In Praise of Physical Media

In 1994, like so many socially awkward nine-years-old boys, I discovered “Weird Al” Yankovic. My older brother and his friends had performed “Bedrock Anthem”—a Red Hot Chilli Peppers parody about The Flintstones—at our school’s air band competition (which, incidentally, they won). Somehow in the process a CD copy of Alapalooza ended up in our house. I listened to it front to back and followed along with the tiny lyrics in the booklet. It was a revelation; this guy gets me, I thought. Twelve songs about Jurassic Park, mimes, waffles and hamsters, capped off with a polka cover of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” It was hilarious and clever. And it was finite. As far as I knew that was the extent of his discography. Pre-home internet, I had no way to even know he had seven other albums, much less listen to them.

But then something funny happened. When I mentioned it to a few of my classmates, they all said they’d had the same experience. And (even better) they all had an album or two of their own. So, we swapped. We circulated cassettes and CDs between us over the next few months. We all got to plumb the depths of this one wacky artist, and we grew closer as friends in the process. We learned to trust each other’s taste and went on to share other discoveries: The Arrogant Worms, They Might Be Giants, the Wayside School stories, Leslie Neilsen movies, Mel Brooks movies, Five Iron Frenzy...

Of course, these days, it all works differently. My kids discovered Yankovic at about the same age as me, but they could listen to his whole discography start to finish at the push of a button. They told their friends about him, but it wasn't a group project like it was back in '94. No need to work together. They just had to all go individually to YouTube. They could even listen to all the original versions of the songs he'd parodied, while I had to stumble upon them randomly on the radio (they'll never know the awkward joy of hearing Richard Harris's ``MacArthur Park" come on in Pizza Hut and forcing their family to sit quietly for seven minutes to listen to it). With the luxury of abundance, they dug way deeper than I ever did. They were happy about it, no doubt, but I can’t shake the feeling that the process of discovery was more meaningful and memorable for me because of the scarcity. The music wasn’t all available at my fingertips, so I had to work to get access to it.

In the days before streaming, you had to take an active role in your relationship with music. If I wanted to hear an album, I had to cut the grass at my parents’ house to earn the money to buy it. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent in the two (TWO!) record stores in my local mall, trawling through their ample collections of tapes and CDs (I mainly went for tapes because they were cheaper), looking for treasure. Sometimes I didn't even have money; I was there simply for the act of browsing. Sometimes I would make accidental discoveries: I bought Muse's Origin of Symmetry and The Shins' Chutes too Narrow and The Decemberists' Picaresque before I knew anything about the artists. I just thought the art looked cool. And all three became favourites. Ultimately, my taste in music wasn’t the product of algorithms or aggressive marketing campaigns. It was something I played a part in and therefore had ownership over. All these years later, if I'm able to make weird, distinct music of my own, it's because of those countless self-directed hours in HMV and Music World.

Our relationships with our favourite musical artists were mediated through physical objects, which gave them the focus and fragility of actual relationships. Holding an Electric Light Orchestra LP that I found in my dad's closet, knowing he used to spin it in the seventies when it was new, it connected me not only to my dad, but to Jeff Lynne, to Mr. Blue Sky himself. I know the artist doesn't physically touch every copy of their album, but it almost feels like it. It's like a holy relic. You learned to be careful with it, or else—horror of horrors—it could scratch or break, never to be played again. You had to hold your breath and respool the cassette with a pencil. There was risk and pain involved, like in other types of relationships.

This tangibility gave depth and meaning to our experience of music. By necessity, to be a fan you also had to be a collector. In high school we all had CD wallets overstuffed with all our favourite albums. We could flip through them and conjure up feelings and memories. We could learn about a person by looking through theirs. When we started going on dates, the introduction to the music collection could make or break the relationship. When I found my future wife we learned that we loved a lot of the same artists, and we introduced each other to new ones. I gave her The Police and she gave me Simon & Garfunkel. We married our fortunes together.

When everything moves online, music listeners no longer have to be collectors or treasure hunters; we become passive consumers. There's no more risk, no more ups and downs. Our relationship with music becomes like so many other parts of our screen-based lives, scarcely distinguishable from the act of mindlessly scrolling on Instagram. But music should be different. Deeper. More intentional. It should be pain and pleasure, high and low, but never mundane. We should have a stake in it so that it has real value in our lives.

What does this mean for us as artists? Of course we all want to put our music online to make it easy for people to listen to it around the world. But in doing so, we undercut its value. It's just there, always there, like all the other music. I can listen to it whenever I want. So what's the rush? A glass of water is not much use when you pour it in the sea; in the desert, it's life. When I started in Children's Music we burned 50 CDs. I found out later that a family in my town—a single mother with two young girls—had listened to their copy for a decade. It was physically part of their household. It belonged to them. It was truly special. That, to me, is more rewarding than a million streams.

My kids now have a CD player in their room. Like me with my dad's old LPs, they've had the experience of digging through their parents' music and discovering stuff they never would have found otherwise. They put on The Talking Heads or the Nacho Libre soundtrack before they go to sleep. Once, their friends came over and my kids immediately rushed them into their bedroom to see what they thought of ``Revolution 9." They ask for specific CDs as birthday presents. They come along with me to rifle through the stacks at record stores and thrift stores. To them, music isn't just wallpaper. It's something they invest thought and energy into. It matters. And that's something they'll keep with them for life.