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A Music-Sharing Network For the Unconnected
An anonymous reader writes: Operating as personal offline versions of iTunes and Spotify, the téléchargeurs, or downloaders, of Mali are filling the online music void for many in the country. For less than a dime a song, a téléchargeur will transfer playlists to memory cards or directly onto cellphones. Even though there are 120,000 landlines for 15 million people in Mali, there are enough cellphones in service for every person in the country. The spread of cell phones and the music-sharing network that has followed is the subject of this New York Times piece. From the article: "They know what their regulars might like, from the latest Jay Z album to the obscurest songs of Malian music pioneers like Ali Farka Touré. Savvy musicians take their new material to Fankélé Diarra Street and press the téléchargeurs to give it a listen and recommend it to their customers....This was the scene Christopher Kirkley found in 2009. A musicologist, he traveled to Mali hoping to record the haunting desert blues he loved. But every time he asked people to perform a favorite folk song or ballad, they pulled out their cellphones to play it for him; every time he set up his gear to capture a live performance, he says, 'five other kids will be holding their cellphones recording the same thing — as an archivist, it kind of takes you down a couple of notches.'”
Frankly I've given up on the whole giant music collection thing. I've lost interest in it. It's not that music sucks, it's just that I barely have time to spend on it. Once your personal collection busts a couple hundred gigs you hardly know what you have anyway.
Shall we have an argument about what makes art or not now?
Faffing about over the context of a word (which all evolve anyway) which millions of people use to refer to recorded music in the same way as live music is really just pontificating.
Music is the thing. Whether you saw it live or recorded it, it was music. It's pretentious to pretend that you can change a definition of a word based on digging up a quote to suit your personal use of it.
And to suggest there's something otherwise undetectable or irreproducible in the air to distinguish between live music and a sufficiently good recording of that music played back to you, it's gold-plated oxygen-free cable territory.
Sure, you probably enjoy the live one more. It's the difference between going to a theatre to see a play or watching it on TV. There's nothing quite like people coughing throughout, treading on your toes, rustling their pockets behind your ear, clapping too early or too vigorously or trying to join in from the seat next to you.
But to suggest that ONLY live music can be music is... just silly in this day and age.