Something to do with Pres. Obama's inauguration? Not quite...
First, for some history.
As near as I can recall, it was in the summer of 1980 that I bought my first stereo. Shortly after that, I got my first album -- ABBA's Greatest Hits.
(gratuitous ABBA album art)
To tell the truth, what I got was a copy from a friend who owned the vinyl, dubbed onto a 60-minute Memorex cassette from a four-pack purchased at Smiths (now demolished, and soon to be the west Boise branch of the library). Yes, folks, despite the RIAA's whining about downloading, the truth is that music piracy existed long before the Internet. Heck, Edison had barely completed the first phonograph when cheap Malaysian bootlegs of "Mary Had A Little Lamb" hit the black market.
(Back in those days, I was only vaguely aware that it was illegal, immoral, and/or unethical to dub music like that. And, on the wildly remote chance that Bjorn, Benny, Agnetha, Frida, or one of their lawyers happen to read this, let me haste to point out that I redeemed myself a dozen times over buying vinyl and then later replacing with CDs.)
The next big milestone was in December of that year, when I joined for the first time the Columbia House Record and Tape Club. I still remember the excitement of opening that first box and pulling out eight brand new records. That first set included "The Game" by Queen, "Paradise Theater" by Styx, "The Stranger" by Billy Joel, and of course we can't forget "ABBA's Greatest Hits Volume 2".
(more gratuitous ABBA album art)
Over the years, I re-joined Columbia House several times, building up a reasonable collection of vinyl (now sadly idle in a box in the garage).
The next major milestone was early summer 1989, when I bought my first CD player -- a very cool Sanyo which also featured dual auto-reverse cassette decks and detachable speakers -- in a shop in Kichijoji, Tokyo. Despite two annoyances (the radio tuner is naturally designed for the Japanese frequency bands, not U.S., and it needs a transformer to convert U.S. voltage to Japan-standard 100 V), it has served faithfully now for nearly 20 years, and still works just fine and is used regularly.
Shortly after, and enabled by, this milestone comes the next major event -- buying my first CD. This was the start of a new, digital era of music enjoyment, changing everything that came before.
But not everything, because I continued to patronize Columbia House, and then BMG Music Club (which had lesser selection but better prices). The music clubs changed with the times, and started selling CDs, so I started buying them. I often held two simultaneous memberships, buying what I could from the cheaper BMG, and using Columbia House to get selections that BMG didn't carry. (The two clubs later merged, which killed that strategy.)
While BMG's selection was never great, even after the Columbia House merger, it was impossible to beat the prices. Even with their higher-than-average sticker prices, and very steep shipping and handling, the "12 for the price of 1" offer worked out to about $4 for a brand-new CD. You've got to love it -- and I did.
The next sea change was the day I started ripping CDs into iTunes on my Macintosh. It's amazing the effect it has on listening style to have your entire collection instantly available, playable at random. For the most part, it's a good thing. At the same time, there's something missing from the old experience of pulling a record off the shelf, slipping on the headphones, and listening to an album straight through while perusing the cover art and record sleeve. (By the way, I must note that while CDs are very cool, there's a lot to be said for 12" cover art!) Of course, for many songs, there's not much difference listening to them out of order, but for some, a lot is lost. (Interestingly, three of the first records I bought are like that -- "The Game," "Paradise Theater," and "The Stranger" all have very definite arcs across the entire album that are lost when the songs are listened to out of order.)
For all the MP3s I've accumulated, they've all been ripped from CDs I own. I have never purchased an MP3 file. Call me old fashioned, but I prefer CDs. (Can you count technology that was invented in the mid-80s as "old fashioned"?) MP3 is a great format for storing on computer or listening to with an iPod, but I still like having the physical medium, the (admittedly puny) artwork, the lyrics booklet, etc. I also enjoy the visual satisfaction of a set of oak shelves with several hundred CDs sitting on them, and a search algorithm that consists of running a finger down the row of alphabetized titles. (The iTunes "cover flow" feature does go a long way toward replicating that experience, but it's still not the same.)
That, and I'm cheap, and a $4 CD from BMG with 15 tracks on it is much, much more cost effective than 15 tracks at $0.99 each.
So, I never purchased any MP3s -- until Friday.
Truth be told, I'm still basically cheap, and I actually bought the MP3s using a free credit from Amazon that they gave out as a bonus for buying stuff from them during the Christmas season. But it still counts.
And the very same day as this landmark event, as I was looking around trying to decide which MP3s to download, I happened to check BMG's Web site and found a message indicating that BMG was no longer accepting new members.
No more "12 for 1" deals. No more "Featured Selection of the Month." No more eager opening of the box of an initial membership shipment, with a stack of new music to anticipate.
The end of an era.
