A Wall Full of Music in Your Pocket

In my early twenties, I used to have cratefulls of record albums, tape cassettes and CDs that I dutifully moved from small Brooklyn apartment to small Brooklyn apartment but rarely listened to. But then, the genius that was and is Steve Jobs invented a little gadget that would save me from the weight and clutter that was necessary to have a good music library. A that little contraption known as the iPod. What does the i even stand for? Individual? I don’t know, but for me it represented the first step in the independence from my stuff!

First of all, my cats had already used my record albums as a scratching post so I wasn’t sure why I still kept them, especially since I had long lost the needle on my record player and wasn’t sure where one went to replace them. But around the time my first daughter was born, my early adopter husband — a Smart Freedom — bought me a what now looks like an old Walkman, but was at the time this tiny little contraption that was inscribed from my six month old daughter — note to all you inscribers out there, makes it much harder to resell when you want to upgrade!

I didn’t work at the time, so for some reason, this Organic Freedom was actually able to take all her CDs and transfer them to her computer and then onto her iPod. I looked at my cassettes and searched for the songs on those mix tapes that I actually liked and bought the ones I didn’t own. In fact it was kind of freeing not to have to listen to songs on albums that I never liked! It was VERY annoying at first how little music was available online, but that has certainly changed in the last 9 years. It took a while and I did it in small batches so I wouldn’t be overwhelmed by my gargantuan task, but I eventually finished and put my CDs in three large notebooks, but frankly I should probably get rid of them at this point! It was a huge and exhausting task and frankly when we come upon a large CD collection in the field, we quickly suggest hiring a college student to do the task of transferring the CDs!

Now, we do realize that there are some music aficionados out there who can actually tell the difference in the sound between digital music and CDs, or heck, even record albums, but I’m not one of them, and the space that the casual listener gains from transferring bulky CDs to a computer and iPod set-up is immeasurable. Okay, wait, it IS measurable. It’s usually the size of a large bookshelf, and usually it isn’t a large bookshelf, but an ugly CD-Rack, so it’s the space of a large, or bunch of ugly CD-Racks. But it’s also the peace of mind one gains with the extra space in their tiny apartment to fit a cozy armchair in which to sit and listen to music rather than stare at its ugly presence!