birth of the internet = death of all media

I'm slowly coming to terms with the fact that the internet is slowly killing of all media. Music was the first thing to go - MP3 has replaced the CD. Movies were next, and as more people shell out top dollar for super-highspeed internet, they'll be downloading their full movies via the net instead of stopping at Blockbuster on the way home. Television and cable are on the way out, replaced by popular on-demand video sites like YouTube. Some argue that the quality of video on these free sites isn't good enough to convince people to ditch their televisions, but if MP3s are any indicator of the horrible digital media quality that the average consumer is willing to endure, I suspect that television stations will die with their oldest viewers. Online books are now the rage, although I personally can't stand reading books on screen.

If you're feeling squirmish and uncomfortable with all of these changes, you must be "old" like myself. Adding insult to injury is the fact that these new media developments have more-or-less killed my hopes of running my all-time dream business - that of a brick-and-mortar independent record store. I used to practically live in record stores. As a teen, any remaining part-time job income after paying my car insurance and gas usually went to the local record store. Seeing as I only recently turned thirty, I thought I could still be part of the "young" and "hip" crowd, but there's no such thing as a "young" or "hip" dying breed, is there? (David Bowie may be the exception here.)

When I was a teen, my media obsession consisted of cassettes, vinyl, newly introduced CDs, VHS and (gasp!) old Beta videos. I'd frequently blow additional cash on blank cassettes, fresh jewelcases, milk crates (for the vinyl), sorting cards and Dymo labels for my display shelving so that I could find the exact album or movie I was looking for. When you've got thousands of discs to thumb through, alphabetization and organization is paramount. It's nothing like today, where some kid can just plug a wildcard into his iPod and every song and album shows up in the mini-browser.

Don't get me wrong. I definitely understand the advantage to being able to carry your entire music collection in your pocket. Trust me...after moving my collection a dozen times or so, I REALLY see the benefit. I'm probably going to migrate my entire collection to digital at some point, as soon as they've perfected the conversion process so that I don't have to worry about digital artifacts, slushy over-compressed hi-hat sounds, and those obnoxious ripping skips and pops. But I don't know if I'll ever be as excited about new acquirements as I used to be, and I lament the fact that my son and daughter will never get their fingertips dirty thumbing through used vinyl at their favorite record shop.

The other benefit to the death of these types of media is the fact that overall we are left with less physical "tings" in our lives. Granted, we are only replacing them with digital and "virtual" things, but I guess that is a step in the right direction...