Where�s all our stuff gone?

Yeah, I remember going to look for albums in the late 70’s, early 80’s and flipping throught the large 12X12″ album covers… there was a tangible feeling to selecting a record. Even the CD’s feel dinky by comparison and of course when it is all on your “mega drive” is sort of feels buried.

Kind of a shame we’ve lost that tactile quality to music.

I agree. I’m quite a visual person and find it hard looking through the hundreds of album titles on my ipod,to find something i want.

If you are physically flipping through albums the graphics/images are quicker to associate with artists than the band/dj name or album name.

Also the cover art can inspire you to play an album by invoking memories of when you bought the album, your age, what you where up to then, first time you heard the album, girlfriends, parties etc …….

I’m on it too…. Albums now can be seen digitally, there’s somehow no sense of interaction with it, but if you have the real visual thingy “album” at your hand, you’ll somehow realize that the experience is much better and sensible rather than staring at your iTunes and looking for albums online…

I hope, the next generation will still consider the concept of keeping the old media alive.

I never thought of it like that but you are quite right. I still try to display my cd collection in my den of my house but that too is dwindling from my impulse to just buy full albums from the iTunes store. Maybe there is something there..maybe there is a movement that needs to be started…not all technology is necessarily better. Knowing you, Bren, I’m interested to see where you are taking this!

what you want is a flat panel or plasma screen on the wall showing, in a traditional CD cabinet/tower layout, the spines of your albums (fed from itunes or similar - via XML? - to flash). touch screen interface to select the CD, which then slides out to reveal cover art and let the user flip through the booklet, and normal CD playing buttons.

heck, what a horrible, anti-septic future picture i just painted. i won’t part with my 300+ CD collection, ever.

i always keep all my CDs racked up and on display. I love leafing through the cover notes and seeing who produced/co-wrote/played tambourine etc, as that usually gets me looking at bands they’ve previously been in and digging into more and more obscure “shite”. You’ve got a good point Bren, and I don’t like the way it’s going. I can imagine how all the Vinyl junkies felt when CDs started taking over.

I’ll be keeping my CDs out for all to see and dig through and go “huh? who are they?”

I spent the last few months converting all my music to MP3s. and hacking my Xbox into my dream media centre (music, photos, video, mame etc).

To be honest it looses a bit of the tactile feeling your talking about, but what it does do very well (after days of scouring the internet for images) is let you browse your collection by album cover. I took it on holiday with us a few weeks ago and everybody got really into hunting for songs from days gone by.

Media centre URL
http://www.xboxmediacenter.de/

Screen shots of the skin
http://chokemaniac.loafamotive.com/gallery.php?cat=pm2

Delicious Library for the Mac (http://www.delicious-monster.com/) is just what you need, turn on, open up, flick through the entire library of books, albums (including artwork), DVD and video’s… Even allows you to put items out on loan and links them with an iCal entry.

Good speech at Newcastle BTW Bren, raised a few eyebrows!

Delicious is very cool though the “what no music collection” thing still exists when you turn your mac off. That said there are a few apps that go half way to making a music selection visual. Check out the brilliant Clutter and the equally great - though not free, coverBuddy.

I don’t know if this is riffing in the wrong direction, but maybe something about how we represent our identity has changed. Now if we want to enlighten friends on the superior taste and eclectic nature of our record collections, we can put playlists on our blogs, link to cool music sites or link to record covers at amazon.

And this can be extended to the other keepsakes, the photos on the mantel are available on Flickr. It’s like we invite people to view our front rooms, before they even get there.

I thought it was quite romantic when recently a friend started seeing someone and a few weeks in told me she still hadn’t googled his name.

I understand that people tie up their identity in their possessions, and this is not really a good thing, but I think it’s interesting the social function that Bren mentions too. We may not need to buy cds in plastic cases, but we still need to impress our friends and future lovers.

To be honest if I went to someone’s house and they didn’t have any records or cd’s on display I would be a bit underwhelmed, and if it was supposed to be a romantic situation it would be a washout. Record collections can get you laid, iPods/playlists cannot. But hey, there’s always the bookshelves!

Thankfully I still have a huge bookshelf!