It’s the End of the World As We Know It

**For over a decade now, the world of music has been swept up in a massive cultural shift towards complete digitalisation, a sea-change that has unearthed huge challenges to all musical traditions. The last few years have felt like a sort of illicit utopia, where the internet has thrown open the doors to a vast record store, where the entirety of recorded sound lies tucked away, waiting to be taken and shared infinitely. We are perhaps the last generation who remembers a time before this world of opportunity was a mere click away, and the new immediacy of it all seems wonderfully progressive. Traditional geographical boundaries to musical discovery have all but dissolved. The idea that anyone can upload something instantly onto SoundCloud or YouTube and beam it to any corner of the world is thrilling. As is the fact that I can, within seconds, download or stream any obscurity… We are obscenely lucky.**

The listener is riding the wave of this Age of Information’s individualism. Almost infinite power lies at our fingertips, not only in our ability to sift through an immeasurable resource of history, but also in our capacity to dictate the direction of the industry’s ever-mutating evolution. The shadowy supremacy of file-sharing and the unique interactivity boasted by Spotify both cater chiefly to the listener’s needs and wants. And yet, it’s hard to shake the feeling of something being lost.

This surge of individualism has created a culture where personal experience is seen as the definitive goal of new technologies. Our laptops and Smartphones are at once the most intimate items we own, and the most alienating. Our lives have become dependent upon the digital and transitory, an existence which is ultimately self-involved. The triumph of the listener has been the triumph of solipsism.

We are forever browsing, entangled in a private world of temporary access, not possession. And there is simply too much: keeping abreast of only a handful of blogs is a Sisyphean task. So we’ll box-tick our way through, download an album which will sit unloved in iTunes, barely listened to, consumed but not digested. Sheer ease of access, which previously took lifetimes to obtain, has merely served to numb emotional connection and patience. Trying to have a conversation with someone about music, and my brain feels washed out, when I try and remember whether I even enjoyed something. These machines have given us access to an unprecedented realm of music, and entirely warped our perception of it.

As our cultural experiences become submerged in the digital, nostalgia for old formats and practises is ever growing. The web may bombard us with the entirety of history, but we feel the lure of yesterday in an altogether different way. For all the advancements of the last decade, we are forever looking back. Nostalgia often seems like the notable feature of our generation. Perhaps we seek to replicate the eras we’re told had a common energy, whose soundtrack was vital and real. Contrastingly, recent music seems fractious, and it speaks volumes that the past decade will perhaps be remembered for technological advancements over musical ones. But perhaps this nostalgic sentiment is more than contrived romanticism. I think back to my fondest memories of music, those moments of giddy joy so unique to musical experience. I tend to find none of these revolve around personal digital devices. And so we look back. Vinyl and cassette sales increase yearly; their tangibility and crackle speaks to our yearning for something solid that has failed to melt into the web, something that has lived, and been loved. A fetish for the analogue may seem regressive to some, but it speaks to people’s love of the cheek-flushing, visceral sensation of music filling a room.

It’s important to stress that any calls for the ridding of digital music are plainly absurd and backward. No new system can be built around diminished formats, and defeated industries. But those fond memories are memories of moments in time: music must reclaim its role as unifying force of social engagement, away from a solipsist detachment from narrative and romance.

We must question how to harness all that seems progressive in modern listenership and maintain the warmth and immediacy that we seem to pine for. These technologies that are so integral to our lives must begin to fulfil their potential to breakdown boundaries between the listener, the music, and the artists. The promise of interactivity must not preclude interaction with something outside ourselves. This state of digital flux can be considered disorientating, but it offers up boundless possibilities rebuilding something from the clutter floating around the web: something concrete and alive, which we all can cherish. Then maybe we’ll begin to look forward with a longing nostalgia for the future.