. That would be what happens if you never give a song a full listen.
I can say that I’ve wanted to get into many artists on my iPod, and want to try new albums from existing artists after having listened to my iPod in full (or almost in full). For spending money, after rent, bills, food, and cat food, it will be music purchases, to fill up the iPod, and possibly branch out to listen to more varied artists in the future. The world will always need music, and luckily, I find myself in a position to help provide at least a portion of that to the general public.
Still, overall, I am glad that this may be one of my last posts (or the last post) with regards to the Experiment. I tried to tell a larger story, and I hope that the posts didn’t get old, or tedious. I sometimes have a tendency for redundancy, especially with writing so hopefully you’ve liked it!
Current song: 2+2=5 by Radiohead (7441 out of 7625)
