Pulling the plug and back to the music store?

A friend of mine told me he did something special last year: he deleted his complete mp3-collection. Say what? Yes, deleted all his music on his computer. He told me he was fed up with all the crappy encoded mp3's. The quality of music on cd/dvd is good and consistent.

Another thing that bugged him was the sheer amount of music that is available on the internet, both legal and illegal. I must agree on that point. Before the internet you bought each month just one or two albums at most. You had something to look forward to. And you listened the complete album. Even if it was mediocre. You paid for it!

But internet changed the scene. Even with zero budget there is more to listen to than you can handle. It certainly changed my way of listening to music. In the pre-internet age I only listened to complete albums. Now because of the sheer abundance of music, the value and appreciation of a song is so much lower that I cannot listen to a complete album. I just want to save those few songs that I really like and go on to the next album to pick out the good songs.

Although I like the abundance of music, I must admit that I think I'm acting like a spoiled brat. I just don't have the patience anymore to listen to songs that aren't good enough. So I can understand that you want to turn back the time. Although it sounds temping, I'm not going to pull the plug. I like to stay in abundance for as long is it will stay that way.

Sound quality by the way isn't such a problem for me. The spirit of a song is much more important than the sound quality.