Nobody listens to albums anymore

Barring a few old fogies like me, nobody listens to albums anymore.

I put on a CD in my music system (not my computer) and listen to the album all the way through, from the first song to the last. I don’t skip or jump or programme my music system to play a list of songs in any odd manner I may choose to listen to at a particular moment. I listen to the album all the way through, from beginning till end.

Today, this habit of mine puts me in the non-tech dinosaur category as far as the masses of youngsters go. While I listen to albums, beginning to end, in the comfort of my home, these youngsters go crazy over thousands of MP3 downloads (mostly pirated), packed and compressed as playlists, on their iPods or mobilephones or other MP3 players.

It doesn’t matter if they are out in the streets or in the middle of raucous college compounds or in the seclusion of their bedrooms at home. These youngsters are happy plugging in their earphones and blasting away their music wherever they are. For, as they plug in to their MP3s, they create a world of their own, isolating themselves from everything and everyone else.

It has its pitfalls, but the good thing is, the neighbours don’t complain the way they do when I play my music albums.