Of all the things to happen to music this century, this is the most important — and worst
Warning: Spoilers ahead for anyone who hasn’t heard ‘The Ongoing History of New Music’ radio show/podcast series on music in the 21st century.
This weekend marks the finale of a 10-part Ongoing History of New Music series on the 100 most important things, events, moments, people and tech seen in music since the beginning of the millennium.
It’s been an interesting journey going back through the last 25 years. Making the list was difficult enough. But how to order things from 100 to one? What’s the most important of all the items on the list?
I thought long and hard about this. Was it music piracy? The death of David Bowie? The final Tragically Hip tour? The introduction of the iPod and smartphone? I wanted to end the series on a high note, but in the end, I had to go with a real downer. I apologize in advance, but I think you’ll see what I mean.
When the 2000s started, we paid between $10 and $20 for a single CD. To acquire this piece of plastic, we had to work X hours at our jobs to earn enough money to travel through time and space at a record store. Because music was so expensive to acquire, we were very particular about how we spent this money. Which artists deserved our financial investment?
We then returned home from the store and put the CD on the stereo. We listened to the album over and over again until we knew all the songs backward and forward. Hopefully, we ended up liking more of them than we hated. But if the balance went the wrong way, our financial investment in that artist was a failure.
Physical music libraries were also treasured possessions. Not only did they reflect our personalities, histories and emotions, but they were also expensive to assemble. You might know the pain of someone breaking into your car and making off with your precious CD binder.
