Engage in music

I grew up with cassettes and CDs. As a kid, I remember that for a while, the only cassette we had in my parents Toyota Corolla was a UB40 tape and I think to this day I still remember the lyrics to “Red red wine”.

Every birthday and christmas, my brother would gift me CDs. Eminem, Kashmir, Disturbed. He’s got a broad music taste, and heavily influenced mine and the music I listen to today.

Around 2012 I started collecting vinyls again, and lately I’ve been interested in cassettes and CDs. I canceled my Spotify (mostly because of the bad artist pay and their CEOs rather.. polarizing investments) and have started making a digital music collection again with WAVs, MP3s and FLAC-files.

Despite the convenience of streaming services, I found that I listen to music in a different way when playing physical media. I don’t shuffle. I don’t click skip, skip, skip until there’s a song that catch me. I try to indulge in the album the way the artist wants me to listen, and often an album has a totally different meaning or gives me another perspective of it.

A good example is the albums that came out on cassettes. When you had to flip the cassette, there would often be a small interludes to continue the story of the album on the other side. The point is, they had a story, and they often had it to keep the listener engaged. Ice Cube’s “Death Certificate” did this. The album literally has two sides, "The Death Side" and "The Life Side," and the flip isn't just mechanical, it's thematic. Dope album, by the way.

Although there’s been talks of the death of the album, I hope there is a revival of the album coming. More and more people start to buy and collect physical media again, also CDs. People realize that owning music (and movies and games) just seems more rational than continually paying for something that you could own. It’s also a way to support artist more directly, especially the smaller ones, by buying their albums and merch directly from them at show or via Bandcamp etc.

I hope artists follow and create albums for engaged listening with deeper stories again.