The Digital Music Jump

by Chad Miller /// September 13th, 2007

Music has been around as long as there have been people. Nearly as long as that, people have been storing music.

Initially, all people could do is repeat catchy tunes until they could remember them. This is probably the time period when they invented those annoying commercial jingles.

Later, they invented a way to actually write down music, in the form of a musical score. That is of course great if you can read music, or if you have a symphony at your command, but if not the musical score will likely leave you scratching your head.

Of course, in recent centuries, we’ve invented recording devices that can actually record and reproduce sound waves on demand. This started, of course, with the phonograph, and progressed to the 8-track, the cassette tape, and ultimately (in my lifetime, in fact) to the Compact Disc.

The First Jump

Of course, since music is essentially nothing more than information, storage of music is progressing (like everything else) to digital storage. When I was in college, a lot of the cool geeks started to put their music on their computers by a process called ripping, where they’d convert all their audio CDs into files on their computer, so they could listen to the music directly from the file with no CD involved.

Then, of course, in early 2004, I got my first iPod. It’s a fourth-generation model, meaning it’s old enough that it has a tiny black-and-white screen rather than a nice large full-color video screen, but it blew me away. This little gadget no bigger than a pack of cards can hold and play back every song from every CD that I own, and then some.

I was the toast of the geek town for nearly a week (that’s how quickly new technology becomes old news)!

The Final Jump

Since I got my iPod, I’ve been eagerly anticipating the day when I can ditch those clumsy, quaint plastic discs known as CDs. It didn’t come as soon as I liked, because my car has no audio hookup for my iPod. I tried one of those crappy FM transmitters, but I just couldn’t get it to sound good through the static and interference.

So then I discovered that the iPod plays quite nicely through a standard cassette adapter, so I dropped $10 for one at Wal-Mart. I thought that surely this would be the one thing that got me off CDs, and onto the Digital Music train, bringing my whole music collection with me wherever I go.

However, this didn’t do it, because picking music by scrolling through a list just doesn’t have the same tangibility as actually being able to pick up and shuffle through the physical albums. I found myself bringing along both the iPod and my CD wallets, along with about a dozen of my newest CDs in jewel cases with me in the car. Talk about defeating the purpose.

But a week and a half ago, I finally got the solid kick in the rump that put me all the way on the bandwagon. I am now all-digital, eschewing those old-fashioned silver plastic discs.

A guy broke into my car and stole all my CDs.

I wasn’t as heartbroken as I could have been, since all my CDs were in my iPod. In fact, I found that I was actually far more upset about the broken window than I was about the missing CDs. And I am actually discovering that I really can do this all-digital thing.

A Word of Advice: Learn from my loss! Don’t get on the Digital Music bandwagon the hard way. Leave your CDs at home and bring your MP3 player, for both convenience and security.