How Much Is Too Much?
I was in Philadelphia last week for a couple days. As I drove around the area, I naturally wanted to hear what the local radio stations had to offer. I landed on WXPN, the college station at Penn, during their "Y-Rock" show. This is the last remnants of what was once Y-100, Philly's alternative rock station. The alt-rock format has fallen on hard times in recent years, not for lack of audience, but for lack of effort to reach them. But I could spend a whole entry (or six) on what's gone wrong with radio in the last several years...
Anyway, Y-Rock is not only its own nightly show, but also its own HD subchannel on WXPN's signal. HD Radio is the latest expansion of options for radio listeners, but it carries a pretty steep price tag and it's much easier to get a satellite receiver in your car at this point. Hopefully, that will change. So as I listened to Y-Rock, I was blown away by the wide variety of songs and artists, known, unknown, and forgotten, that I was hearing. And I thought that I would love to get a lot of the music that I was listening to. But that reminded me of one thing... I already have a TON of music.
I wasn't much of a music collector until the end of high school/beginning of college. Even then, I was a poor college student and didn't get all that many CDs during those years. Certainly, not as many as my senior year roommate, who was music director at the college radio station. He had over 500. Then, Napster hit. Until using the P2P sites put you at risk of a lawsuit, I downloaded freely and often, but I also bought a lot more CDs. By the time I moved to Chambersburg, Pah in 2001, my CD count was over 100, and I had a lot of MP3s, both of the ripped and "shared" variety on my computer. Then I worked in music radio, and that allows you to hear a lot of new music and then I was a music director, which meant I heard even more, and I continued buying, and since my move back here to Syracuse, I've bought more and more. Then, I started downloading legally and paying for it on iTunes, and developed a nice $3 a week habit with that site. Yeah, it adds up, but I figured that was about what I was paying in CD purchases anyway.
Fast-forward to 2009. I now have well over 300 CDs, counting burned mix CDs and comedy CDs, and over 2000 songs on my computer. When the recession hit, one of the first things I cut back on was buying CDs. I've bought one this year, the new Blues Traveler one (worth it, by the way), but I'm still downloading from iTunes. One day recently, I was listening to music on my iTunes player, and it occurred to me that in the 18 months I have owned this laptop, there are songs that I have not listened to. At all. And they're good songs. Maybe I've heard some of them on the radio during that time, but that doesn't count for these purposes. Now it's like I have them just to have them. Certainly, listening to 2000 songs, one right after another, would take quite a while (5.7 days to be exact), and then there's the small matter of those 300-plus CDs. When the hell do I have time to listen to those? I'll bet I haven't heard some of them in years, as my favorite tracks from those CDs were ripped to become part of the 2000-plus songs I have in my computer.
And then there's all the books I have. I've accumulated them over the years from various places. When I was a kid, I loved to go to the used bookstore on the North Side, just cuz I'm into old stuff like that. I used to read for reasons other than academic ones (I miss those days sometimes). And now I'm saving books from classes that I feel will be helpful to me, so I guess that's good, but when am I ever going to have practical use for a 1991 Sports Almanac (and no, McFly, it's not a Grays Sports Almanac)? I have a ton of VCR tapes I will never watch (and I still record things!) I have a PlayStation One gathering dust and games I will likely never play again. And don't get me started on the boxes of useless stuff I have accumulated from various sporting events and such I have attended over the years... while I may be a packrat, at least I'm an organized one...
I've heard suggestions that I sell back my used CDs and I know people who have done that, used books too... but it's MY STUFF! Ya know, the late George Carlin had it right when he said that our dwelling places, be they apartments or houses, are really just oversized compartments for storing all of our stuff. And now we're in an economic downturn and the only way we can get out of this mess is, essentially, to buy more stuff.
Now don't get me wrong, I am very much pro-capitalist and I understand that buying stuff (otherwise known as goods and services) makes the world go round. But it just seems like we are overwhelmed by all the stuff we already have. Thanks to the Internet, we can watch any number of television shows that have been off the air for years (for that matter, you can do that on cable, but the Internet is on demand). Or you buy these things on DVD... have I mentioned that I also have a lot of DVD movies that I have NEVER watched? And of course we have more new stuff coming out all the time.
