Music Listening Habits in a Digital Age

As our method of accessing music changes, so do our listening habits. The digital age has seen the emergence of many new listening tools, many of which alter the way we relate to our society's music. The ubiquity of instant downloading means that new songs are at our fingertips, ready to be downloaded onto our computers and uploaded to hand-held media devices like the iPod at any moment. Peer-to-peer file sharing has radically increased the speed with which new music travels, and has made expanding one's music library simple and often free of any financial cost. Online radio that uses systems to match users with music similar to their tastes has enabled some underground artists to gain popularity, and Myspace has given new groups an extremely useful promotion tool.

Each of these things has changed the way we think about music. For instance, the ease of picking and choosing specific songs to download has had a dual effect on album production, with some bands attempting to produce complete albums that will be desirable in order to promote the sale of older media like CDs, and others focusing on incredible singles that will rocket them to popularity regardless of what the rest of the album sounds like.

The portability of massive amounts of songs encourages listeners to carry around music for any context. Because it is possible to carry around many artists and many albums at once, a diverse music taste is a must in the modern era. Playlists enable easy mixing and matching, and having a handful of good mixes on hand is easy to do. The typical iPod carries music (and often playlists) appropriate for many situations: quiet study time in the library, working out, falling asleep, rocking out in your car by yourself, spontaneous DJ-ing for a party of you and friends.

Easy sharing causes rapid spread of music from one person to another, and it encourages personalization. Download rates give you a feel for the popularity of a song on P2P websites, and recommended downloads notify listeners of possible artists and songs they haven't explored that they might like. Websites like Last.fm, Pandora, and Musicovery further enhance this discovery process. Musicovery links music by feeling and emotion, while still providing artist sorting features. Last.fm links music by tags, and provides a large searchable database as well as "radio" stations that group similar artists.

In other words, the music scene is different now than it was when Reel Big Fish complained that "you're gonna go to the record store/you're gonna give'em all your money/radio plays what they want you to hear/they tell me it's cool but I just don't believe it..." It's different enough to begin to break the old methods of distributing music - instead of going to the record store and giving them all your money, or listening to the radio play what other people want to listen to, you can go download In Between Rainbows for a nominal donation online.

The Filthiest Book Report You’ll Ever Read, or My Artifact Selection: Grant Morrison's The Filth

Grant Morrison’s The Filth is a graphic novel that comes with a warning label. Covering nearly the entire back cover and the first two pages inside, The Filth’s warning is almost clinical in its rigorous coverage of the many reasons you might be better off if you opt to return this book to the shelf. Although the book’s warning is more mocking than genuine, it is still a text any sensible censor would strike from a reading list intended for polite society. With its grungy artwork, repulsive characters, and sadistic plotlines, at first glance The Filth might seem to be a low-culture artifact with no redeeming qualities. However, a more thorough reading turns up questions deserving of further inquiry.

For instance, why is it that the most cherished fantasy the protagonist can dream up for himself is the life of a lonely old man named Greg Feely, who spends his days feeding his beloved cat and masturbating to hardcore pornography? And even if this rehabilitation of the despised archetype of the neighborhood sex offender is for good reason, why is it so important as to merit the novel’s opening panels? From this inauspicious beginning, The Filth continues to wade further into the muck. Rather than complementing Greg Feely with more noble characters, it highlights people like Anders Klimakks, the pornstar famous for shooting black sperm, and Tex Porneau, the wealthy hardcore director who engineers giant sperm monsters for his latest flick. A sex scene is never more than a chapter away, and neither is graphically illustrated violence.

Yet, although The Filth glorifies its own power to provoke disgust in the unsuspecting reader, it is also fascinating. Each sub-plot is carefully constructed to reveal an insight about human nature or the society we have built. The unattractive Greg Feely somehow moves from pathetic to likeable as he grapples with his identity as an agent of the sketchy organization known as the Hand, whose mission is to preserve the Status Q. Even the novel itself is a subject in its far-reaching critique, with an entire storyline premised on drawing attention to the eerie realness of absorbing comic book worlds by repeatedly breaking the fourth wall.

For me, The Filth is interesting because of the complex ideas woven into the words and images that make up the graphic novel. Although the “filthy” subject matter may be titillating, the elusive hypotheticals posed by each of the book’s chapters are far more worthy of study. The first time I flipped through The Filth, I was both appalled and fascinated, unable to look away until I had devoured the entire graphic novel. Subsequent re-readings have not yet failed to uncover new material to ponder, and the opportunity to investigate the text for a class allows me to delve further into these questions.

Although The Filth is not widely recognized by anyone besides comic book aficionados, it is still relevant. Its medium, the graphic novel, is a cornerstone of mass communication. It was published in late 2002, and its commentary actively engages and responds to contemporary society and mainstream culture, if only to subvert them. The author, Grant Morrison, has worked with both DC and Marvel, writing issues of classic series like Spider-Man, X-Men, and Batman. For these reasons, The Filth qualifies as pop culture.

Covering issues as blurry as the nature of reality, the role of authority, and the sanity of our collective desires and anxieties, The Filth presents a surreal study of the way we have designed our world. By choosing this book as my artifact, I hope to shed light on a text I find extraordinarily challenging and appealing. From the first few lines of its warning label to the last panel of the last page, The Filth is a puzzle waiting to be unraveled.