Living up to a procrastination habit more detrimental than my caffeine addiction, I sidled up to my computer in mid-November to finish a paper that should have be turned in 12 hours and 800 miles ago. Slipping on headphones, I immediately logged onto Pandora.com for a soundtrack to my typing. A website that markets itself as “the music genome project,” Pandora takes a certain band or song that you enter and formulates a personalized radio station by dissecting the tonal qualities typical of that artist or tune. Genius? Yes. Obsessing? To a dangerous degree.
So as I am rocking out to inoffensive chamber-pop, I stop in mid keystroke and Hamlet is suddenly on hold. Opening up the minimized window, I discover that the heavenly, albeit slightly congested whine that has caused bopping from my snow boots to my unwashed hair belongs to Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin. Yes, another absurdly named band that I have never heard of! Elizabethean drama forgotten, I immediately turn to the purveyor of more useless knowledge than Alex Trebek: Google. Bringing up their Myspace page, I click on their download-able songs, and transfer them quickly onto to my Itunes. Figuring that their diversion from my paper is worth at least five dollars, I also purchase some tracks from Itunes, because one cannot eat on street-cred alone. Back to their MySpace page, I click on tours and realize that they are playing in Philadelphia tomorrow night. Signing into AIM, I message my friend at the Art Institute who drives down to South Street to get tickets. Before giving my over-heated, out-dated, yet ever-faithful laptop a well-deserved hibernation, I hook-up my iPod and transfer the tracks for easy transportation under a new playlist that will make the rush-hour traffic drive out-of-town if not enjoyable, at least bearable.
Packing up my Norton Shakespeare, the tangibility of the book made me realize that despite the quick transfer of knowledge, I still miss the personal feel of CD booklet and the defined artwork of an album cover.
It’s true that we’ve opened a box that we can’t replace the lid on and maybe we have sacrificed a bit of intimacy, but isn’t music, and literature for that matter, the most powerful when it is expressed differently and innovatively–distribution methods included? Besides, I’m sure Willy Shakes totally would have had a myspace too.
3 thoughts on “Pandora’s Box”
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I like your point about tangibility (“..the feel of a CD booklet…”); I can’t help but wonder if the wish to hold and feel a cultural artifact is unique to a print society. Did the advent of newspapers make people nostalgic for the town crier? In other words, for some semblance of an “aural artifact”? Interesting.
I too like your point about tangibility. I must agree with you that I think pandora’s box is genius. It was actually my mom who introduced me to it over Christmas time, and I have been hooked ever since. I think Derek brings up an interesting point about the wish to hold and feel a cultural artifact possibly being unique to a print society. I feel like tangible artifacts have been a part of our culture for so long, that it would be very hard to even imagine if we would still have that wish to hold and feel the cultural artifact if they weren’t created in the first place. I think what Melissa’s post demonstrates is just how accessible technology has made things.
I recently checked out pandora.com and also agree that it is awesome and a great time killer…
Previous to this website, however, I have been using a similar site called musicovery.com, where you choose your first song based on your mood, or genre that you want to listen to. Then they create a playlist for you based on that initial setting and it turns out to be pretty amazing… Check it out…