De-Converging Technology - Music

What is De-converging

For the full introduction, check out the previous post De-converging Technology - Introduction.

De-converging, or de-convergence, is the opposite of converging or convergence. It’s a made-up word. The gist, the feeling, is that it’s breaking apart these bits of technology that we’ve melded together for convenience. Western society, and much of the world from what I gather, is constantly aiming to make the technology we use more convenient and do more and more functions, i.e. the smart phone. There are many benefits to this convenience and convergence, but there are also many unforeseen consequences.

One of the greatest challenges of de-converging is that you need to figure out what functions of converged technology are most useful to you and that you actually do use on a regular basis that aren’t bad for your mental health. For me one of the most used apps is YouTube Music, and so before I could even think about de-converging I needed to make sure that I could still listen to music if I had a dumb-phone.

The joy of music streaming

Music streaming is equal parts amazing and terrible. On one hand, you have millions of tracks you can listen to from hundreds of thousands of artists from all around the globe. You have genres of music that are mashups of other genres, or deep sub-genres, or totally new genres. You can hear music from an artist that you may have never had the chance to listen to if not for the ease of access for streaming music.

There’s also thousands of playlists, both from the service provider like YouTube or Spotify, but also community or fan-made playlists. The services themselves can also recommend music based on similar artists or albums. When Pandora music first entered the scene (that dates me), it was revolutionary to have music recommended and unearthed for you. Services now do that, and then some. Music streaming isn’t perfect, and has some very large drawbacks.

The sadness of owning nothing

For artists, music streaming services pay them very little, like tenths-of-a-cent per stream kind of very little. For those who have a large following, or have a song go viral, that doesn’t matter as much, but for the vast majority of other artists, that’s not enough to sustain them. For the consumer, you own nothing now. You have no physical object or digital object that you can move and listen to freely. If you stop paying Spotify or Google their monthly subscription, you potentially lose access to all those songs. Currently most streaming services have some form or another of a free tier that you can still use to listen, but you have no control over that media.

In the context of convergence, streaming music is now also a portal into your phone, and phone addiction. Having your music streaming on a smartphone means that if you want to skip a song, you need to unlock your phone and open up your streaming app, but oh look there’s an email that you need to check, and as you’re reading that email an Instagram notification pops up and you get sucked into Insta for a bit before realizing why you even opened your phone, and by now you’re already 7 tracks past where you were. Even streaming via the web apps has the potential for distraction and pulling you from the flow state.

And lastly, music and listening has become another commodity. With A.I. being used more and more to create art and music, and with everyone trying to game the streaming service algorithm to try to survive, music is losing some of it’s uniqueness, it’s flavor. And as consumers we no longer listen to an album or pick our playlists with the same care that we did with mixtapes and cd mixes for the car. When was the last time you sat down and just listened to music, without doing something else? I know for me it’s been a very very long time.

A solution?

The big takeaway here is intentionality. For me, listening to music is for three reasons: getting into a flow state while working, improve my mood, or improve whatever task I’m doing with background music. Having music on my phone can definitely solve my mood or serve background music, but the problem comes to when I want to be productive or just to listen to an album. There have been times that I was working, but wanted to skip a track or see who the artist was and then I was sucked down a notification hole on my phone.

My solution has been to buy an old iPod off of eBay and flash-mod it. I bought a cheap pair of IEMs off of Amazon, loaded up some music from my personal collection, and that’s been my go-to music device for when I need to really be productive. It’s not tied to any notifications or distractions. It plays music. I need to skip a song, I hit the skip button. I want a different album, I select one. There’s no chance of a notification tricking my lizard brain to go down a rabbit hole. And because it only plays music and the DAC in it is much nicer than most smartphones, I can get a much better music experience. Does it suck having to use iTunes? A little. The 30-pin cable is also a bit of a pain. But the fact that I have been daily-driving the iPod for 80% of my music needs means that I could potentially transition to a dumb phone with little impact to my music listening habits.

I have mainly loaded up my favorite video game albums as those are excellent at fading into the background and letting me get into a flow state, and they can also improve my mood or the task I’m engaged in. I’m also more intentional with my music listening because I’m making my own playlists again. I’m deciding what music will be available to me. I’ve rediscovered so much of my old music and even music I didn’t know I had. It’s amazing how many soundtracks you accumulate from Steam or GoG or Humble Bundles. I’ve also been using BandCamp and iTunes to purchase music. I prefer BandCamp simply because I get FLAC/ALAC tracks when purchasing albums, and more of the money goes to the artists. You can also pick up used CD’s or even new CD’s to rip, but then you have a phyisical item taking up space when the digital version in ALAC/FLAC/WAV is just as good. HDD’s are cheaper than most apartments and houses per square foot vs per gigabyte.

Is there a happy middle ground

So streaming music is a great way to listen to new music and find artists and sounds you may not have found, but you own nothing. Listening to music from your own collection means you get to curate it for yourself, but you also have to purchase albums and store some of those potentially. There’s also many times an artist is only on streaming services and is not on BandCamp or iTunes. And you may have noticed I mentioned that the iPod only covers 80% of my music needs. What about the other 20%? Well, I still stream music via YouTube Music. I paid for premium because I hate ads, but the music addon is quite nice. I have Nest speakers that I stream while cooking. And I still like to use streaming music to find other artists or albums I might not otherwise.

This brings me to the happy middle ground. I think there’s a place for streaming music even if it’s not through the smartphone. I think having it on the web is nice, especially if you are intentionally listening to find new songs. It is essentially the new version of FM Radio. I know that part of how I found music I liked as a teenager was through my friends, and the other part was through the radio. Streaming services fulfill this need nicely, and after I find an album I really like I can jump over to BandCamp and purchase it and keep it for as long as the digital files will last.

Conclusion

It’s not a perfect solution. Not everyone wants to get an old iPod or use iTunes, but there are other MP3 players from the likes of FiiO and even Sony that are higher-end players that have MicroSD expansion and charge using USB-C. Most of them have some form of Android and can even stream YouTube Music, Spotify, Tidal, etc. Those might be a better solution than an old iPod, but there is a much steeper cost to those devices vs an old iPod. It has helped, though, to cut down on my own distractions from my smartphone and has showed me that I am able to check another box off the “Don’t-Need-Smartphone” list.

If you find that you work better with music but don’t want to break your flow-state or want to lessen your dependence on a smartphone, I highly recommend a dedicated music player. Get a decent set of ear buds or over the ear headphones and you may be surprised by how much it helps.