29 July 2008
Personal Listening Devices
Portable devices allow enjoyment of digital music anywhere
(The following is excerpted from the U.S. Department of State publication, American Popular Music.)
Personal Listening Devices
The development of new personal listening devices came hand-in-hand with the rise of file-sharing on the Internet. In 2001 Apple Computer introduced the iPod player, which could store up to 1,000 CD-quality songs on its internal hard drive. The iPod and other MP3 players have come to dominate the market for portable listening devices because they provide the listener with the ability to build a unique library of music. The ability of the iPod to “shuffle” music has not only exerted an influence on personal listening habits but also provided a metaphor for the contemporary state of consumer culture.
Studies of the intimate relationship between the iPod and its users suggest that for many listeners the device functions as an aural prosthetic, an extension of the ears and musical mind and a point of connection to wider circuits for the circulation of digital information. Through these portable devices, consumers of popular music are connected to a global entertainment matrix that includes home computers, the Internet, music download services, and new services that are beginning to supplant the traditional functions of broadcasting. The rise of “podcasting” – a method of online audio distribution in which digital sound files are uploaded to a Web site, and listeners can automatically load files onto a portable player as become available – has some cultural observers forecasting the demise of radio.
[This article is excerpted from American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MP3 by Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman, published by Oxford University Press, copyright (2003, 2007), and offered in an abridged edition by the Bureau of International Information Programs.]
