Changes in Music: G-Dragon vs. the KMCIA
I’m old enough to remember vinyl albums, 8-tracks, cassette tapes, blank cassette tapes, CDs, VHS tapes, Laserdiscs and DVDs. I have evolved through each technology. With each transition, the media industries barked and fought their replacements. Media is constantly changing. I remember the fight for blank cassette and blank VHS tapes. Recording was supposed to be the “death” of radio and television. Now we laugh about mixtapes, which have become mixcds.
Except, the iPod came along. Sure there were other “tapeless/cdless” music formats for different players before the iPod came around. However, the iPod really started to define digital music. It wasn’t just portable, but you could store countless albums on your computer, meaning harddrive space had to be redefined and upgraded. Then movie formats changed, more compression, without a decreasing the resolution. And here we are.
A few years back, after moving to Virginia, I had the stereo system in the Jeep upgraded. Back then I only had close to 20 days of digital music stored on my computer. When I saw the Sony Xplod system (Yes, I’m namedropping. Nothing you can do about it.) I immediately knew it was the one for me. There would be no more loosely scattered mixCDs slewn across the floor of SpaceGhost. See, this system didn’t have a CD player. I was thinking to myself, “You’re a f*cking genius!”
I could plug in my iPod and play music to my heart’s content. Better yet, I could store music on a USB stick, plug it in, and play even more music than my iPod would offer. I was in MUSICLAND with my Jeep.
So now, we come to my nearly 300 days worth of music, taking up less than 2TB on my 4TB external drive. I listen to everything. I mean everything: All American genres, but also French rap, Hindi Rap, Korean Rap and Pop, World Trap Beats, trot, and of course, BigBang (who I will give a genre all to themselves, just because I can. It’s my blog!)
So, the Korean Music Content Industry Association (KMCIA), says that they will not recognize G-Dragon’s newest album, Act III, M.O.T.T.E, as a record. Well, sure, technically it isn’t physically a record, but it is pure genius. I will admit, I am disappointed that the songs are not on the USB itself [having to login and provide the code to download the music]. That little technicality could make it not a record, or technically an album, since the content of an album is not physically on the USB stick. I would prefer a USB which I could pull out of the packaging and stick directly into my stereo, without having to go online and download the album, then put them back on my USB stick. It’s a conundrum.
What do you think? I still think it’s genius because many technologies are now dropping physical medias. Most albums I know take up less than the 64 GB space in a typical USB stick. I don’t know the max GB space of these USBs used for G-D’s album. However, I believe it’s going to begin a standard as technology keeps evolving.
