My Hopes

People like to talk about the change that's coming over the music and video industry. The transition between analog mediums and non-transferability that comes along with it to digital mediums and the ability to make perfect duplicates. It's not a transition anymore. It's happened. Analog, much as I love it, has been relegated to DJs and audio purists; those willing to put forth an awful lot of effort to listen to music and have it sound real. The rest of the world is on digital, for better or worse.
It's my hope that we'll use this in a good way. I see it going in many directions. For instance, we could end up in a world where you have to pay some fee to Sony every time you want to play a song. It's not out of the question; it's what the record companies have always wanted. Now the technology is in place to do that. We're just not quite under the yoke of that technology yet, with CDs and MP3s still being ubiquitous. Ever try to use somebody else's WMA? Have you noticed the spyware/malware embedded in your latest Warner Bros. CD purchase?
Anyway, I digress from my hope. I see us as potentially being a culture glued to our broadband connections, downloading music at our whim, experiencing our art through a vibrating magnet and an LCD. It's so easy to do things this way. It's cheap, you don't have to get up, it's gratifying, it's instant. Records are so much easier to achieve/create, in a lot of ways, than a solid live performance. But it's my hope that we can parlay this technology into real human contact. It's so easy to hear a band's record, to get that advertisement, as it were, that maybe more people will start going to live shows. When recordings become ubiquitous and essentially free, maybe the live show will become (as it once was and remains for many) the venue where the true originality happens and is expected. The records are what gets you there. Live shows are already the place where artists (and TicketMaster) actually make their money. It would be ironic if we went full circle from the invention of the phonograph, where records were considered a cheap imitation of live shows, through the record-as-product, and back. It would be ironic, but it would also be excellent. Because we've reached a point where we need to make an effort to have actual human interaction, and it's my hope that maybe the availability of everything at our desk will push us back out into the real world, seeking reality with which to corroborate.
Seems like a long shot, but it's actually my driving force in seeking out art. Maybe it could work for everybody...

Latiflearned.com - Go Listen. Then see me live (whenever I get my shit together and start performing live. Anyway, it'll be on that page if I am).