I guess if there's any comfort I can take right now, it's the fact that a lot of the new stuff SUCKS. New music, new movies, etc. If I have to be more choosy, I guess when you look at the cycles of pop culture, now is the time to do it.
Meanwhile, does anyone want to buy a used copy of Nerf Herder's first CD?
Anyway, Y-Rock is not only its own nightly show, but also its own HD subchannel on WXPN's signal. HD Radio is the latest expansion of options for radio listeners, but it carries a pretty steep price tag and it's much easier to get a satellite receiver in your car at this point. Hopefully, that will change. So as I listened to Y-Rock, I was blown away by the wide variety of songs and artists, known, unknown, and forgotten, that I was hearing. And I thought that I would love to get a lot of the music that I was listening to. But that reminded me of one thing... I already have a TON of music.
I wasn't much of a music collector until the end of high school/beginning of college. Even then, I was a poor college student and didn't get all that many CDs during those years. Certainly, not as many as my senior year roommate, who was music director at the college radio station. He had over 500. Then, Napster hit. Until using the P2P sites put you at risk of a lawsuit, I downloaded freely and often, but I also bought a lot more CDs. By the time I moved to Chambersburg, Pah in 2001, my CD count was over 100, and I had a lot of MP3s, both of the ripped and "shared" variety on my computer. Then I worked in music radio, and that allows you to hear a lot of new music and then I was a music director, which meant I heard even more, and I continued buying, and since my move back here to Syracuse, I've bought more and more. Then, I started downloading legally and paying for it on iTunes, and developed a nice $3 a week habit with that site. Yeah, it adds up, but I figured that was about what I was paying in CD purchases anyway.
Fast-forward to 2009. I now have well over 300 CDs, counting burned mix CDs and comedy CDs, and over 2000 songs on my computer. When the recession hit, one of the first things I cut back on was buying CDs. I've bought one this year, the new Blues Traveler one (worth it, by the way), but I'm still downloading from iTunes. One day recently, I was listening to music on my iTunes player, and it occurred to me that in the 18 months I have owned this laptop, there are songs that I have not listened to. At all. And they're good songs. Maybe I've heard some of them on the radio during that time, but that doesn't count for these purposes. Now it's like I have them just to have them. Certainly, listening to 2000 songs, one right after another, would take quite a while (5.7 days to be exact), and then there's the small matter of those 300-plus CDs. When the hell do I have time to listen to those? I'll bet I haven't heard some of them in years, as my favorite tracks from those CDs were ripped to become part of the 2000-plus songs I have in my computer.
And then there's all the books I have. I've accumulated them over the years from various places. When I was a kid, I loved to go to the used bookstore on the North Side, just cuz I'm into old stuff like that. I used to read for reasons other than academic ones (I miss those days sometimes). And now I'm saving books from classes that I feel will be helpful to me, so I guess that's good, but when am I ever going to have practical use for a 1991 Sports Almanac (and no, McFly, it's not a Grays Sports Almanac)? I have a ton of VCR tapes I will never watch (and I still record things!) I have a PlayStation One gathering dust and games I will likely never play again. And don't get me started on the boxes of useless stuff I have accumulated from various sporting events and such I have attended over the years... while I may be a packrat, at least I'm an organized one...
I've heard suggestions that I sell back my used CDs and I know people who have done that, used books too... but it's MY STUFF! Ya know, the late George Carlin had it right when he said that our dwelling places, be they apartments or houses, are really just oversized compartments for storing all of our stuff. And now we're in an economic downturn and the only way we can get out of this mess is, essentially, to buy more stuff.
Now don't get me wrong, I am very much pro-capitalist and I understand that buying stuff (otherwise known as goods and services) makes the world go round. But it just seems like we are overwhelmed by all the stuff we already have. Thanks to the Internet, we can watch any number of television shows that have been off the air for years (for that matter, you can do that on cable, but the Internet is on demand). Or you buy these things on DVD... have I mentioned that I also have a lot of DVD movies that I have NEVER watched? And of course we have more new stuff coming out all the time.
I guess if there's any comfort I can take right now, it's the fact that a lot of the new stuff SUCKS. New music, new movies, etc. If I have to be more choosy, I guess when you look at the cycles of pop culture, now is the time to do it.
Meanwhile, does anyone want to buy a used copy of Nerf Herder's first CD?
Labels: stuff
posted by Dave | 2:30 PM
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