We are being ruined by the iPod.

Ok, not really, but you probably want to read on...

I'd meant to post this New Republic Online article a while back, but never got around to it. It's a new take on my favorite personal device that points out one of the negative consequences of the endlessly burgeoning iPod culture.

The article, for the most part, has me nodding my head in agreement, but here is one of my favorite excerpts:

But there's a dark side to the iPod era. Snobbery subsists on exclusivity. And the ownership of a huge and eclectic music collection has become ordinary. Thanks to the iPod, and digital music generally, anyone can milk various friends, acquaintances, and the Internet to quickly build a glorious 10,000-song collection. Adding insult to injury, this process often comes directly at the Rock Snob's expense. We are suddenly plagued by musical parasites. For instance, a friend of middling taste recently leeched 700 songs from my computer. He offered his own library in return, but it wasn't much. Never mind my vague sense that he should pay me some money. In Rock Snob terms, I was a Boston Brahmin and he was a Beverly Hillbilly--one who certainly hadn't earned that highly obscure album of AC/DC songs performed as tender acoustic ballads but was sure to go bragging to all his friends about it. Even worse was the girlfriend to whom I gave an iPod. She promptly plugged it into my computer and was soon holding in her hand a duplicate version of my 5,000-song library--a library that had taken some 20 years, thousands of dollars, and about as many hours to accumulate. She'd downloaded it all within five minutes. And, a few months later, she was gone, taking my intimate musical DNA with her.

Oh, how it's true! The acquisition of music--huge amounts of music-- has come down a few fleeting moments with friends (and sometimes people who aren't even friends) through iPod updates, burnt CDs/DVDs, and the like. The problem was introduced when CD burning began, but looking back, it was merely a nuisance then whereas now the idea of cloning music collections is simply what's accepted.

And I'm not here to point fingers. I certainly have gained my share of new music from others' iPods, "digital libraries," and burnt CDs. But I do regret that the whole sanctity of one's music collection is forever changed. This is probably one of the reasons that despite the ease and bargain of purchasing albums off iTunes ($9.99 for any complete album is a steal), I still try to make a point to go to record stores to browse the aisles. For my most favorite artists, I almost always pick up the actual CD. While some would argue that liner notes and plastic cases take up unnecessary space, these things are priceless to me. I think it's my attempt to try and preserve the "thrill of acquisition" as mentioned in the article, and my small effort to see that CDs don't become completely replaced by intangible files on a computer. Heck, I know for sure that someday I want my own record player. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned like that.