Unless everyone around you took a vow of silence the moment you were born and you spent the intervening years in a sensory deprivation tank, a sound isolation chamber of some kind, or one of our planet’s rare, ultra-quiet environments, your hearing is already damaged, at least a little. It’s a part of life.
Most people probably remember having a song, album, or band change our lives. It’s a fairly common experience, even for those unfortunate beings who don’t live and breathe music. It’s a good thing to have happen to you (unless you’ve become too obsessed). More »
You’re innocently going about your day when it happens: You hear a song you’ve never heard before. It rules. You need to know what it is. More »
Music Is Still Too Expensive To Be Free, Too Free To Be Expensive [Spotify]
Posted in: Today's Chili In this corner, we have recording artists – those beleagured believers clinging dearly to the notion that they can quit their day jobs, just like their tune-slinging forebears did. As many have pointed out, they don’t make much per stream from even today’s most popular streaming services – about $0.003 from iTunes Match and $0.001 from Spotify, according Josh Davidson, whose September 3 tweet sparked this latest round of speculation. More »
We often think of listening to music with headphones as creating “a soundtrack for our lives.” But when you think about it, the music in films usually plays in the background to enhance the setting, not drown it out. Unless you live in a persistent montage scene (where the music comes to the fore) or you’re having one pivotal, life-changing moment after another (ditto), you’re not really “soundtracking your life” with those headphones, now, are you? More »
In Philip K. Dick’s book Do Android’s Dream of Electric Sheep? (a.k.a. Blade Runner), the lead character Rick Deckard and his wife alter their mental states with devices called Mood Organs. Rising in the morning, Deckard dials in a “businesslike professional attitude,” while his vengeful wife selects no fewer than six hours of “self-accusatory depression.” More »