Back in the day, I was never convinced by the ‘home taping is killing music’ argument any more than I would subscribe to the view that home cooking is killing restaurants.
On the contrary, the fact that I taped countless albums borrowed from friends or my local library satisfied my ravenous musical appetite and introduced me to countless artists I would never otherwise have heard of. I certainly didn’t buy any less music as a result
I recognise that the MP3 revolution is a different kettle of fish and offers a flood of free temptations for music obsessives but,even so, l don’t think that file sharing is killing music either.
Napster cat
As fellow addicts will know there is no limit to how many new sounds you can consume and there’s never a point where you say ‘I have enough music to listen to and don’t need more’.
The more you hear, the more you want to hear – it’s an itch that never goes away.
A man who understands this craving is the founder of UbuWeb, Kenneth Goldsmith who presents an intelligent perspective on this issue in an article in this month’s Wire magazine. Continue reading
