A bittersweet look at ten years of MP3s

By Donald Bell on 04 April 2008

commentary In the '90s, when the MP3 was new, it was difficult to predict the medium's effect on the music industry and our culture. Today, the results of the MP3 revolution are starting to show, and I sometimes wonder what we won.

It's fitting that 2008 marks the 10-year anniversary of two of the first MP3 players, the Eiger Labs MPMan F10, and the Rio PMP300, but chances are you didn't listen to a first-gen MP3 player in 1998. With the first iPod still three years off, most of us were in the heights of our compact disc addiction 10 years ago, content to hear our music on portable CD players. Hell, some of us still listened to cassettes.

If nothing else, we've certainly redefined our notions of portability over the last 10 years.
(Credit: Donald Bell/CNET Networks)

The Sony Discman pictured above belongs to me. I never use it, but I like holding on to it because it reminds me of how amazing I once thought CDs were. Sure, they would skip like crazy, get scratched, or even break, but compact discs were the first medium to usher in the idea of "permanent" music -- albums that (if treated kindly) would never degrade over time. After a lifetime of warped LPs and worn-out cassettes, CDs seemed almost magical.

Today, most of us take for granted that our MP3s won't wear out or skip. In fact, there's tons of antiquated annoyances we no longer worry about in the age of the MP3. For instance, when was the last time you had to special-order your music at a record store and wait a week or more for it to arrive? When was the last time you wanted to hear an album you know you own but couldn't locate in the mess of your apartment? As the music in our lives has evaporated into noncorporeal ones and zeros, the troubled memories of acquiring and maintaining a physical music collection are quickly fading into the past.

Despite the advantages of the MP3, I'm willing to wager that somewhere in your home you have a shelf, closet, or box filled with CDs, records, or cassettes (maybe even MiniDiscs). Why do we hang on to these antiques? Is it nostalgia? Is it the fear of losing something we can't regain? Or are we just lazy?

Call it the MP3-era hangover, but even as online music providers are finally offering the DRM-free downloads we asked for years ago, I'm starting to realise that my fascination with the MP3 is starting to wane. As a music fan, I can't completely accept that MP3s are the end of the line. I won't be reviving my old Discman anytime soon, but I can't help but wonder if we've lost more than we realize in the process of virtualising our music collections.

I want to hear what you guys think, but to start you off, here's my list of music listening habits I had in 1998 that for reasons directly or indirectly related to the advent of the MP3, have died off. Admittedly, some of these habits are also related to the difference between being 19 and 29 (you can decide which are which).

Borrowing music
I know this may sound weird considering all the P2P music "sharing" going on these days, not to mention music-focused social networks such as Last.fm, but I miss borrowing CDs from friends. Like lending out a good book, lending music used to mean the lender actually gave up something, and that sacrifice imbued the music with personal meaning. Borrowing physical media also involves face-to-face interaction, oftentimes leading to great conversations. The modern age of copying, uploading, and linking to music has allowed me to discover new music at a much faster rate, but those discoveries seem much less personal.

Album artwork and liner notes
As far back as I can remember, whenever I brought home a new cassette or CD I would pop it in my stereo and immediately look over the album artwork and liner notes. Back then, I remember feeling ripped off if a group didn't include printed lyrics, but these days, I don't think twice that most of my music collection exists as a grid of basic metatags. Sure I can always jump on a band's MySpace page or Wikipedia entry if I want to know where they're from, what they're singing about, who their drummer is, or what their album cover looks like at full size, but I wish that information was still a part of the "product."

Used music
I spent more than two years of my life working in a new and used record store in Sacramento, where used CDs outsold new CDs about four to one. Used CDs not only offered our customers an inexpensive way to acquire new music, it gave people who were bored with their music a way to put money back in their pocket.

Putting aside my nostalgia for used music stores, I think we forget that MP3s are the first music format consumers cannot legally resell. Maybe I'm weird, but over the past 10 years, I've been happy to find myself on both sides of the used music economy -- selling CDs to make rent, and buying great old records at garage sales. iTunes has never helped me pay the bills, and aside from illegal file sharing, there's no way to put your MP3s back into circulation after you're tired of them.

Music as furniture
I've known people with CD and record collections that take up an entire room of their home. Personally, I love going over to a friend's home and seeing what's on their shelves (books, CDs, DVDs). As our music collections disappear from our shelves and become entombed in our computers and iPods, something gets lost. Sure, it means dinner guests can no longer judge your bad taste in music, but it also means that when you want to hear Nick Drake on a on rainy Sunday afternoon, you'll need to boot up Windows Media Player or scroll through your iPod. Personally, I miss having Nick Drake live on my shelf as a tangible part of my life, and I miss seeing friend's music collections laid bare for me to analyse and admire.

So how about you? What do you miss about how you experienced music 10 years ago? Has today's technology made you feel more or less connected to the bands and musicians behind the music you hear today? Has the shuffle feature on your iPod opened you to new music, or just erased your attention span? I really want to know, so sound off in the comments.

