How We Listen to Music

By Frank Manriquez

In today’s society, people do not exactly seem to know what they want when it comes to music. Some want old technology to be improved and perfected, while others want the latest and (supposedly) greatest. Companies are always making improvements and creating new products. The question is, is technology moving too fast when it might not be quite ready yet?

The evolution of how we listen to music has changed drastically just in the past twenty years. Cassette tapes were big when we were growing up. This was the primary way we listened to music in the car. If you wanted to listen to a different artist or album, you had to eject the tape and put another one back in. The Walkman was a portable device where people were able to play their music while on walks or at the ballpark. I believe this device was very influential to the technological advancements shortly after that. Being a millennial, I have been able to see technology change dramatically throughout the course of my short 22 years.

Thinking back, I do not remember seeing many people walking around listening to music like they do today. In 1984, CD players came out, and they too had portable devices just like cassette players do. Although it was portable, the CD players were inconvenient and cumbersome in addition to frequently skipping when one would walk with it. In 2001, music would change forever when the first generation Ipod came out. Before the Ipod, the only way to listen to a variety of different music was to purchase a hard copy of each album. The Ipod quickly replaced that when the Itunes store was created where anyone could purchase individual songs rather than having to buy the full album.

This advancement not only changed the way we listen to music, but also the accessories surrounding it. For example, headphones became more of a necessity. Having this quick access to music resulted into people wanting to have the best sound quality. This created a whole new market of competitive headphone businesses such as Beats, Skullcandy, and Bose.

As time has passed, these companies have remained successful. People typically love anything that is new, but what the people really want is a product that sounds great and has been perfected. However, they are always trying to make their products better by pushing for things like wireless headphones. Consequently, this causes the quality of music to go slightly down and another thing to worry about: battery. In turn, this has impacted companies such as Apple in the recent release of their wireless headphones. Not only do the headphones lack sufficient sound quality that one might get with wired headphones, but the design is a weak as well.

  

Our society has come a long way in the recent years when it comes to music and how we listen to it. I do believe that this has been a good thing, but also a bad thing too. Because of the high demand for constant change, companies have been forced to work faster. That being said, with less time comes less investment into a single product to perfect first. Although I don’t deny that music in general has made leaps and bounds in the past twenty years, I feel like companies still have work to do.