Reflecting on How We Listen to Music Today
The day after drinking, when I brew some coffee and launch Spotify hoping to spend an elegant morning listening to some classical music, I sometimes find my playback history filled with nostalgic tracks on the home screen.
It seems I got drunk the night before, listened to music I loved in my youth, and fell asleep. Since I had forgotten all about it by the next morning, I'm surprised and feel a little embarrassed when I open Spotify.
Once you become a working adult, you don't listen to music the way you did as a student, so it's actually more common that I don't listen to the music I used to listen to back then.
However, it seems that when I get drunk, I return to my childhood self and feel the urge to listen to music from my youth that I don't listen to anymore.
More than ten years have passed since my student days, and despite hardly listening to them in the meantime, I remember these songs clearly. Since I was in a band, there are even many cases where I remember not just the songs and lyrics, but also how each instrument was played.
I am sometimes a little surprised by how well these memories have stuck. Of course, I'm not praising my own memory, but rather marveling at the fact that music stays in one's memory.
Perhaps it's because memories formed in one's youth have a higher degree of retention. Still, it's strange that music I don't usually think about would suddenly resurface in my brain after a span of over ten years.
But when I look back on those days, I feel like I can understand the reason why.
When I was a student, it was just when the iPod was starting to become popular. I remember buying an iPod around my third year of university, a little later than those around me. So until then, I would buy or rent CDs and dub them onto MDs, which were the mainstream at the time, to listen to music.
Looking back now, this process was incredibly tedious. First, I would scout for the music I wanted to hear at rental shops like TSUTAYA, and if it was in stock, I would rent it. I would then dub them one by one on my home MD stereo, manually register the album and song names, and write the titles by hand on labels to stick onto the MDs. After that, I had to return them to the rental shop by the deadline to avoid late fees.
And since YouTube and the like weren't as widespread back then, my sources for music information were magazines, the liner notes included with CDs, and word of mouth from friends. Based on that information, I would desperately search for stock at TSUTAYA or used CD shops.
Also, since there were no subscription services like there are today, I spent my meager part-time job earnings on each CD, paying out of my own pocket to listen to music, so I naturally ended up pressing the play button with the expectation of a return on investment for every single song.
Since the music was etched into my brain in this way, I feel I can understand why the memories resurface even if I haven't listened to them for years.
I can no longer return to such a tedious routine, but looking back, it was a fun and happy time. Because it was music I worked hard and paid for, I grew to love it more the more I listened, like something that gets better the more you chew it, and I listened to it over and over again. Unlike reading, I think music is packed with charms that you only notice by listening repeatedly.
Being able to listen to music anytime and anywhere like today is convenient and pure happiness, but perhaps a little inconvenience was better for becoming so absorbed that it gets etched into your memory.