A while back I read some blog post by a guy describing a friend of his who still bought CDs. The guy did this because he believed that the act of curation was part of what made the music special for him. It wasn’t enough to have a vast collection of music at his fingertips (as anyone who has access to the web does), he wanted to have a relationship of sorts with the music. He wanted o purchase the CD, to eagerly read its jacket, to place the CD on and listen to the music, determining which were his favorites etc. I get the point though I think that kind of fetishization is a little fruity.

But there is something that I think has occurs when you have the massive digitization of music albums: each individual album becomes less valuable. Not just in a financial sense, but in a harder to define personal sense. I can remember as a kid that certain albums had a strong cache. “Sgt. Peppers” would be one, as would Pink Floyd’s “The Wall.” These albums were almost legendary in certain circles. I’m sure fans of hip hop or heavy metal or various other music genres can point to similar examples of their own. And additionally, when I was a kid, I would find certain unknown albums that I came to love and they became personal favorites of mine. (A bizarre album by the group Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Machine was one.) This music had great personal value to me.

And I wonder of that sort of thing is disappearing. Because music can be pertained with so little effort is music losing not just financial but personal value? The guy buying CDs above is sort of forcing himself to maintain the previous value of music (personal and financial), even if the rest of the world has moved on.

This is counter to the consumer oriented forces of “more is better” who argue that the cheapening of things can only be good for people. And I suspect they’re basically right in terms of food and other basic needs. But not so much in regards to objects of personal fetishization. The valuation of such things has always been an ethereal process—exactly why a culture values one album of music over another is unclear (especially since music really has no purely utilitarian value the way food or shelter does.)

It’s a mystery.