Grave Considerations: Apple Music

Your boy Moby Richard is notoriously slow to embrace new technology. It was 2012 when he decided to move on to the iPod and ditch the giant CD wallet that was always under the driver seat of his car. The early stages of iPod acceptance were not pretty, as technological misunderstandings and a general sense of frustration with things he doesn’t understand really, really overwhelmed him. But man, did he end up loving that iPod. 148 gigs of music, in his pocket.

Shift in forward in time (and in pronoun) to 2017, and my iPod was starting to cause me more stress than I wanted. It was getting old, and it had been host to many, many albums that were added and removed again and again, and I’d read online that Apple had discontinued the model (the 160gb iPod Classic), which meant that if something happened to mine, I was going to be without my massive music menagerie until I found what would undoubtedly be an inferior replacement option. See, I’m a creature of habit. I don’t so much resist or oppose new things or new technology so much as I find something I like and stick with it because I like it; it’s comfortable. My father, he hated technology, and basically decided against ever even trying to learn how to use it. My sister, who is younger than I for what it’s worth, shuts down at the possibility of technology, preferring to act like a senior citizen from the days of old, decrying new things as crap and bemoaning their adoption by and into society. My dad died without knowing how to operate a DVD player; my sister gets angry because Blu-Ray has replaced DVD. I guess being technophobic runs in my family. But I’m not against technology, I just like what I like, and I stick with what I know and what is comfortable.

But, my iPod was getting old, and I wanted a Plan B for when the inevitable happened. All the kids these days, they stream their music. My wife has been using Apple Music for like two years now. I did some digging into various streaming services, and I dug deeper on Apple Music. When I found out I could sync my iTunes with Apple Music, that was it. All I really wanted was a way to keep taking my digital music with me, and I already had a substantial library. I didn’t need to, or want to, rebuild that library from the ground up, so I didn’t really need something that was going to have all the albums I already possessed, and since Apple Music would let me do that, I was sold. I am a Death Metal guy, and while that music is not entirely as underground and unknown as it once was, I am generally distrusting of the “metal” selections offered by the outside world, only truly trusting my own. Like, even when friends tell me about some band and they call it metal, in my head, the little voice is always asking, “Really? Are they really metal, or like, what you would consider metal?”  My wife and I occasionally play this game on long, dull car rides where she puts on the metal station available through Apple Music and we see if I know what band is playing, and I generally do pretty well. This would mean that much of the music I like is on Apple Music. But still, I was skeptical. One Saturday morning, I was poking around in the Apple Music store, just checking to see if band names I put in yielded any results. And there were some. And then there were more. And then I signed up.

The combination of my iTunes library and the selection available through Apple Music produced essentially the thing that I have wanted since I first started using an iPod: a bottomless iPod. There is apparently no limit to the amount of music Apple Music will allow you to have, and so my 147gbs of iTunes music was only the beginning. As I started digging through the Apple Music catalog, I was stunned to find some of the bands and albums I found. I am basically doing the same things I have been doing with music for years now: find a band, take an interest, add the entire catalog. It’s just that now, there is no need to make sacrifices for space concerns; there is no need to jettison acceptable or moderately engaging listens; there is no need to choose between similar artists, or whittle down examples of a particular style for room for new or otherwise additions. It just gets added. At last glance, my Apple Music/iTunes total size is 445.6gbs, twice again what it was the last time I synched my iPod, just over a month ago.

It is amazing.

Things I abandoned for their taking up too much space, back. Live albums, back. I love live albums in general, as they are a combo of greatest hits and vicarious in-person experience, but when they take up the same amount of iPod space as two full lengths, they ended up being purged fairly early. One thing I have really indulged in during my Apple Music time thus far has been live albums. Eps, back. Old bands that I know and like but never wanted to choose over newer or ‘better’ bands, back. All that ambient music that was axed in the early months of 2017? Back, baby. Oh hey, I’ve heard things about this band and I found those things intriguing, but not intriguing enough to clear iPod room for them. Added. That band I’ve heard of and always been curious about but never explored? Oh yes. Added.

The literal world of music, in limitless form, on my phone.

For the first two days, I carried my iPod with me as well, just until I was sure this new frontier of freedom was going to work. But it was never necessary. I retired my iPod to my sock drawer, to be kept in case of need. It had a very, very distinguished career, and it served with utmost distinction. But now I was apparently a True Millennial, dependent on my smartphone for everything.

But man is Apple Music great. Not a day has gone by where I haven’t pondered if this or that band was on the service, only to search and find that exact band. Stuff I’d never have expected a big corporate platform to have, either, which I think is the coolest part. I get these surprises each time I go looking for a band. And, I am able to keep adding things to my iTunes, and then sync with my Apply Music Library (suddenly, I have this feeling like I’m shilling, or that both my readers will think I got an endorsement deal or something. . . ) and blam! even more music than I had previously. It is literally an iPod without boundaries, and I could not be any happier with this arrangement than I currently am.

So, who cares? Well, I obviously do. I’ve also observed that my music listening is up since I’ve signed up. I am listening to a lot more music, not necessarily in terms of time or quantity, but in terms of things I hadn’t heard before. I’ve listened to some of those albums that I’ve been holding out on for ten years, and I’m not sure why, but I don’t feel any listening limitation with this new set up. I feel somehow freer to listen to things, and that is also something that I can’t explain, as it’s not like I’ve ever had any limitations on what I listen to or when. I think that maybe this sense of freedom stems from the lack of size restraints, as though the storage limits of an iPod were cause for not listening to certain things. Or, better yet, since there are now no limits on what I can have, or how much I can have, the sense of restriction in general has been lifted? I don’t know. I never said it was going to make any sense, and heaven knows that my strange music hoarding coupled with this odd obsession with maintaining the newness of records hasn’t made sense for the last 13 years of my life.

I really love Apple Music and the possibilities it offers. It truly is this vast frontier of music, and while I know it is a few years old and thus not a “new frontier,” as time rolls on, more and more bands will open their catalogs to the service, which is great. I found myself thinking the other day at work: since I’ve basically loved every new technological thing I have eventually embraced, maybe I should just dive in on the next new thing, and not let my comfort with the way things have been or things are dictate my glacial pace of adopting a new thing.

Then I realized that, while this is a nice thought, and would definitely end this positing on a positive note, it is unlikely to happen. Not a technophobe, but always comfortable until I realize how much better something new makes my life.