Music from reel-to-reel.

Music from reel-to-reel.

This is from an interview with cassette-only label honcho Matt Sullivan.

According to Sullivan, when consumers lost the hassle of scratched records and the tedious process of fast-forwarding our tapes to the next song, the music also lost a great deal of its identity.

I think he has a really good point there. I know i certainly don't listen to albums at all in the same way as i did back in the day when you kind of HAD to go through one song to get to another. Hell, nowadays I'm actually lucky if I get to listen to an album all the way through more than once before slicing and dicing it on my iPod for use when DJing. Songs tend to be revealed more as snippets than full narratives. It certainly creates its own interesting values that can still be rewarding, but I do think we've lost something primal that made music feel more permanent.