Collect Yourself

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COLLECT YOURSELFMarjorie Kibby a a University of Newcastle, Humanities and Social Science, University Drive, Newcastle, Australia Online Publication Date: 01 April 2009

To cite this Article Kibby, Marjorie(2009)'COLLECT YOURSELF',Information, Communication & Society,12:3,428 443 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/13691180802660644 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13691180802660644

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Marjorie KibbyCOLLECT YOURSELF Negotiating personal music archives

Downloaded By: [Kibby, Marjorie] At: 02:32 16 May 2009

Despite the importance of digital music in most young peoples lives, there has been little academic research into the meanings attached to these acquisitions and the patterns of organization of and access to them. This study reviewed the existing research into music collections, and interviewed 35 young people whose first music acquisitions were music files or whose current collections consisted predominantly of music files. The results suggest that many young people have acquired a large amount of music in file formats, and relate to their music in ways that show their music functions as a collection. The examination of personal archives of music primarily existing as music files suggests that the process of classifying, organizing and accessing music that has no physical or material presence gives it a materiality. Keywords Cyberculture; media studies; young people

While there are significant studies of collecting as consumer behaviour, few of these address music collecting. This may be explained by the fact that music collecting is significantly different from other forms of collecting, and what some view as merely a personal archive of songs, others may view in emblematic terms as a collection. Music is a complex example of compulsive acquisition because the objects remain in daily use, as well as having symbolic value. A music collection is at once an archive and a participatory practice. Where the music exists, not as a set of tangible objects, but as a series of computer files, its identification as a collection is even more complicated. Most research that examines music collections is on large institutional collections such as libraries, and on the specific problems associated with cataloguing, storing and delivering these music collections to library patrons. There is little to date analysing the relationship of individual users to their personal music archives, particularly where that archive is in the form of music files. I conducted 35 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with males and females between the ages of 18 and 25 years old who self identified as having acquired what they thought was a significant amount of music, and whose first musicInformation, Communication & Society Vol. 12, No. 3, April 2009, pp. 428 443 ISSN 1369-118X print/ISSN 1468-4462 online # 2009 Taylor & Francis http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/13691180802660644

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acquisitions were music files, or whose current collection consisted primarily of music files. The participants were recruited through informational posters sited in locations frequented by young people such as the campuses of tertiary institutions and music venues with a youth orientation. Interviews began with a general discussion about musical tastes and the importance of music in their lives, moving on to more specific questions about music acquisition, storage and organization, and access and use. The open-ended questions were interspersed with questions that gave quantifiable responses on collection size and format, types of music use and sources of recorded music. Of the thirty-five 18 25-year-olds interviewed, 18 (51 per cent) said that music was very important in their lives, and 15 (43 per cent) more said that it was important. While three (9 per cent) described their collection as enviable, 22 others (69 per cent) rated their collection as good or better than good. The most common size of the CD collection was 25 50 CDs, with 14 (41 per cent) including their collection in this category. Four people (12 per cent) had more than 500 CDs, while five had fewer than 25 CDs. Two people had small vinyl collections. Most of the interviewees reported a music file collection of more than 3,000 files, with 23 (65 per cent) of them having file collections of this size. The four participants who had more than 500 CDs all had more than 3,000 files, and the five who had fewer than 250 files also had small CD collections of fewer than 25 discs. Activities surrounding the acquisition of music occupied a significant amount of time for the participants. While half of them (17) went to a physical music store most weeks, nearly two thirds of them (20) visited an online music source most days. Everyone reported a range of reasons for visiting physical music sources, including picking up free music newspapers, buying pre-paid iTunes cards, finding out about new releases and browsing the shelves. The range of reasons for visiting an online music source was understandably even greater, with online discussion, tour and concert information, watching videos and downloading images being mentioned by participants. The majority found out about new music from friends, primarily face-to-face friends, but also online contacts. Radio was still an important source of new music for many, particularly the Australian national youth broadcaster, Triple J, with many reporting listening to radio in the car. Travelling, including walking, was the space most likely to be filled by music, while the bedroom was a close second with the majority reporting that they listen to music while studying, doing domestic tasks, chilling out or going to sleep. Using grounded theory techniques, the interviews were transcribed and coded thematically, beginning with the categories used by Giles et al. (2007) and modifying these categories as patterns emerged in the data. I grouped the participants statements into categories: statements regarding the acquisition of tracks for the sake of owning them; statements that referred to the relationship between the user and their music as it has been acquired; statements that


