"...the pleasure of music...fades with familiarity, and requires either to be revived by intermittance, or fed by continual novelty."
This idea, if true, could accurately predict the trajectory of popular music that would accompany technological advancements in recorded music, specifically, as music gets more portable, and the opportunity cost of listening to it approaches zero (as is the case with record players originally, but limited to the home, and iPods and the like currently, which make the opportunity cost of listening to thousands of songs almost zero provided that one is committed to being alone, such as in the home or in the car), popular music would necessarily respond with novelty, with rapidly shifting tastes and disposability. I notice recently tht one consequence of owning an iPod is the diminishing marginal return to music I enjoy. I grow tired of music I like much more quickly now because it is much more available to me. I should temper my listening to revive the pleasure with intermittance, so to speak.
If music were only available, as it once was, in live performance, one's tastes would be remarkably more stable, but it would take a brilliant mind to forsee such a consequence of technology.
So who said it?
John Stuart Mill--a brilliant man indeed-- in his autobiography published in 1873, who claimed to be "seriously tormented by the thought of the exhaustibility of musical combinations." Funny, I used to have the same thoughts when I was a kid: "when are we going to run out of songs?" I would think.
Posted by Matthew Pearson at November 22, 2003 12:57 PM | TrackBackI've found similar things to be true for me. I don't have an iPod, but I do have almost 50GB of mp3s sitting on my fileserver, and have burned most of that so I can play it in my car. I get tired of music fairly quickly, and a given album only lasts a week at most. I counteract this by having an exceptionally broad and deep library. I've probably only heard about two thirds of what I've got, and have only listened to about a third of it, so I've always got something new. But I also really enjoy putting on music I haven't heard for a few months. It's refreshing to return to an old favorite and have it renewed by an interval of de-emphasis.
Posted by: ryan at November 22, 2003 01:45 PM50 GB! No wonder you wanted album view in iTunes. I have had some luck with this in the browse view, by the way, but I think you said you already tried this.
Posted by: Matthew at November 22, 2003 01:53 PMJohn Stuart Mill is also credited for this little gem, that I have never been fond of...
"I never meant to say that the conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally conservative. I believe
that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it."
I got an I-Pod recently as well -- kinda expensive, but I was thinking if each microeconmic book cost about $100 after tax, then the $399 20GB I-Pod worth every penny (Does MWG's Microecomic Theory has 20GB information?) Well, the above is just some dumb justification for irrational and gulity consumption.
Yes, I have become impatient with songs by sometimes skipping to the next one in the middle of crappy them.
After reading your post, I am thinking to create playlists for each economics subject I study. Wondering if you listen to different genres of music when working on metrics, marco, or micro.
At the end, thank god for music, which brings joy to my life while I am excessively studying away in a quite library.
Posted by: Kwanhang Sergio at December 20, 2003 07:54 PM