It's Time To Stop MP3 Players Killing Off Albums

Don’t get me wrong, I love my iPod. It has enabled me to enjoy music wherever I go and create a soundtrack to each day - until last week.

Whilst listening to a couple of tracks 30mins before I had to get a train to the airport, the Pod decided to reboot and wipe all my songs for an inexplicable reason. Sheer horror swept over me. The limited capacity on my player meant that I couldn’t just copy everything from my computer and the limited time meant that I couldn’t go through and choose all the songs I wanted. Out of sheer desperation I copied a random handful of the albums and off I went for two weeks. To be completely honest I was dreading it. I wouldn’t be able to put on Otis Redding to ease me into each morning or play Zero 7 to de-stress me when my connecting flight was delayed.

For the first couple of days I shuffled through the songs I liked off the albums and it was fine. Then the same 20 songs over and over again get boring, so I began to challenge myself listen to whole albums. Every track, no shuffle, no skipping…and it was brilliant.

Suddenly I remembered what it was like to be 10 again, putting on repeat that CD that you had saved religiously for six months to get and enjoying every nuance that the artists were attempting to put across whilst frantically trying to learn the lyrics (Ok, maybe the Chumbawumba CD didn’t have all that but you know what I’m getting at).

Songs made more sense as they musically intertwined with the ones before and after - and in some circumstances lyrical stories unfolded between tracks. Sure not all albums have that but even the rubbish ones in everyone’s collection tend to sound better when surrounded by like minded songs.

Then it dawned on me. MP3 players are killing albums. They have made the majority of us into impatient, A.D.D.-esque human beings. Whether it be from choosing to buy off iTunes the one tune you have heard on the radio instead of having to buy the album to get it, or merely putting it on shuffle and either skipping half the songs, this ‘instant-gratification’ society has begun to break the mesh of intertwining musical fibres that a 1-12 track order develops.

So I dare you to discard shuffle or playlist options on your player and listen to the whole album. I bet every single one of you finds at least one new song they like and look at a certain bands in a new light. I sure did. I found that Ok-Go have more talent then just making amusing music videos, The Beatles really enjoyed using echo in a lot of their songs and David Holmes can seamlessly make one album sound like one superb song.  Albums are the past and they need to be the future.