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reflected a sense of pride in the music acquired; statements regarding expediency in acquisition, ease of access, and portability; statements on the range of styles, artists and genres acquired; statements on the cost of music; statements where the music acquired was linked to personal identity; statements that described the music in terms of connection to another person; statements that referred to a personal history; statements that referred to future uses or values for the music collection; statements that spoke of the transience or impermanence of music; statements concerning the format or the medium of the music; statements on the quantity of music acquired; and statements on how the music had been categorized and stored. Across the twelve initial categories, I identified the repeated key concerns of the interviewees when discussing their music to be: how they felt about the music, how they interacted with the music, how they used music to modify their environment, and how they connected with others through music. In line with the grounded theory approach, this analysis suggested four dominant theoretical concepts: affective attachment, access and control, construction of space, and social connections. From these four concepts, I identified the core concept that arose from the participants statements was the social construction and negotiation of personal archives of digital music. It appeared that far from being ephemeral and valueless, music files played an important social and symbolic role in their owners lives and were interacted with in similar ways to music collections in solely physical formats.

Properties of musical artefactsWhile there are significant studies of collecting as consumer behaviour, few of these address music collecting. Acquiring and organizing a music collection is a more complex example of compulsive acquisition than other types of collections because the objects collected both have symbolic value, and remain in daily use. Although music is an economically important consumer item, and an accumulation of music artefacts is usually described as a collection, it is difficult to discuss individuals music acquisitions solely in terms of consumer goods with their presumption of utility (Devetag 1999), or simply as a collection with the implication of objects removed from ordinary use (Giles et al. 2007). Personal music archives are not easily categorized as either sacred objects or mundane possessions. The music that has been acquired by individuals usually consists of both tracks and albums that are not currently played, but are seen to be important to own; and music that is currently listened to, but is seen as a temporary interest with no long-term value. But these are fluid categories. Peoples relationships with the music they have acquired are complex and heterogeneous, and the functions of a personal archive and the properties of personal musical artefacts cannot be assumed to be identical for all music consumers/collectors. When the music acquired comes from a range of sources from free and


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illegal to expensive and inconvenient, and in a variety of formats with differing levels of quality, the functions and properties become even more complex.

Affective attachmentThe attachment of personal and emotional meanings to physical possessions has been discussed by a number of authors: Appadurai argues that commodities can be said to have social lives such is the relationship between commodities and consumers (Appadurai 1986, p. 3), while Ruvio describes how consumers use objects to demonstrate that they are unique like everybody else (Ruvio 2008, p. 444). This relationship between people and their possessions is particularly strong in the case of collections. In sharing the process of unpacking his book collection, Benjamin describes collecting as developing a relationship to objects which does not emphasize their functional, utilitarian value (Benjamin 1982, p. 60). Belk discusses collecting as a socially sanctioned hoarding activity, a legitimate exercise in suturing consumer goods to identity (Belk 1995). Collecting, defined as the process of actively, selectively, and passionately acquiring and possessing things removed from ordinary use (Belk 1995, p. 67) easily describes teaspoons taken out of service in the kitchen to be displayed in the parlour as reminders of friends or vacations, however a music collection has always been more complicated. Music can be an object but it can also be an experience; it can exist as a phrase heard from a passing vehicle as well as taking a concrete form with cover art and liner notes in a purposebuilt cabinet. In addition, musics use is invariably mundane as well as symbolic, covering background distractions while representing personal history. While it is accepted that an important feature of hard record collections is . . . that they serve as a kind of cultural autobiography for their owners (Giles et al. 2007, p. 431) there has been a reluctance on the part of researchers to accord digital collections a similar role. Giles et al. reason that with soft digital formats it is unlikely that such sentimental value would be accorded to individual music files (Giles et al. 2007, p. 431). Beer believes that the physicality of the collection is an integral part of our relations with it (Beer 2008, p. 75). Cunningham et al.s analysis of personal music collections in 2004 led them to conclude that simply having an MP3 file does not give the same pleasure or same sense of ownership, of having a collection, that the purchase of a physical CD brings (Cunningham et al. 2004, p. 7). Digital files are seen as too ephemeral, too intangible, too easily deleted, to maintain an affective investment. However, the under-25s interviewed suggested a changing relationship to music formats. Some like Lilen did value the CD more than the file. She had two sets of music; music files which were for listening to today and were essentially disposable, and music on CD which formed a more or less permanent collection. Lilen1: People used to buy CDs because it was their way of


