Has Technology Changed the Experience of Music?

[Commentary] Downloadable music files, online radio stations, streaming on-demand song libraries, iPods with mixes ... the music industry hasn't undergone a single tsunami. It's faced a onslaught of natural forces that changed the way we listen to music forever.

But are these technologies uprooting or upholding the experience of music, itself? It's easy to argue that technology's force has been disruptive. The music industry's profits have fallen by 60 percent in the last decade. You know why. When music was made of polyvinyl chloride (aka vinyl), it was hard to steal. Once it could be turned into a file, the price for many listeners fell to zero. Downloading and file sharing services from Napster to bittorrent create an ether market where the cost of gaining ownership of music is equal to the cost of an Internet connection. The impact on the music industry's bottom line is clear enough, but what about the impact on listeners? Half a century ago, the overwhelming choice was to buy and listen to whole albums. Today iTunes, the largest music store in the country, sells individual tracks that listeners can mix and mash in personal audio-collages. We, the listeners, now exert much more control than original artists over the narrative of our musical experience.