I just read a really good post from Martin Weller on Ed Techie called Ownership ain’t what it used to be. Talking about web-based music sharing services such as LastFM, and having just signed up to Spotify, Martin says:
It brought back to me some considerations I’d had about the nature of ownership. My generation will have a distinctly different concept of ownership to that of my daughter’s generation. For my generation you partly constructed your identity around what you owned – your bookshelf, record collection and DVD archive were important aspects of who you were (as anyone who has read Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity will appreciate). But for the digital generation this strong link with ownership has been broken.
It took time and money to build up any of those collections. Therefore they demonstrated a commitment which was worth exhibiting. In a digital world this effort is greatly reduced, and as a result so is the emotional attachment one feels towards them.
This rings very true to me. I’m also interested in a slightly different aspect to this. When I first bought an iPod for myself (about 3-4 years ago), I went for the small ‘Nano’ model knowing that it had limited capacity (around 2GB if memory serves). My CD collection could not possibly fit on this device – but I did not mind. I didn’t see the iPod as a replacement for the media I owned, I saw it as a convenient way to get access to my favourite music – where ‘favourite’ could be a flexible category. I distinctly remember an argument with a colleague who was horrified that I would extract just one or two songs from a particular album – I think he saw this as a kind of desecration of an artwork. I realised at the time that I might be more of a consumer than a connoisseur of popular music (I definitely preferred the ‘punk single’ to the ‘concept album’). However, it was only when I started to buy the odd tune from iTunes that I realised something more profound had changed. I could now buy a single tune, from an album, without needing to own, or even know or care, what ever else might be on that album. In the last three years I have only bought one album for myself (a CD from Amazon), because it was cheaper than buying the 6 songs I wanted from iTunes. I don’t take any particular pride in my CD collection: for some time I have had a vague plan to archive it all to disk (quicker than being selective), make sure I have a good backup, and dispose of the CDs. But as Martin points out:
Imagine a service like Spotify greatly increased so you could find any artist, and with mobile devices, get access anywhere. Why do I need to own any of these tracks then? I can get them whenever I want, and isn’t that the point of ownership, to have access under your control?
We’d certainly need to closely examine the ‘access under your control’ part of such an arrangement but this is, nonetheless, an attractive proposition to me. Will I feel the same way about books, I wonder, once, or indeed if, devices for reading eBooks become so good that I no longer need the paper format?
Martin talks about this in the context of identity – and how ownership of music was a major signifier in how certain generations (mine included) of young people constructed their identities. He speculates that this will now change with current generation of young people. But I’m also interested in a more prosaic matter: If you stripped my house of CDs (not forgetting vinyl records and cassette-tapes) and, more significantly, books, then my home environment would be changed dramatically. I already think twice before buying reference books – knowing that there is a wealth of good reference material on the web.
Clearly, aesthetics matter also. There is pleasure to be had in handling a nicely formed book. Album covers on vinyl LPs can be beautiful (something which was lost with the move to CD). Bearing this in mind I predict that, ten years from now, I will have disposed of:
- 100% of my cassette-tapes
- 99% of my CDs
- 99% of my DVDs
- 99% of my vinyl singles
- 70% of my vinyl albums
- 50% of my books
Instead, I will have access to massive amounts of data storage – not necessarily owned by me, and access to huge libraries of music, film, text etc. via excellent client hardware and software.
Now, what will I do with all that shelf space?
N.B. I realise that my views on music may be partly a product of age – I certainly care a little less passionately about specific pieces of music now than I did when I was much younger. (I once stopped talking to a friend for a while at school because they said the Smiths were rubbish, when they were clearly supreme at the time) 
Tags: SaaS
Hi Paul, thanks for the link. There will be artefact purists who _insist_ on having the physical object. Vinyl is a good example of this – there exists a group of vinyl purists out there. But this is very small compared to the rest of us who just want the end-product (music, film, etc) regardless of the actual format. I do have some nostalgia for the vinyl album, the gatefold sleeve, etc, but there are also so many other functional benefits one gets from being digital.