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getting music they liked, um, you didnt have things online where you could legally or illegally download it. But now its become more of you buy CDs for the sake of a collection these days. Some saw their CDs and records as their real collection and their music files as a back-up copy, or a way of making the physical objects more accessible. Cooper: Most of the stuff I have digitally is stuff on vinyl that Ive had to download. Ive probably got about 100, 150 gig, something like that, including all the stuff backed up. Others saw the CD as just a step in the process of getting files. Daniel: Oh, I buy the CDs and just put them on the computer. I like keeping the CDs if its a good band . . . but I usually sell them or give them away. Others like Murray had acquired their first music as a file, and all of their music was on their computer, but they didnt really see it as a collection. Murray: All of my music is on my computer so I dont know whether its a collection as such because its not the actual CDs or records. At the other end of this continuum were people like Simon, who set out to establish a collection in Benjamins terms, but did so with music files with no physical form. Simon: I have about forty gigs worth [of music files]. I have a sort of semi-obscure music collection, one that Ive built up myself. I dont like to share music personally because it devalues my own collection; like, I love the fact that my collection on my computer is unique. Simon reflects on his files in a way reminiscent of Benjamin unpacking his book collection, their lack of physicality does not mitigate their status as a collection. Music collections seemed to be in a state of transition from physical CDs to digital files. While some of those interviewed saw CDs as their real collection, others had an investment in their music files that previous researchers saw only with physical collections (cf. Giles et al. 2007; Beer 2008). For young music collectors in the future files may replace physical formats. The apparent ease of acquiring music files might seem to negate their importance as we call those objects valuable that resist our desire to possess them (Simmel quoted in Appadurai 1986, p. 3), however many of the interviewees linked the easy availability of music online to a desire or even a compulsion to develop larger, more comprehensive or more selective collections. People were proud of their digital collections, and pleased to identity them in terms of breadth, specificity or obscurity. Kim: I get access to so much stuff now . . . my collection has just exponentially grown. Josh: Some of it is like local sorts of bands that play in the pub scene in Germany or something youd never find it in a store. Daniel: Ive got some interesting stuff there, particularly my early nineties Norwegian black metal. . .. Yeah, some very cool stuff in there. Adrian: Im very sort of selective when it comes to my music. I dont just get something for the sake of having it on my computer. I know what I like. The ease of acquisition and the intangibility of the format did not appear to lesson the affective attachment to the collection. The increasing use of portable music file players is having an impact on peoples relationship to their physical music collection. Users must import



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music from the CDs they own onto their computers in order to be able to have music on their portable players, giving them three copies of the track or album. Given the ubiquity of the portable player, and the multi-functionality of modern computers, it seems to be generally more convenient to play the music file than to locate the physical form and play it in a conventional Hi-Fi system. In this way music is becoming increasingly disassociated from its physical manifestation, and increasingly valued as an experience. As considerable time and effort is involved in ripping CDs, and there exist convenient links between portable players and online music file sources, it is conceivable that more people will be purchasing their everyday music in file format in the future. Alan: I rip most of [my CDs]. Its all on computer at the moment. Im sort of glad I did but, man, it was such an arduous process. It took like ten minutes to rip each CD on my shitty laptop. James: I copy my whole collection, mainly for backup, but also for listening on the computer. Theres a couple of them, theyre copy protected, so Ive got to go to a different computer thats got a burner that can burn and Ive got to burn that to a CD and then rip that to my computer. For some, downloading is a routine activity, as with Josh: I usually have downloads going every night between midnight and midday when the unlimited downloads are on while a CD purchase is spurred by a particular event such as a new release or a memorable gig, for example, Ruth: If I heard a band play live I would be inclined to buy their CD. One of the interviewees reflected a concern with environmental issues and an increasing consumer demand that they be able to buy just what they require, rather than be compelled to purchase packaging and extras for which they have no use. Ivan: The Beatles, what was it, um, the big record they released, Sergeant Peppers, yeah, and how they turned that into more than just music, they made it something that people would want with foldout stickers and made it something memorable, an object, an item. There is good and bad things about that I guess, including the environmental concerns of creating more waste and the consumeristic side of owning a product. I liked that Radiohead with their most recent album, Im not sure how successful it was, but allowed the buyer to nominate a price but if they wanted something well-rounded as a product they could pay the additional costs and get a full package. Most of the people interviewed wanted the CD copy even after they had ripped it to the computer and transferred it to their portable player. Michael: I do like the actual physical-ness of it but still probably the most reason that I keep it is for archival kind of things. I have that sort of source to go back to. The actual artwork and all that sort of gear is nice to have. Though several of those interviewed spoke of their music files in terms of the present, while their physical collection represented the past. Simon: I dont use my CDs anymore. I actually dont even have them . . . in the place Im living now, I dont even have any of the CDs, theyre all at my old place. Kim: In my real life record collection there is a lot of stuff that is very old, that I havent listened to in a long time. My electronic collection is more up-to-date, more


