Jumping late onto the iTunes bandwagon: life (again) as a jukebox.

I don't own an iPod and don't think I'll ever have one: I feel little need to podcast, and I have other stereo components and music devices that fit the bill just fine. I still buy CD's and carry a zippable envelope of them in the car. Recently, though, I've discovered the pleasure and potential pain of downloading from iTunes. Given enough time and a bigger budget than I have now, I could do serious damage.

But even before iTunes--even when simply listening to a customized playlist on Media Player within the past couple of years--I sensed my listening habits had changed. Not the kinds of music I like, which have expanded, but how I hear it. If this were the 70s, it would be as though I had an expanded collection of 45's and fewer LP's.

The age of downloadable, "rippable" music strikes me as not something revolutionary but as a throwback to the eras when singles were a viable commodity. If you liked the hit, you bought the 45 and didn't necessarily buy the LP. Sometimes you had to buy the single, because artists often released songs for single issue only ("Suspicious Minds" is the first example that comes to mind). And back before LP's were a viable commodity, singles were definitely it.

So lately, I find myself less nostalgic about the passing of the CD era than I thought I would be. Over recording history, I think we've more often had music as a series of singles than as unified statements, and I'd rather think of the download era as power in our hands. Does this lead to a sort of "greatest-hits" skimming of an artists' catalog? Maybe. But with some artists, skimming is all that's needed. I can indulge my guiltiest pleasures (OK: early-70s AM one-hit wonders) one 99-cent song at a time and not have to suffer through inferior work.

The one-at-a-time method allows for an infinitely customizable "soundtrack" of one's life--ebbing, flowing, eternally in flux. Like, right now, my iTunes player is playing James McMurtry, soon to be followed by Dave Brubeck, Allison Krauss/Robert Plant, Fountains of Wayne, and Richard Thompson. I don't know what thread binds those artists together, and I don't want to know.

Yeah, that sounds exactly like my childhood. I just remember the radio was on a lot and my consciousness formed one song at a time. Perhaps downloading makes me, in fact, more nostalgic and not less.