Old Man Yells at Cloud

by Mike DeFabio

Look, I fully accept that music streaming is one of the main ways people listen to music now. It’s not going away anytime soon, and I’d rather the industry focus on that than on suing 12-year-olds and grandmothers for ridiculous amounts for downloading a few songs. But I do have a little problem with it becoming the main way people listen to music, and I’m going to try to explain why.

If you go on Spotify or YouTube right now and search for Amon Tobin’s (quite excellent) 2000 album Supermodified, and you’re familiar with that album, you’ll notice that track two, “Four Ton Mantis,” one of the highlights of the album, is conspicuously absent. It has been quietly removed from the internet (most likely due to sample clearance issues) save for a remix by Bonobo that removes most of what was good about the song. There is no way to hear “Four Ton Mantis” unless you either hit up Soulseek or own a copy of the album.

When you rely on a streaming service to provide the music you listen to, you’re essentially giving someone else control over what’s in your music collection. One day, for whatever reason, a song or an entire album you love can be completely removed without warning. I don’t like that.

I know there are those who will probably think I’m a crusty old curmudgeon for not letting the past stay in the past, but I don’t like it when old music I like disappears. And I’m not trying to argue that you should throw your Spotify account out the window or anything like that. I use streaming services all the time to check out things I might be interested in. It just makes me sad to see people completely ditch the idea of having a physical music collection altogether. If you own a copy of something, no one can take it away from you unless they break into your house, and we shouldn’t take that for granted.

I guess the main gist of what I’m trying to get at here is that buying music from record stores is good. Do more of that!