Topics: ipod, mp3, music, itunes, myspace, cds, years

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Comments (13)

  • chrome arctic commented on 12/06/2009 12:34 Report abuse

    i grew up in the late 80's eary 90's and listend to almost all my music with headphones. i own the cd player as pictured above "D-EG7", and although my zen vision has an equalizer you can customize, the sony sounds much better, especially the bass. i don't know how much is lost converting a cd track to mp3, wav or whatever digital format, but to me it sounds better direct from cd. i've parted ways with alot of vinyl,cassettes, and cd's from a practical standpoint. I have over 200 cd's stored on 9 dvd's. quite a space saver, however, i wish i has kept everything. especially gatefold L.P's. i'm sure alot of it is nostalgia, but music will never be the same from a marketing standpoint. especially with the on line sites like e.bay, it e bay. no more spending weekends scouring every college record shop or convention hoping to find that one rare single or bootleg sadly. I used to enjoy the physical hunt and scanning through Goldmine Magazine. memories that aren't avalible to be had anymore. consider myself lucky to have them, if only them

  • BayAreaBiker commented on 16/02/2009 19:22 Report abuse

    I have over a thousand cassettes. Many of them church services, TV programs, bike rides, among other things.

  • Jim H commented on 30/11/2008 18:44 Report abuse

    I have to say I think you're really understating CDs current existence. They still sell MILLIONS of CDs for big hits. CDs are not a "dead" format by any means. It's anecdotal, but personally I don't know anyone who buys ONLY MP3s. Why would they? Buying the MP3s, if you're actually interested in the entire album, is usually not much cheaper, and you don't get the physical discs, which many people still like to have. Just a thought.

  • garth commented on 19/06/2008 01:03 Report abuse

    I started with apye black box portable stereo that i carted everywhere all over aus in the 60's with my collection of lps which i stillhave(scratched and warped). i have now copied all of my cds and found mp3s of all the old ones. my collection is about 3500 songs which i burn onto individual cds for personal pleasure or i fit 620 onto a dvd for party times. the mixes are endless. things have changed all for the better

  • supafran commented on 04/05/2008 18:58 Report abuse

    MP3s still squash the dynamic range of a CD to something tiny. REAL artists spend hours in the studio making music that is put to CD then when its squashed and put to MP3 its not how the artist wanted the 'fan' to hear their music. Sure its a good way to put your CD's all on one device but I'd rather listen to music how the artist wanted me to listen to it.

  • Brennanc commented on 02/05/2008 21:11 Report abuse

    I must admit I do miss the days of frantically tapping my TEAC disk player in frustration. There was something about it that just makes me smile now. Maybe it is just because it reminds me of the good old days of my primary school years where everything was still simple =)

  • machine commented on 09/04/2008 14:58 Report abuse

    I felt the same way when CD's first arrived. I loved tapes (and records). I loved listening to an album from start to finish. I hated the idea that I could "skip" from one song to the next or "shuffle" the playlist. I wanted to listen to the album the way it was recorded (or the way the artist intended). A lot of albums--for instance, RHCP-BloodSugarSexMagik--were mastered without gaps between the songs. That was awesome! It was like one continuous track. I used to listen to that all the time on cassette. Then I got it on CD and it wasn't the same. Anyway, for me, the whole digital thing started with CD's, so be it CD or mp3, it still sucks not having an analog medium.

  • Dani commented on 05/04/2008 06:16 Report abuse

    CD > BETTER > TAPE. CD > BETTER > MP3 (320kbps to 128kbps). DVD-Audio Disk > BETTER > CD. Blue-Ray MD > BETTER > DVD AD. Mini Blue Ray MD > BETTER > DVD AD. Why not move from CD's to DVD's? Can you even compare a 700 Mb's CD to a 4.7 Gb's DVD disk? We could push Audio up yo 12.1 on a single DL-DVD. Wouldn't that better then the old Stereo or the downgraded MP3? Or even better, we could use Blue-Ray Media discs instead of CD's, that would put any mp3 to a shame. We could also use Mini Blue Ray MD which would could do the trick to.

  • Giorgio commented on 04/04/2008 19:14 Report abuse

    I have 3,000 CDs and close to 10,000 LPs and I love listening to full range sound. I occasionally listen to MP3 and invariably, unless it is in the car, feel cheated by the musical quality that chops large chunks of music from the original signal. Try listening to an MP3 encoded Cd on a good system and increase the volume, it is like using razor blades to scratch your brain!

  • sexy_shazam commented on 04/04/2008 18:07 Report abuse

    well im only 14 but i remember my first ipod i got when i was 11 it was a 4th gen white 20gb ipod and i remember that day i spent uploading every single cd i could find onto my ipod its amazing that 4 yrs on now im on my 3rd ipod (30gb white video) that if theres a song i want all i have to do is open my p2p aplication and get the song for a small or no price altho ever time i pass my local music store i can just smile and think woow people out there are still buying cd's i think we havnt seen the end of the compact disc yet, the cd will prob be round till 2011 - 2015 max the only question now is how long do u think the mp3 will be around for i to agree donald bell in that the mp3 surly cant be the end for music but i think it will prob be around for more or less 10 yrs just like it predessesor the compact disc

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