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representative of my taste now. Caitlin: Ive got about twenty CDs. I stopped buying them when I got my iPod. Josh: Ive got three CDs. When I lived with my parents I used to buy CDs, and these probably were in the car when I moved. Where participants routinely bought CDs to rip to file, and then no longer used the CD it could be hypothesized that these types of CD purchases will eventually end, as file purchasing becomes faster, cheaper, and more widely available and the habit of buying CDs fades. However it is similarly likely that those special purchases of music in a physical format will continue, as a link to a particular musical event, as a symbol or gift, or as a significant archive. The business press though, sees the DVD as providing collectors with their physical music product (Pressman 2007) and the CD as eventually disappearing. Interestingly, a number of independent labels including Sub Pop, Matador, Merge, and Saddle Creek are releasing their music on vinyl and MP3 only, with no CD.Downloaded By: [Kibby, Marjorie] At: 02:32 16 May 2009

Access and controlAn archive becomes a collection when incorporated into the ritual of everyday life. The music collection is a habitual embodiment or performance of the music archive (Beer 2008, p. 82), it is an accumulation of personal artefacts with particular understandings, practices, rituals, and identity forming properties attached to it (Beer 2008, p. 82). With music files there is a new type of materiality bound up in the ways that users access and control their digital collections, attaching personal meanings through tags, menus and playlists. The way in which the interviewees described organizing the collection into folders, adding or revising meta-tags, locating and attaching graphics, designing playlists and identifying search terms and patterns, suggested that the ways in which they accessed and controlled the files gave them a materiality. Through their interaction with their files they attached real world properties to them. In Nick Hornbys novel High Fidelity, the hero, Rob, explains that he is reorganizing his record collection by events in his life thereby writing his autobiography without picking up a pen a system that is close to the event-linked playlists of contemporary music file players. A music collection in the form of digital files facilitates the autobiographical organization Rob desired. Rob says when Im finished Im flushed with a sense of self, because this, after all, is who I am (Hornby 1996, p. 51), and music file collectors express similar sentiments about the organization of their collection into categories that denote significant moments in their lives. As Andrew said: Music, can also, I dont what the word is, maybe empathize with you, so you can find music that explains exactly how you are. Most of the interviewees described their file collections as being highly organized, though what constituted highly organized varied widely. Some merely used the default settings of iTunes or Media Player, while others capitalized on


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the ease of reorganization online to develop overlapping sets of music categorized by associations, activities, moods or memories, as well as by artist, album, genre and date. All of those with substantial file collections said that their CDs were either not organized in any particular way, or had been organized by use into recently played and not recently played. It was very important to all the interviewees that their digital music was classified correctly, easy to navigate and access. Alan: Its pretty sweet, um, Microsoft Windows Media Player sorts [my files] for me you go on the net and it downloads all the album covers and that sort of thing and arranges it all systematically. You can arrange it by artist names, the year it was released so, yeah, it does it all automatically, which is awesome. My CDs . . . my room is so messy . . . theyre fricking everywhere at the moment. Casey: My CDs are just piled around the place. Just pretty much piled up. The two interviewees that had a significant number of CDs before they stared to acquire music files had quite sophisticated systems for organizing them. For example, Lilen: I have three stacks, um, where I can put them in and I have my favourite band up the top down to my least favourite band, but theyre not in any way the worst. But those bands, I have them in chronological order of the release of the album (laughs), how complex. I have on top the first album that they released, say if they released an album in 1983 and the next one would be, which could be 1986 so its in that order, but in the order of popularity and then in the chronological order that they were released. Those who had no significant CD collection, and whose music was primarily or wholly in the form of music files, reported a similar level of engagement with their files. Many of them acquired music as single tracks, rather than albums, and then combined the tracks into albums of their own. The process of ripping songs from CD to the hard drive has been described as an act of redemption a release of music hitherto trapped in amber into a new, more ample existence (Dibbell 2000), and certainly the people interviewed spoke of their ability to remix mass media into new highly personalized content, accommodating changing moods and situations. James: Ive set up a playlist at the moment so it just randomizes, so even stuff that Ive got a few years back even, that still plays. Michael: Playlists, yeah, when you go on roadtrips and those sort of things with other people, so matching other peoples tastes. And, I guess, moving into different moods, I guess. Yeah, building it that way whereas the album structure isnt always the same like that its just the same artist. Simon: I use playlists all the time. Um, I mean, its so easy to do in iTunes Ive got playlists for, you know, jazzy stuff if Im in that sort of mood or more like dancey stuff, if Im in that kind of mood, Ive even got one where I just chuck tracks in that are nice to go to sleep to and I put it on sometimes when Im going to sleep. Jessica: Ive only started making playlists a lot recently. Ive made one for kind of sleep, sleepy kind of music not just all slow songs but it sets the mood a bit.


