I'm not going to pretend that the age of collecting music in physical form is over (a quarter of the 7" singles in my collection have been bought in the last five years). But something is slipping.
I bought this CD because it has one two-minute track (by The Gothic Archies) that was, at the time, unavailable anywhere else.
When I say "at the time", I'm sure the track was already available on peer-to-peer filesharing services back in 2002, when I got it. But now individual songs have truly slipped the moorings of their original physical releases. All the 14 tracks on Survive and Advance, Vol 1 (and Vols 2 & 3, for that matter) can be found in a few seconds on Spotify. The idea of buying 13 extra tracks just for that one exclusive… well, ok, it was already ludicrously obsessive in 2002, but now it's beyond the pale.
It's not as though that two-minute track is particularly good.
Meanwhile, lest it should appear from the comments above and last week that I think I'm about to sail off towards some Spotify-enabled paradise, let's be clear that every new form of affluence brings with it its own diseases. I've already compiled enough playlists in Spotify to last a couple of weeks, without repeat and without sleeping. I'm having to think about meta-playlists to organise the playlists. The blessing of abundance contains many a curse.
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MusicBrainz entry for this album Wikipedia entry for this album Rate Your Music entry for this album Some metadata about this album at Last.fm Listen to this album in full at Spotify |
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