My New Years Substitution

So it’s the first day of the year. The first day of the rest of your life. The day when you look forward with excitement and awe to all the possibilities the New Year might hold for you. Will you get a new job? Will you fall in love? Will the public ever get tired of hearing about Britney Spears?

In other words, this should be a very optimistic time. And yet this morning I woke up with a bit of a headache, and a day filled with dark clouds and pouring rain. Not exactly what you’d call a buoyant beginning for 2008. So instead of greeting the New Year with energy and enthusiasm, I crawled in bed and went back to sleep.

But now I’m wide awake, and sober, and my mood hasn’t gotten much better. What happened? Last night I was so upbeat and full of energy, and today I feel like I just hit BANKRUPT on “Wheel of Fortune”. Other than residual lethargy from an evening of celebrating with friends, there shouldn’t be this gloomy feeling pervading my spirit. And yet, I find myself looking toward the future with uncertainty…perhaps even doubt. Will 2008 be better than 2007? Will the War in Iraq ever end? Will someone please explain to me why Paris Hilton is important?

I find myself filled with so many questions that I can’t quite see the future as clearly as I thought I did. So instead of writing the traditional list of New Years Resolutions, I decided to deconstruct my many thoughts and fears, and try to figure out why I have so much angst about the coming year. A substitution for the typical resolutions, if you will. (It also prevents me from having to make any promises I know I won't keep. Like giving up my $4 cup of Starbucks coffee, for instance.)

So here is a partial list of my questions for 2008:

Will the Writer’s Strike ever end? Or is Winter television going to be filled with a slew of reality shows like “Family Fight Club” and “Skid Row Nation?”

Will iTunes ever give us a “Free Song of the Week” that’s actually good?

Will steroid use in sports darken the careers of more legendary athletes?

Will the Spice Girls be as popular as they were before?

Will J K Rowling have success past Harry Potter?

Will Hilary become the first female President?

Will (fill in the blank) ever come out of the closet?

Will my 1-year-old iPod continue its swift journey toward irrelevancy?

Will the real Lindsay Lohan please stand up?

These are the kinds of questions plaguing me today as I take stock of the New Year. I’m sure you have a few of your own, so feel free to add them to the list.

Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be a little more optimistic.

Is iTunes a Music Enabler?

When I was young and records were still in fashion, I remember the eager anticipation I felt when one of my favorite singers or groups released a new album. I would run down to the record store on the day it was released, find the most pristine copy, and then rush home to listen to the entire album in one sitting. And if I really liked it, I’d listen to it all over again. Sometimes for the rest of the day. (Much to the dismay of my parents, whose musical tastes were clearly different than my own.)

Then I went through a cassette phase, where I bought the cassette version of everything I already had on vinyl. After all, you couldn’t fit a 33” record into a Sony Walkman. Not unless you wanted to do some serious damage to your instrument.

After cassettes came CDs, which were much smaller and more convenient than records, and supposedly better quality than cassettes. I must admit I resisted this new innovation for a while, until the Walkman ate my cassette tapes one too many times. (How I hated having to stick a pencil through the spindles of the cassette to try and reel in the tape that had been pulled out.)

The transition to CD was rather easy, and I thought this would be the last time I’d ever have to update my musical collection to another format. How little I knew about technology. For several years after I made the switch to CDs, I was introduced to something called an iPod. And for a while, I must admit that I didn’t really understand the concept of an iPod. How could you hear music playing from such a little box without inserting a cassette or CD first?

The iPod presented a new level of musical appreciation—the ability to have your entire CD collection on one unit. Or at least as much of your collection as you could fit. And you could even create your own dance mix or playlist, so now everyone and their Grandmother had the opportunity to test out their latent DJ skills.

But the biggest musical revolution of the past few decades has got to be that wonderful online store that allows you to download your selections immediately. I’m referring of course to iTunes, which single-handedly changed the way people purchase music.

iTunes is like having your own private Xanadu, a “place that nobody dared to go.” No more running down to your nearest Tower Records to pick up the latest Billy Joel CD, or waiting for your latest package from Columbia House to arrive. In fact, no more running down to Tower Records at all, since the company recently closed its doors forever. (An obvious sign of what iTunes has done to the local neighborhood record store.)

It’s sad to think that music stores might soon become a thing of the past. All those aisles of CDs and Albums and Cassettes you once mulled over for hours have now been replaced by the convenience of a click. And how easy it is to click, especially when most songs only cost ninety-nine cents to purchase. Ninety-nine cents!!!! It’s incredible.

And what’s even better is that you no longer have to purchase a whole album if you only like a few songs. Now you can have your music a la carte. Which makes it so much easier to expand your musical tastes to other genres and artists you might never have considered before. Just browse, click on a song title, and after thirty seconds of sampling it, make the quick decision whether to download it or not. And since it’s only ninety-nine cents, what have you got to lose? If you decide later you think the song sucks, you’ve only wasted ninety-nine cents. (Except those ninety-nine cents really add up if you happen to be a compulsive clicker.)

Today, I have the largest collection of music I’ve ever owned. It’s massive, it’s comprehensive, it’s eclectic. But if you asked me a specific question about a particular song or the artist singing it, I’d probably draw a blank nine out of ten times. Because my music is no longer something I anticipate, or research, or know much about. It’s more spontaneous than that. With only a click, I can have instant gratification and a snappy tune. I don’t have to spend hours staring at the album cover, or reading all the liner notes. All those simple pleasures have now become a thing of the past. Replaced with an online jukebox that is not only convenient, but addictive as well. And therein lies the rub.

I’m Henson. And I’m an iTune-aholic.