Last year was the year music died. Well, my music died. My iPod is dying, a slow and painful digital death, having begun to fritz and refuse to sync early into this New Year. The device was condemned to death in September, when Apple quietly killed off the iPod Classic, the model I own, because of how dismally it has held up in the face of iPhones and streaming services. People just don’t want to own a 160GB chunk of metal to funnel their $2.99 mp3s into anymore.
There are very few aspects of music culture that I feel sentimental about. Largely due to my age (I’m a millennial, or whatever TIME magazine hates currently) but also the fact that I am fanatically open to experimenting with how I listen to, consume, and define music. I laughed at my friends who bought tapes until I realized the medium was more than alive. I couldn’t understand the appeal of a turntable until I actually experienced the social aspect of owning one. Yes, I will tune into the concert on livestream. Yes, I will listen to this Vine star’s new album. I can’t yell at anyone to get off of my lawn because I don’t know what my lawn’s supposed to look like because it keeps changing.
Except, this iPod-littered lawn. Sure, my iPod will croak and I can buy a new one, a no doubt sleeker model so tiny that will get lost in my jean pocket (and maybe then I’ll give up on listening to music all together just for the hell of it). Maybe I’ll purchase that new $1,200 Sony Walkman! What’s concerning about the discontinuation of the iPod Classic is that Apple is making a concerted effort to move into streaming services which signals a future without mp3 holding devices, which signals a future in which I’ll need to seriously consider getting a streaming account-- a development I’m not happy about being goaded towards.
I don’t use Spotify though I do use Soundcloud and Bandcamp (until I buy the actual album.) Downloading music to a device is how I’ve come to primarily own music. Whether it’s a file on my computer desktop or a 7'' in my bag, I like owning the music. I like burning files to mix CDs and uploading non-protected files to Tumblr. I like having my entire library in my pocket and not having to worry about roaming data charges or hooking my phone up to WiFi to hear my favorite songs. Weaned on sites like Last.fm and 8tracks and possessing a wariness towards almost all apps that immediately hook up to Facebook, to use Spotify only would feel like I no longer owned my music.
I’m certainly not the only one who feels that way. Last year, we saw Taylor Swift remove her music from the service, her label citing they only earned $2 million from a year of streaming her songs and Swift making headlines with her opinions regarding why people should buy music. Elsewhere artists such as Nora Jane Struthers started raising money to make their albums using services like Kickstarter and Pledge Music. While the world argued with Taylor Swift on how much she can afford to lose (or not earn) as a major pop star for streaming, Struthers’ only getting paid $19.02 off of 116,000 spins of her last album lays out pretty clearly how streaming services can hurt artists.
Beyond just people moving towards streaming rather than buying music (old news), the discontinuation of the iPod Classic and future mp3 devices presents a whole other problem: a lack of devices and applications that are for music listening only. There is no right or wrong way to listen to music, but there is admittedly a stark contrast between listening to music on your iPhone and listening to music on an iPod that does not connect to the Internet. The benefits of an iPod are the ability to literally contain your entire music library and just a lack of notifications in general, to enjoy it without the temptation to blindly scroll through Instagram or tweets while you do so.
There is still a huge market for large mp3 players, with people snatching up new and old Classic models already for double the price online. Back in 2013 Will Dunn predicted this, urging people to buy iPods before they were gone. "Spotify might offer 20 million songs, but 120GB of music is more than most people need, and your iTunes library doesn’t carry data charges or a subscription fee," he wrote. "Also, I think the Classic is a more distraction-free listening experience—I’m more likely to get through a full album on one." What happens to the music fans who have huge collections of music that simply is not available on popular streaming services? The music fans who actually want to buy music to support artists?
This issue is far more than an iPod-specific one, it’s an issue concerning how a future of streaming only music services could potentially hurt musicians and pose problems for people who want separate devices for their music and their multitude of Internet activities. I never thought one day the act of actually purchasing music would be endangered, but with streaming trumping actual music sales it seems to be the future for many music fans, embarrassingly public Spotify plays of "Here I Go Again" by Whitesnake on repeat and all.