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Yeah, just general playlists for different moods I suppose. It sounds a bit lame but if you saw them, theyre really good. Leah: I rate all my tracks as I add them; you know five stars for new things that I want to hear a lot. Then if its older or Im sick of it Ill take some stars off. The ability to reconfigure the music so that the flow is determined by the user seems to be of increasing importance to consumers whose early experience of recorded music was in file formats. In a post interview discussion, Lauren told of how her father had just ripped all of his favourite CDs to his iPod and just put it on shuffle, which she described as driving her insane to the point where she offered to create playlists for him an offer he rejected. While all of those interviewed use the shuffle feature, usually while doing some non-specific activity (walking, waiting for the bus) most of those that discussed shuffle saw this as a mode to be used when you couldnt decide on a playlist. Lauren found it incomprehensible that anyone would only ever listen to their entire collection as a series of random tracks. Digital technologies increase the opportunities for customizing and personalizing. The age group being labelled GenTech is part of a mashup culture, accustomed to taking elements of popular culture to cut and paste, drag and drop, and rip and burn individual personalized media products. While a previous generation crafted mix-tapes from their records, todays teens are seen to have an enhanced desire to customize (McCourt 2005) facilitated by the enhanced ability provided by software bundled with their laptop or downloaded for their portable player. Homemade mix-tapes were fairly common in the 1980s driven to a large extent by the popularity of the cassette deck in car entertainment systems. The gradual disappearance of the cassette player, and the time elapsed before the development of home burnable CDs saw them die out as a pop-culture art form. However now that the mix tape has gone digital the reduction in the time and technical ability required to develop custom mixes has allowed it to become an almost universal activity amongst music file collectors. The ability to sort and regroup files effortlessly transforms the listening experience (McCourt 2005, p. 250), whether the user takes the opportunity to create their own soundtrack or selects shuffle for a musical experience that has elements of surprise within a familiar programme. The players menu system provides multiple pathways through the collection, significantly altering the level of interactivity between the user, the device and the music. Simon: I make a lot of mixes . . . because Im passionate about my music, and I like sort of creatively exploring my collection, seeing what goes with what, and then also I really enjoy listening back to the mixes that I make. However Simon also expressed a regret that people had stopped listening to albums as a result of digital music players. He said, Even though the majority of my music is a digital collection, I still like to listen to albums. So even on my iPod I wont put one or two tracks across, Ill put a whole album. And Ill try to listen to that album as a whole, and I hardly ever use the shuffle feature it just kills



