Apple Archive

How the iPod Drives the Digital Revolution and Changes the Way We Listen to Music

, 2005.04.29

The iPod has clearly been selling well, and walking around the city of Montreal seeing all these people with the white headphones reaffirms that fact.

The fact that people are buying them could easily be due to the iPod's style, their ability to hold many songs, or their small size compared to a Discman - but could there be another force at work? Some, especially younger people, feel that owning an iPod is being part of a "digital revolution".

Whether this revolution is a real one or a supposed one is a good question. Revolutions are generally started by those who are repressed in some way, and often that's economic repression. In other words, the working class.

When you look at the iPod's price tag, you realize that most likely your average low-wage worker probably isn't going to be buying one anytime soon.

Of course, the iPod Shuffle changed all that - at under US$150, it makes the iPod a lot more affordable for those who don't have US$300 to spend on regular iPod. Then again, a $59 CD Discman is a cheaper still.

The revolution they're getting into is one of consumers who were being forced into listening to music one album at a time with the songs in a set order - and they are rebelling against that, attempting to listen to music their way.

This is especially happening with teenagers.

Think of average middle school or high school kids. They're going to like the freedom that the iPod gives them to listen to songs from many different artists in a single day and to choose the order they listen to them in (or let them play randomly). They can listen to Thursday, Taking Back Sunday, or Dashboard Confessional - or, if they're feeling a bit more revolutionary, they can always put on some Rise Against.

Okay, I'm stereotyping. But there is something about a device that allows kids to access the music they feel is "theirs" (even if it's just a mainstream pseudo-revolution). A Discman just doesn't cut it anymore, because the way people are listening to music is changing.

For instance, take the new New Order album, Waiting for the Siren's Call. I got the single, "Krafty", before I decided whether I would get the album. I thought the single was good, and some friends recommended some other songs off the album that I was able to check out online. New Order's been a band that I've consistently liked in the past, so I ended up getting the entire album and finding that it is indeed very good.

However, there are some artists I wouldn't want more than a few songs from. For example, the Montreal band Projet Orange has a very good single, '"Tell All Your Friends". I sampled a few songs on their site, and I found that I wanted the song "Les Géants" as well. Instead of getting the whole album, I got the just songs that I wanted and was able to copy them to my iPod for inclusion in a playlist.

Over the past couple of years, it's become completely normal to use a playlist or shuffle your music instead of listening to full albums track by track. You can't shuffle tracks with cassettes, and it's difficult to do it with LPs. You can do it with CDs, but only if the songs you want to shuffle between are on a single disc.

But with an iPod . . . with an iPod the song can be on any album, and it will still be included in the random playlist.

There's no question that the way people listen to music is being revolutionized, and it would seem that the iPod is a symbol of that. To many who use Discmans and cassette Walkmans, the iPod is an overpriced toy meant for the ninth graders listening to Alkaline Trio and the 30-somethings who can't wait to spend $250 to iPod their BMW, Mercedes, or Volvo and listen to that Eagles album that they already had on CD as well as cassette.

But for others, the iPod is something they can show as proof to themselves (and others, especially with those white headphones) that they no longer just listen to music in the same old one-album-at-a-time fashion.

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