All Mine.
- No Longer Mine
When I write, I like to listen to music. Most of my first book was written to a series of CDs I purchased from Amazon and ripped to my Mac — early turn of the century electronica, for the most part — Prodigy, Moby, Fat Boy Slim and the like. But as I write these words, I’m listening to an unfamiliar playlist on Spotify called “Brain Food” — and while the general vibe is close to what I want, something is missing.
This got me thinking about my music collection — or, more accurately, the fact that I no longer have a music collection. I once considered myself pretty connected to a certain part of the scene — I’d buy 10 or 15 albums a month, and I’d spend hours each day consuming and considering new music, usually while working or writing. Digital technologies were actually pretty useful in this pursuit — when Spotify launched in 2008, I used it to curate playlists of the music I had purchased — it’s hard to believe, but back then, you could organize Spotify around your collection, tracks that lived on your computer, tracks that, for all intents and purposes, you owned. Spotify was like having a magic digital assistant that made my ownership that much more powerful.
But as the digital revolution progressed, I’d purchase a new Mac every few years, and somewhere along the way my music got disassociated with proof of my ownership. It was all lost to poor DRM…
