Weak.

I've realized since I got my iPod in March (and two more since) that I've had latent OCD issues all my life. Trying to get the perfect playlist for every possible listening situation has caused me hours and hours of contemplation and I'm wagering I could teach a college level logic course based solely on the possible variations iPod playlists offer. And just when I come upon the perfect combination of playlists, I discover, like the characters in a Michael Cunningham novel, that there has to be something more.

Why oh why can't iPod playist options offer such a basic option as an "if-then" option? I use my "shuffle" at the gym. It's light and you can hang it around your neck where it's less likely to get damaged by sweat or clumsily running into a wall (as I saw some careless meathead do the other day, but I digress...) I put on only five star songs as they are the most likely to keep me forgetting about that 7th six-minute mile the treadmill is forcing me to do. But I can't listen to any of these songs more often than once every two weeks (I currently have 293 songs that fit the bill) or I tire of them.

But then there are the times when I go to the casinos and play a no limit tournament. During these tournaments I also listen to these five star songs as they prevent me from becoming bored and stupidly playing an A-9 offsuit when in first position. So a problem arises if I last long in the tournament and I've been attending the gym faithfully. I run out of songs!

So when I'm low on songs when I download into my shuffle, I would like the option of putting in some alternate songs but only temporarily. I want to the option to read "If my downloaded songs are less than 100 total, I want you to sneak in some less sufficient but in a pinch will do four star songs (but only if I haven't heard them in 8 weeks, mind you!)" I don't want to have to reprogram all my playlists whenever I get a streak of great starting hands at the Taj.

And that's only one small example. I could go on for hours. But then I guess I'd sound like that guy at the Christmas office party who's tired of his wife of four years. We both have a great deal of love for our objects of complaint, but why can't they be more perfect, why can't they just get better at anticipating and accommodating our goddamned needs!

It's a Walkman. Granted, it's one that requires you to put in a CD, rip the tunes and then copy them to the device, rather than just popping the disc or cassette in.

Or you can buy the tunes at a buck a pop.

OK, it's like a Walkman but harder and more expensive to use, with mediocre, compressed MP3 sound, to boot.

This is a revolution? Feh.

Charlie

I used to think like you, but I guess you can't imagine the simple pleasures at your not-at-all-that-expensive disposal. Putting 5000 songs into that little device and letting it play on random is like discovering a radio station tailor made for you. And before you say "What about new music?" you have to realize that there are hundreds of mp3 bloggers out there sorting through the gazillion free downloads out there highlighting the best ones. All it takes is a little bit of effort in finding one who has a similar taste to you (I really like Salon's audiofile and the guy at fingertipsmusic.com) and you can have more new music than any mainstream commercial radio could possibly offer.

I'd have to buy a Mac to download music? The music doesn't sound good because of the level of compression? Forget it.

I have a Walkman CD player I take to the gym. Yes, it's bulky (I only use it when I'm on an aerobic machine; I set it on the little stand by the controls). But it works, and the music sounds good. I don't need a billion tunes available to me at once. I need about 45 minutes of music.

...but most of the complaints in this article pertaining to the ways the iPod supposedly changed music listening for the worse are not the iPod's fault, but rather the author projecting his own problems onto the iPod. Let's take them one at a time:

1. The accessibility of your entire music library makes listening to new music difficult, because you are tempted to skip to other music.

Um, use the hold switch? Problem solved. If you really can't make it all the way through a new album, it's no one's fault but your own. I have over 10000 songs on my current iPod, and I buy what some would consider an unhealthy amount of music, but I still manage to listen to all of my new music all the way through. Owning an iPod certainly has changed my buying habits, and since I got my first one when I was in college (another big influence on my music habits) my music collection has increased exponentially. I'll be the first to admit that I don't listen to all of my new music nearly as rigorously as I did when I was buying a few CDs per month, and my criteria for buying new music have gotten much looser, but I don't consider this a problem. If an album really catches my attention, I'll listen to it just as much as if I were using a CD player; if not, I'll listen to it a few times and put it back in the rotation. Just because the new CDs I buy aren't all "OK Computer"s doesn't mean I can't enjoy them on a more casual level. Besides, this method of collecting music allows me to "rediscover" albums that have been in my collection for awhile but I had never paid much attention to, an experience I find very rewarding. The author's impatience with new music is no fault of the iPod.

2. The ease with which one can acquire music on the web decreases the ability to enjoy new music.

This isn't even a complaint against the iPod, but against the internet as a means of distributing music, and even there it falls flat. Any lack of discrimination is purely the fault of the author. It should be fairly obvious to anyone with a minimum of common sense that hearing one good song by an artist is not a good justification for downloading the artist's entire body of work (1 GB of music because of ONE song you liked? Please). What do I do when I hear a good song? I download that song, and ONLY THAT SONG. Maybe if I'm really digging the song I'll look into the artist's other work before making a judicious purchase or two. Although the author may be correct in believing that using the internet to download ridiculous amounts of music that you only have a passing interest in anyway diminishes the enjoyment of new music, the choice to do so is entirely up to you. With only a little self-control the author could make listening to new music an enjoyable experience again.

Another aspect of this "problem" that is worth mentioning: if you don't like something you downloaded (or you have no intention of listening to it), you can DELETE IT. This may be harder to justify if you actually bought it (which I do for almost all my music), but the author clearly is getting a lot of music that he has little interest in from a variety of sources that don't involve the exchange of money. Nobody's forcing you to keep all of this music, Farhad.

In the technological determinism vs. voluntarism argument (does technology actively change the way we live or is it simply a tool we use for whatever ends we want?), the author puts forth a purely deterministic argument in order to absolve himself of his inadequacies as a music listener. While I won't deny that the iPod has certainly changed the way millions of people listen to music, the idea that the iPod is to be blamed for Mr. Manjoo's problems is absurd. Ironically enough, the device which inspires Mr. Manjoo's fervor contains within it the tools to overcome his concerns, provided they are used correctly. My solution? I make a playlist of "New Music" I have added in the last month (or two, or three), set my iPod on Album Shuffle, and fire up the playlist every once in a while to make sure nothing gets lost in the shuffle (pardon the pun). It may take a little more focus and effort to listen to and apprectiate music in the iPod era but it's certainly managable, and blaming the iPod is a pretty weak argument.