Re. downloading one or two tracks – Clay Shirky had a good piece on this: http://many.corante.com/archives/2007/08/01/new_freedom_destroys_old_culture_a_response_to_nick_carr.php
There is a slight reversal to this I’ve noticed – if downloading from BitTorrent (ie free) then the attitude is that you may as well grab the whole album. But the album is, as David Weinberger has noted, an artificial concept that was linked to the economics of physical products anyway.
And you were quite right to stop speaking to your anti-Smiths friend. I always think it demonstrates a certain character flaw…
Martin
Martin,
thanks – hadn’t seen the Shirky post before, although I do remember Nick Carr’s post which it criticises.
The bit-torrent effect is interesting – the matter of unit-cost(none) and storage costs(negligible) come into play here.
I am intrigued by your ideas around ownership and identity. It’ll be interesting to see how my own children – too young presently – form their adolescent identities in a few years time….
Paul
Got to read this via paul’s announcementon Twitter that he blogged about this. Just Hard disked my CD collection,and fall in love again with forgotten tracks at my fingertips. Will think about identity and ownership again – indeed I ‘added’ missing albums via bittorent. Enjoyment of great music has (yet) not diminished.
I totally agree with your general attitude to single tracks vs. whole albums and bought an iPod Shuffle as my first iPod for exactly the same reasons as you – even now that I own an iPhone I still only download my favorite playlists to it – not whole albums.
I disagree with your prediction about ‘disposing’ of so much stuff. Carefully preserved in the loft would be my take on it. One of my kids recently got a set of DJ decks and being able to get all my old vinyl out of the loft and listen to (some of) it again is fantastic. Most of it is crap. Part of me wants to digitise it – but it won’t happen – it’ll just go back up into the loft for another 10 years or so. Likewise with cassette tapes. Books are different (more artifactual!) and i find it harder to believe that even 50% of them will have gone – but maybe you are right.
PS My daughter (19) still buys and owns a lot of physical CDs and my son (15) is now buying vinyl much more rapidly than i did at his age so perhaps things are not that different?
bas,
your point about finding ‘forgotten’ tracks is a good one. I have enjoyed that experience myself in the past. But, to an extent, it has been replaced with the serendipitous discovery of new music through social networks such as LastFM.
Andy,
to be honest, my vinyl LPs are already in the loft. I don’t even own the hardware capable of playing them anymore! My feeling is that I never will again… hence my prediction that I will dispose of most of them at some point. I can imagine the same scenario arising concerning CDs….
But, as you say in your next comment, perhaps it hasn’t changed as much as we might suppose….
I own a vast collection of vinyl and a healthy collection of CD’s with a good hundred on my Amazon wishlist waiting to be bought.
Andrew Dubber (@dubber) has a good point in his article about is music fidelity important? http://tinyurl.com/6qtqko
“Records are for listening to, digital files for having on“.
I think for me, listing to music while I’m at work or on the train an iPod with a good pair of headphones is as good as you can get while being out and about.
However when I’m at home, I enjoy shutting the door to my office putting a vinyl or CD on my 20+ year old hi-fi and enjoying the wonderful music fidelity I can experience using that system.
Doing all of that doesn’t involve the digital world of iTunes or LastFM yet as they’re too foreign to that physical ritual and I can’t see them being part of it yet for a very long time.
Guess Andy said a similar thing, but a fair few friends of mine around their early 20s have turntables (mainly ex-students of the Royal Northern College of Music) and buy more vinyl than I ever did. Haven’t bothered to check but I believe vinyl sales are growing, though still much lower than in the past.
Also with Julian – ITunes downloads are generally not great quality. It’s really quite noticeable through a half decent hifi system. With classical and some jazz it’s not an option.
Ade,
interesting point about the 20 somethings and vinyl. I guess it’s the difference, as I said, between the connoisseur and the consumer. While plenty of people do care about sound quality, iTunes has demonstrated that the average punter (this includes me) are prepared to give up a measure of fidelity in favour of all kinds of convenience.