The IPOD is changing the way I am listening to music.

As the IPOD (and other similar personal music devices) increase in usage, I am beginning to personally notice a trend in which even I am starting to listen to music.
Back when I first started to listen and buy music around 1973 I bought LP's. For the record (no pun intended) the first record I ever bought was Naturally, by Three Dog Night, followed by Every Picture Tells AStory. I learned early on by my mistakes. I was never really interested in singles like some of my friends because I was never a 'hits' kind of listener. I wanted to hear the other songs the artist/group had recorded and found the album format to be the one that worked best for me. Because of this I at one time amassed the complete record collections of many of my favorite artists.....I trend the continued with the CD era. In addition, my leanings toward theLP as opposed to the single format was also due to my enjoynment of the Progressive Rock movement of the 1970's (and somewhat beyond) in which albums were built around a theme (think Nektar, Yes, ELP, Genesis.....to name just a few) and these types of releases did not come accross very well in the single song format.

Time marches on, as it always does, and some things continue as always while otherschange slowly. As the era of the CD came along, I continued to buy them in thealbum format (no CD 'singles for me) and look at the CD as a whole entity as opposedto one or two good songs followed by what was and is still known as 'filler'. From time to time I would make a compilation of songs from CD's that I was getting rid of (selling forthe sake of making room for more purchases) but my buying and listening habits did notchange from the time I began to listen to music in the early 1970's to the present.
Even with the advent of the Sony CD Walkman and its successful copies by every electronic manufacturer in the business, my listening habits did not change. Unless I was listening to a 'mix tape' or a 'mix cd' (think of me being a bit like Rob Gordon, the lead characterJohn Cusack played in High Fidelity. I was very much like him as I made mix tapes for countless people in high school and then in college.....primarily as a way of impressing girls I guess. With the Walkman format you still listened to one CD at a time. Even int he car and with the early home CD players. It wasn't until CD players at home and in the car were able to handle multiple discs that we were able to either 'program' a group of songs to play from multiple CDs loaded on the platter, or better yet, put the player on shuffle play to randomly select songs form the loaded CD's. However, we were still limited to the CD's that were loaded into the player and had no choice in what was being played. Until now.

When my older son got his first IPOD about 2 years ago I showed little or no interest except in helping him learn how to use the software (something he soon surpassed me in knowledge and experience). It wasn't until I started to borrow it from him from timeto time that I began to enjoy having one around the house. It reminds me of an articleI once read about when televisions first became commercially available, most peoplethought that having one in each household would be enough. Nobody at the time could have guessed that in some houses there is a television in every room (bathrooms included). However, I digress and need to get back on track.

Even with borrowing his IPOD I had no interest in owning one of my own. However,my family thought I would enjoy one and bought a 20 Gig model for me last June for Fathersday. I was tickled pink and very thankful. After a few weeks of staring at the wrapped boxand (believe it or not contemplating returning it) I finally opened it, loaded the software and imported and loaded some CDs onto it, gradually over the course of a year and a few months to the present of having about 2300 songs on it.

When I first started to use MY Ipod, I listened to an album, and then when it was donescrolled around and listened to another. It wasn't until I accidently discovered the shuffleplay feature that the full power of the IPOD became apparent to me. By setting the machine up on songs shuffle I had (in my opinion) the greatest radio station in the worldat my fingertips, with NO commercials and annoying DJ chatter (more on annoying DJ chatter another time....when I was growing up and listening to WNEW-FM in NYC, part of the lure WAS the DJ chatter). I was in heaven as I was listening to MY songs in an order that wouldtotally surprise and sometimes confound me.....how DOES this little machine know what songsfit so well together?

Well....about a month ago I realized that this shuffle play was nice, but there were plenty of times that a song would come on that I really did not like. I would skip over it. As time wenton I realized that I was doing this more and more. It finally dawned on me a few weeks ago that when using my IPOD I wasn't listening to ALBUMS anymore. I was listening to SINGLE songs, from many different artists. About a month ago I loaded some more CD's onto myIPOD. This time however I did it a bit different than I had before. Instead of letting Itunes just import everything (by the way....isn't Itunes one of the other coolest inventions ever created andt hat database it goes to get the CD and song titles, how cool is that), I started to select only the songs I wanted to hear. I even remember the CD I began doing this with. It was Ghost In The Machine by the Police. A great ALBUM, but there are a few songs on it that I just don't enjoy (I can't recall them offhand). So.....I didn't load them, and now I won't have to listen tothem on my IPOD. Of course, if I have that CD on at home in the changer it is possible that a song I don't like will come on, but that's ok. This is not to say that some of my favorite albums won't have songs not loaded . Think about Born To Run, Sgt Pepper, Blood OnThe Tracks, The Fillmore Concerts, or many other great classic albums. Could you think about a song from those NOT to load onto your IPOD. If you can, well that's another topic.

As I am thinking about this I am beginning to realize that (for the IPOD at least) my listeninghabits have changed. No longer do I need to load every song from every CD I own. I may not want to hear them all, and that's ok. When I want to hear an entire CD I still can. But, whenI want to hear some great songs that I love (and some ones that I love and have forgotten about), not having the 'filler' songs from an album on my IPOD is nice. I really hate interrupting what I am doing and pressing the skip forward button. I'm not sure if this is good for the industry or not, but I think it is one of the new business models (along with some others)that the music industry has to face as we (as listeners) become more technological savvy and keep expanding how, when, and where we listen to music. I will still buy my CD's and listen to them at home andin the car. However, my portable device, my IPOD, will contain the songs that I love and not all of the albums.

Rock on and make sure the device is charged.