How much digital music and film have I bought? I think I ‘own’ virtual boxsets of a couple of TV shows and have a tentative digital music collection too. But I am undisciplined about where I store it or what account it is linked to, and so on. And some of the services I purchased the media on have shut down or rebranded. I’ve lost track of a lot of digital media that I once bought.
One response to the above problem is to just say, ‘who owns anything, dude?’, and to just ensure that your umbrella of subscriptions covers the films, shows and music you like to enjoy. Sure, two of your favourite musicians may pull their music from the service you subscribe to, but is that not a small price to pay for convenience? If those artists make up a large portion of your listening habits, you may disagree.
Beyond the fluctuations in catalogue availability associated with streaming, there’s something about possessing a physical copy of something that binds you to the art in some deeper way. Even that scratched up copy of PPK’s ‘ResurRection’ I got for my 13th birthday makes me smile when I see it, even if it’s just at how… random my music taste was.
Long story short, I was never massively into the ‘cloudification’ of art anyway but am now starting to proactively resist it, albeit on a purely personal level. I’ve even changed the batteries in my DVD player’s remote and recently bought Paolo Sorrentino’s ‘The Great Beauty’ on eBay.
In this great flourishing of physical media love that I am experiencing, I’ve got back into the idea of creating CDs for my own music. This autumn, there’s a new piano album and a new album from my folk band Sandtimer coming out. There will be limited runs of CDs for both albums. In the meantime, I dug out a load of CDs of my first album, Shape in the Clouds.
I rerecorded most of these tracks for Reshaping the Clouds but the 2010 performances are quite different and there are some otherwise unheard pieces on the CD too. Any CD sale proceeds will go towards covering the costs of the upcoming album being printed.
Sample and purchase the physical album on Bandcamp here.