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the album. Though many others expressed a similar opinion to Joyleen: If I put a CD on I find that now more so than before I had an mp3 that I get a bit bored listening to the same album. The symbolic value of music is the connection that it has to everyday life, and the larger amounts of music accumulated by most file collectors, the acquisition of individual tracks as well as albums and the ubiquity of the portable players, provides more opportunity for the attachment of personal meanings to the music. There is greater facility to associate experiences with songs, or to remember songs in connection with people or events. Joyleen: We were watching a movie about El Salvador and it had a lot of Spanish so I made up a playlist of Spanish music. With tracks disconnected from albums, eras, or even artists there is the possibility of inscribing only personal meanings the train trip to the mountains, my sister, July 2008. For some however the ease of acquisition and ubiquitous presence of music tracks can also negate the connection with the music. David: I actually got rid of my iPod at one stage; my first iPod, I gave it to my sister. I was taking music with me everywhere I go and I just started actually getting sick of having music in my ears. Shaun: I used to listen to albums and read the words and Id know the songs well. Now I listen to a lot more music, but I listen more shallowly. I think Ive got too much music. The notion of completism is central to collecting; the idea that, at some point in time, the collector will be able to view the collection as complete (Belk 1995; Shuker 2004). However it is an impossible concept to apply to digital music files. With more music becoming more widely, more easily, and more cheaply available and the development of portable devices with larger storage capacity there would seem to be at least some reduction in the factors that limit the size of physical collections. Problems of storage space, cataloguing, portability and maintenance are less of an issue with files. Most of the participants in this study did not delete files they no longer listened to, though this would seem to be an advantage of the file format. Most of the interviewees admitted to have significant amounts of music on their computer that they no longer actively listened to. Elisa: My biggest problem is discarding the music I used to like. I never listen to it, but I just cant bear to part with it! Sam: A lot of the time I listen to it when I download it, like just after I download it and Im all stoked about it. I listen to it maybe two or three times and then it wont be touched for ages after that. In general I do listen to everything that I download but then sometimes it will just get left behind for six or twelve months and forgotten about. All agreed that all of the music in their collection, whether or not it was listened to regularly, or at all, was an important part of their personalities and part of what defined who they are. The music that they possess all holds certain meanings specific to each individual and all serves as a connection to their pasts or a reminder of different people and events in their lives. Their collection was not defined as the music currently being played, but as the music


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owned, even if it might never again be accessed. It had been tagged and classified, and it belonged to the collection.

Construction of spaceUnlike pre-industrial societies which have an acute awareness of environmental sounds, contemporary societies find little meaning in their acoustic environment, with sonic awareness limited to polarized extremes noticed or unnoticed, good or bad. In the developed world, sound becomes something that the individual tries to block, rather than to hear (Wrightson 1999, p. 12). Music becomes an artificial soundscape that is consciously used to replace the extant sonic environment. Music is also used as protection against the internal noise of unwanted thoughts and feelings. Music functions as an audioanalgesic (Schafer 1977, p. 96) postponing inner dialogues and blocking uncomfortable emotions (Wrightson 1999, p. 12). Music provides an illusion of control over both the external world and the inner self. As sound has been used more ubiquitously to direct and control consumers moods and behaviours (see Martin 2005; Caldwell & Hibbert 2002; Alpert & Alpert 1991), and as personal music players have developed to a point where users can hold 40,000 songs in the palm of their hand, users personal sound barrier has become a music bubble protecting them from both external intrusions and interior demands. Portable file players give users access to their music collection in a range of locations, where previous versions of portable players had restrictions on the location or activity (you couldnt jog with your Dancette record player) or limited the user to a few selections from their collection (such as with the Walkman or Discman). Contemporary players allow users to have their entire collection with them through all of the events, activities, moods and interactions that constitute daily life. This facilitates the creation of a seamless auditory experience that is essentially a privatized auditory bubble where users listen to sounds of their own choice (Bull 2005, p. 344). With an entire collection on an everywhere-transportable device, users can control their daily experience by carving out their own personal space and time. Listening to chosen music enables these iPod users to focus in on themselves (Bull 2005, p. 349), using their own collections to re-frame their experiences. By surrounding themselves with their own music, they transform the world into something that is intimate, known and possessed (Bull 2005, p. 350). Of the people interviewed those who had music in file formats all used a portable player to listen to music when travelling on public transport, or when walking. Ivan: I listen a lot whilst Im travelling by train or in someone elses car. Kimbalee: I listen mostly on the train to and from uni. Others interviewed had their portable player with them at all times. James: I pretty much listen 24/7. Ruth: I listen at home all the time, and whenever I travel . . .



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because I dont have a car I spend a lot of time waiting and being on public transport with my iPod. Alan: I listen to my MP3 player in the car, while Im at work, oh and at home definitely when Im doing assignments and that sort of stuff. Jono: Music is something I live and breathe something I listen to constantly in the car, just having something in the background on the computer at home, and at work I have music on constantly. Joyleen: Its very important to me that I have music going virtually all the time. While many of them had the ability to play music files in the car, for several of the interviewees without this capacity the car was the only place in which they used CDs. Even those participants who had a significant number of CDs tended to listen to files via the computer in their bedrooms, or study, rather than using a stereo system in the living room. Simon: I dont use my CDs any more. I use iTunes to listen on my laptop, or my iPod. Ive got a nice little set of JVL speakers for listening at home. All of the interviewees whose collection was primarily in file formats reported listening to their music through speakers as well as ear buds. One of them explained that he did not listen to his MP3 player through earpieces because it did not sufficiently create a personal music bubble. Daniel: I suppose its just not loud enough . . . you know I stick it in my ears and its not loud enough. The outside world still manages to seep in. The most frequent explanation for choosing speakers over ear buds or headphones came down to the type of sonic environment that they wished to create surround sound for immersion or a personal space for reflection.

