Confessions of a Nude Media Addict
Its been two days now that the MP3 peer-to-peer file server Im hooked on has been down and Im going through severe withdrawal. Several times a day, I compulsively crack my file-sharing program to see if its back up. Crushed that my connection is dry, I try to occupy myself in various ways: standardizing the file names of my MP3 collection to make them easier to read or intricately perfecting the files ID3 tags (the information encoded on an MP3 players display). When I get really hard up, I back up my files to CDs, neurotically transferring digital material from one medium to another, just to keep myself distracted. It all adds up to the equivalent of a junkie scratching his cheek between jabs.
Over the past week, a statistic caught my eye for which Im partly responsible: the music industry is now selling 100 million fewer CDs and cassettes than it did in 2000. Frankly, its been about that long since Ive bought a CD. And Im someone who has never thought twice about dropping $100 a week on discs–sometimes much more than that–since I was 14. Over the years I amassed a great collection. I dont care to recall the countless hours Ive spent combing through charity shops in Columbus, OH; open-air markets in Athens, Greece; rockabilly shops in Birmingham, UK; and street stalls in Calcutta. Ive picked though tables piled high with germ-laden rags just to get to vinyl buried underneath them in thieves markets near the freeways of Caracas. My trips to Amsterdam would have been worthless if not for the stacks of soul records Ive scored from the street junkies there. Ive trolled the dangerous underpasses of Lodz, Poland, in search of Eastern European hardcore discs Ive nabbed from Nazi punk rockers who desperately sell their collections for a pittance. Ive ditched friends from out of town at the 26th St. flea markets when Ive spotted a James Brown vinyl out of the corner of my eye; ignored my screaming kid at Tower Outlet over a crate of avant-garde classical cut-outs; dragged my long-suffering dog over the sweltering summer pavements in Flatbush in search of Caribbean music. My life, to this point, has been one long, endless quest for music. Until the Internet.
Now I dont leave my house. My ass is nailed to the chair and my eyes glued to the screen as I gleefully watch these same gems roll over the cable lines right into my download folder. Last weekend, on a family trip to the New Paltz area, I drove right by one of my favorite record stores, bragging to my wife and kid how I dont need to stop there anymore. As a result, Ive become a better person to be with–at least when Im away from my computer. Im lucky in that I have an understanding wife. Some guys are addicted to sex, others to drink, many to cavorting. My obsession now keeps me safely at home.
Last spring, during my weekly WFMU show, I was bitching about the post-Napster landscape. I was saying that after the crash and burn of Napster, I found the new p2p clients werent up to snuff for uncovering the sort of oddball stuff I play. As a result, I claimed, my radio show was suffering. After the show I received an e-mail from a sympathetic Internet listener from Scotland informing me of a remedy. At his suggestion, I joined a Yahoo group (Ill keep the name under wraps for fear of this piece drawing heat and putting the group in peril) and Ive been hooked ever since. In fact, due to its narrow focus, it makes my once-glorious Napster experience pale by comparison. Its a group of obsessives like myself from around the world, all gathered in one place with fast connections and a seemingly endless number of obscurities to share.
Since joining early last summer, Ive acquired some 500 CDs worth of material–arcane LP rips and unusual CD burns–most of which I could never find in any store even if I could afford them. A quick glance at last weeks download highlights shows several hours of La Monte Young rarities, a bunch of bootlegged German horspiels (radio plays), Lil Markies Music to Serve the Lord By (a twisted child singing horrifying Christian morality tales), the soundtrack to a 1975 porn film called The Film Guide to Sexual Pleasures (no music, just graphic descriptions by a guy with a thick Brooklyn accent) and a collection of historical surrealist audio works. And thats just the tip of the iceberg.
Fortunately, Ive never been the kind of guy who has collected for the sake of cool album covers. Also, Ive never been an audiophile; Ive always bought the lowest-price piece-of-shit rack system so that I could hear the music, not the fidelity. On my system, I cant tell the difference between CDs and LPs. And scratched-up vinyl doesnt bother me either–I cant hear the pops and clicks anyway. When people tell me that MP3s have degraded sound, I dont know what theyre talking about.
Ive become a devotee of the ephemeral MP3 and have come up with a new term for this phenomenon: nude media. What I mean by this is that once, say, I grab a file from my p2p group, its free or naked, stripped bare of any packaging, labels, provenance, etc. Completely detached from my normal shopping impulses, unadorned with either branding or impressive liner notes, emanating from no authoritative source, Im left with only the wine–not the bottles. It took a while to accept but Im getting used to it. At first I spent hours burning every MP3 onto CDs, hunting down the covers and creating faux-looking jewel-boxed packages with my ink-jet printer. But once I picked up a 120GB hard drive and a 20GB iPod, I felt more kindly toward things remaining naked. So is my family: weve run out of shelf space for CDs.
The genie is out of the bottle and its gonna be awfully hard for the RIAA to cram it back in. Although theyll try, I think theyre focused on the wrong thing. Over the past two years, Ive spent a substantial sum on external storage and portable devices to play my nude media files on–certainly not as much as I would have spent in record stores–but these days, its hard for me to pass by J&R without going in and dropping 25 bucks on a spindle of 100 blank discs. It seems to me–speaking as an addict on the front lines–that the money will be made in the mechanics of distribution rather than in the product itself. But Im not going to worry about that now–its not my problem. Instead, Ill remain an enthusiastic key player in the greatest worldwide gift-economy mankind has ever known. Im open 24-7. Suck me dry.