How The Internet Changed Music As We Know It

Happy Sunday everyone.

I've recently dug deep in conversations on social media that related to the impact that albums had in the pre Internet days vs in the late 90s and early 2000s as well as today.

I remember back in 99 when Nas' I Am was released. That was one of the first albums that was scrapped and sent back to the drawing board completely due to rampant bootlegging. The bootleg version of I Am was a classic, while the retail version, for the most part, was nothing but a wash out for Nas. This was due to the rise of Napster and online file sharing, which at that point was a problem that the record business had no idea what to do about.

I guested on a podcast last week and discussed how 50 Cent's Get Rich or Die Tryin' was the album that I remembered borrowing from a friend after it was released and how I tried copying it to a computer hard drive and being rebuffed by the machine, not knowing that the whole time that the CD was copy protected. It's really the only album that I remember having such an issue with.

The year that 50's album dropped, 2003, was also the year that saw the release of the iTunes Store, which made purchasing albums a throwaway concept. No longer did you have to make a trip to your local mom and pop store or Musicland, Best Buy, FYE, or wherever you bought CD's and cassettes before. It could immediately be purchased, downloaded, and synced to either an iPod or mp3 player.

So between internet file sharing and the iTunes Store, music underwent a change, which in itself was used to combat what the music industry saw as stealing, which in effect gave rise to the way that music is now. Record stores have been reduced to nearly nonexistent entities, now that streaming is the way that the record business collects revenue, in much the same way as subscription services like Netflix killed the video store.

We, as a whole, have become nothing but a dumbed down society, so used to conveniences such as streaming unlimited music and video content online, so much so that we have neglected to notice the impact and just go along for the ride.

My girlfriend bought me a new turntable for my birthday recently. I can't tell you how when I got all those new records how good it felt to rip the plastic off, put the records on, and read liner notes. CD's aren't quite the same, but I still enjoy ripping off the plastic, when, of course, I can find one that hasn't been opened, which is quite rare nowadays.

I was discussing on Twitter the other night the impact of Outkast's album Aquemini versus Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly. My comments were that it is really difficult to gauge the impact of an album today that heavily relies on streaming versus a record that was released in an age where people actually flocked to record shops to buy it.

The way we listen to and consume music now is totally different, and even though I stream occasionally, I'm not a fan. Bring back the record shops.