Social connectionsAdorno wrote of the use of music to create a social environment in a world in which more and more people felt alienated, describing music as creating an illusion of immediacy in a totally mediated world, of proximity between strangers (Horkheimer & Adorno 1973, p. 46). Music files seem to have facilitated new ways of feeling connected through shared music. For students who live on campus, music sharing technologies such as iTunes digital music jukebox has allowed them to listen to each others music collections via the University network. The iTunes software does not enable copying or downloading, the music files reside only on the host computer. Users can make their entire collection available, or chose to allow access to designated playlists. Adrian: Being at uni is good because youre surrounded by people who are heavily into music and you get to hear what they are listening to. There is a level of cultural capital involved in being able to introduce others to new music, particularly if it later becomes either popular or critically acclaimed. Alan: The last track I got really excited about was the William Shatner version of Pulps Common People, and I shared that around with a lot of people. I got an advance copy from the radio station so I got it a few weeks before it was on the radio. Alan reported

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that he had a bit of a reputation for getting great new music before it was generally available. Andrew reported a similar experience: Its nice when someone goes Oh, wow, I havent heard of these guys. While the cocoon of the mobile music device can protect from social isolation it can also increase that isolation. Lilen: Ill take my MP3 along with me, but I dont like being completely isolated from the people around me. I know there have been situations where you see someone and you cant yell out to them because theyve got their ear plugs in. A kind of iPod etiquette is developing to cover these situations. Carl: If you see someone you know you take one earpiece out to indicate your willingness to exchange a few words. If they leave both theirs in you know they just want to say hi and go on their way. Or if they take both out and stop their player, they want to have a conversation. Most of the interviewees expand their collection by seeing what is in other peoples collections. Andrew: I mostly find out about new music just talking to people, people recommend things. And MySpace, finding a band I like then checking their friends, and checking their friends. Cooper: Last.fm is really good because you can find similar artists, and you can find a person who is really into something and, like, scam off their lists. The older interviewees (23 25 years old) seemed more likely to use peer to peer file sharing services to get or share music than younger ones (18 20 years old) who tended to purchase files; rip their own, friends or library CDs; get files from free online sources or share with people they knew. Stacey: I use file sharing, but only with my friends. I dont do that whole Limewire thing. Daniel: I share files with friends. They kind of just give me their iPod and I just upload it for them, or they upload stuff on mine. Josh: The two guys I live with, we share stuff over the home network. Otherwise Ill just tell friends if I hear something new thats pretty good. Michael: Ive got all my music on my computer, backed up, so I lend friends the CD because I have no use for it anymore. Leah: Ill give friends a USB drive with stuff on it that theyll like. You know, like a mix tape. Shared musical taste was reported as a component of friendships, if not as the causal factor in a relationship, and sharing music was seen as a form of social interaction. For example: Katey: If I cant get home at the weekend Ill send my boyfriend a song, and hell send me one. Communication through the exchange of music tracks is not a new practice, but it is one that has been facilitated by file formats and computer networks.


Contemporary music collectionsWhile the attitudes and practices of 35 young people where their music collections are concerned cannot be immediately generalized to the wider population, comparing this data with previous research into music collections does suggest some trends, particularly amongst younger music collectors. Music files do


