iTunes Revisited
Back in July, 2004, I had my first iTunes Music Store experience, and it was mostly negative. The tempestuous youth that I was, I vowed never to buy from there again. Obviously, that’s not how things have turned out, because I discovered that it had two uses for me. One use was allowing me to quickly grab loud and fast single tracks for use at the gym, and the other was saving me a fortune on entire albums, by putting me off buying them.
I have an illness which I refer to as ’6Music Syndrome’. What happens is that I listen to BBC 6Music, hear a track I like by a band I’ve never heard of, buy the band’s album and discover that the rest of the album is, for want of a better word, cack, and then the album sits on my shelf gathering dust until I can get around to ebaying it.
This has cost me a lot in the past, particularly when I used to walk past HMV twice a day. Albums by Regina Spektor, The Future Kings of Spain, Mclusky, Snow Patrol, The Hong Kong, Bran Van 3000, Lazyboy…all purchased on the strengths of one song, all discarded on the strength of the accompanying half-dozen other tracks on the CD. I’ve spent literally tens of pounds on useless music.
The iTunes Music Store makes checking up on artists very easy, though. Recently, thanks to their 30-second previews of every song, I’ve successfully avoided spending money on albums by Mattafix, Robert Plant, Lush, The Prodigy and The Ordinary Boys. If an artist can’t impress me in 30 seconds, then they don’t get bought (but I still have the option to buy the track that did impress me, so long as I don’t want to share it with anyone).
Rehearsing My Choir
But this way of vetting my music purchases could be a problem. One of my most-listened to albums lately has been The Fiery Furnaces’ Rehearsing My Choir, and it’s one of the more challenging LPs I’ve heard for a while. Purchased again on the strength of just one track, I couldn’t even finish the album on the first couple of attempts — I hated it.
But after a couple of goes, it all clicked. I understood the album, I understood how best to listen to it and I’ve fallen for it. I’d never have done this if I’d subjected it to the 30-second rule, and would have lost out. So I need to be careful, in case my music collection becomes predictable and generic, a wasteland of populist, instant-appeal artists. I need the weirdness to balance me out — it’s just that the weirdness isn’t always, well, instantly-appealing.
I still don’t buy entire albums from iTunes. I don’t really get that.
If you hadn’t written the second-last paragraph I would’ve shouted about the fact that most of my favourite albums are the ones that didn’t sound that good to me at first. The truly great ones need time to get into, but once you do they only get better.
I eventually go off albums that are at first instantly appealing to me.
How can you not like Mclusky? They’re fantastic and possibly one of the best live acts of recent years!
I didn’t dislike them as such, but they didn’t leave much of an impression — I listened to their album, the wonderfully-titled The Difference Between Me And You Is That I’m Not On Fire, but when it was over I had no real interest in listening to it again. Perhaps they’re better live.