Essays of Christian De Matteo

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Christian De Matteo

iPOD:
The Death of Music as Art

by Christian De Matteo

In 2001, the rapcore/rock band P.O.D. released the album Satellite featuring the infinitely catchy hit “Alive” followed by the equally successful “Youth of the Nation.” The album put P.O.D., or Payable on Death, on the map, setting them up for rock star status. This rising star story of one album’s success makes one wonder if, had the iPOD been around then, we ever would have gotten around to hearing “Youth of the Nation” since no one would have heard the whole CD. As iPOD grows into our culture, the single song syndrome spreads like musical ADD, and we become less and less likely to listen beyond the hit.

Once the takeover is complete - a takeover that seems inevitable as iPOD makes news not only for its ease of use and popularity but how in Manhattan it seems to be single-handedly upping the numbers on subway crime - will anyone have any use for CDs anymore? Will liner notes and art layouts for compact disc jackets be necessary? More importantly, is the era of the classic album officially gone and the era of the One Hit Wonder returned now forever?

If P.O.D. stands for not only Payable on Delivery but, according to the band, Payable on Death, the P.O.D. in iPOD seems to mean just that for the record industry. Why keep together an expensive band when one song writer can put together a set of studio musicians, name them something catchy, and release a single song to be a downloading super-success? Concept albums, huge artistic undertakings that often produce the most incredible music will be gone. Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy, The Beastie Boys’ License to Ill and Green Day’s American Idiot will have no rivals in this iPOD future of singles and vaguely recalled artist’s names.

And so where goes the art? Once not just boy-bands but all music is swept into folds of corporate formula marketing designated to be infinitely catchy for brief moments in history just long enough to charge for download, where will be the art? It seems now inevitable that music is doomed to the fate of the hamburger: no longer a prized treat but a corporately-crafted, fake-tasting, carbon-copy molded, stamped-out usual on the dollar menu with occasional barbeque sauce to make it seem fresh.

But seeming and being are two very different things. Rock’n’Roll will never die we were told, and had, perhaps, just started believing. Now, it seems, not just Rock but all great music has its days not only numbered, but catalogued and stored within a square white tombstone bearing the carving of a small, bitten Apple.