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seem to have a materiality for those collectors who actively engage with them; organizing them in multiple ways, creating play lists and mix-USB drives, and using them to mark events and cement relationships. For those whose collections are based on music files, the CD may be an ephemeral product in that it is useful as a way of acquiring music files but not valued beyond that function. Users acquiring music as files are not limited to the 12 track albums supplied by the record companies, but are acquiring single tracks and creating their own aggregations. Many CD collections tended to be the shared accumulations of families or housemates, however the file collection was seen as an individual expression of taste and identity and was subdivided into playlists that are used as specific identity markers. The everywhere-portable file player with extraordinary storage capacity increasingly allows a users entire collection to be accessible anytime, anywhere, enabling contemporary collectors to transform their environment into a sonic landscape they have personally designed to meet their individual needs. The consistent thread through the discussions on contemporary music collections was that the participants were attaching a materiality to their music even when it lacked a physical presence. It could not be simply said that CDs and records constituted a collection to which sentimental value could be attached, while music files lacked the physicality which is an integral part of our relationship with a collection. Benjamin made the point that collecting was the accumulation of a tangible biography (Benjamin 1982). Beer asks Without physical artifacts what becomes of our material biographies? (Beer 2008, p. 76). The answer to that question is that the notion of attachment to the materiality of a collection needs to be reconfigured to make sense of the biography that music collections represent in the digital era.

Note1 Unless otherwise cited quotations are from personal interviews conducted in Newcastle, Australia during April 2008.

ReferencesAlpert, J. I. & Alpert, M. I. (1991) Music influences on mood and purchase intentions, Psychology and Marketing, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 109133. Appadurai, A. (1986) Introduction: commodities and the politics of value, in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 363. Beer, D. (2008) The iconic interface and the veneer of simplicity: MP3 players and the reconfiguration of music collecting and reproduction practices in the digital age, Information, Communication & Society, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 7188.

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Belk, R. W. (1995) Collecting in a Consumer Society, Routledge, London. Benjamin, W. (1982) Unpacking my library: a talk about book collecting, in Illuminations, Fontana, London, pp. 5967. Bull, M. (2005) No dead air! The iPod and the culture of mobile listening, Leisure Studies, vol. 24, no. 4, pp. 4,3434,355. Caldwell, C. & Hibbert, S. A. (2002) The influence of music tempo and musical preference on restaurant patrons behavior, Psychology and Marketing, vol. 19, no. 11, pp. 895917. Cunningham, S. J., Jones, M. & Jones, S. (2004) Organizing digital music for use: an examination of personal music collections, Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Music Information Retrieval: ISMIR, Barcelona, October, 10 14, [Online] Available at: http://ismir2004.ismir.net/proceedings/ p082-page-447-paper221.pdf (23 August 2008). Devetag, M. G. (1999) From utilities to mental models: a critical survey on decision rules and cognition in consumer choice, Industrial and Corporate Change, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 289351. Dibbell, J. (2000) Unpacking my record collection, Feed Magazine, March 15, [Online] Available at http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/feed_records.html (26 August 2008). Giles, D. C., Pietrzykowski, S. & Clark, K. E. (2007) The psychological meaning of personal record collections and the impact of changing technological forms, Journal of Economic Psychology, vol. 28, no. 4, pp. 429443. Horkheimer, M. & Adorno, T. (1973) The Dialectic of Enlightenment, Penguin, London. Hornby, N. (1996) High Fidelity, Indigo Press, Southampton. Martin, P. J. (2005) Music, identity and social control, in Music and Manipulation: On the Social Uses and Social Control of Music, eds S. Brown & U. Volgsten, Berghahn Books, New York, pp. 5773. McCourt, T. (2005) Collecting material in the digital realm, Popular Music and Society, vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 249253. Pressman, A. (2007) Music CD, Im just not that into you, Business Week, March 21, [Online] Available at: http://www.businessweek.com/investing/ insights/blog/archives/2007/03/music_cd_im_jus.html (26 August 2008). Ruvio, A. (2008) Unique like everybody else? The dual role of consumers need for uniqueness, Psychology and Marketing, vol. 25, no. 5, pp. 444464. Schafer, R. M. (1977) The Tuning of the World, Knopf, New York. Shuker, R. (2004) Beyond the High Fidelity stereotype: defining the (contemporary) record collector, Popular Music, vol. 23, no. 3, pp. 311330. Wrightson, K. (1999) An introduction to acoustic ecology, Journal of Electroacoustic Music, vol. 12, pp. 1115.



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Marjorie D. Kibby is an Associate Professor in Film, Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Newcastle, Australia, where she teaches courses in music, technology, and culture. Her previous publications include research into internet culture, online community, teaching and learning online, and popular music and the intersections of these areas. This study of the music collection in the digital era is part of a larger research project investigating the impact of the internet on young peoples music consumption habits that was funded by a grant from the Australian Research Council. Address: University of Newcastle, Humanities and Social Science, University Drive, Callaghan, Newcastle, 2308 Australia. [email: [email protected]]


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