I don’t remember the first time I downloaded Napster, but after attending Alex Winter’s Downloaded screening at Sonos Studios last summer, it’s pretty clear that I was there from the beginning—via IRC—as @sicks.

I vaguely remember being on Scour before Napster, but my memory about this era has mostly eroded. The movie struck a chord. I was fully captivated, laughing, applauding, and remembering along with the other aging nerds. (And I had a chance to talk to Alex after the movie, so that was most excellent.)

Song sharing was nothing new by the time Napster came out. We had set up FTP dumps for years before. But Napster widened the net. (The Net, maybe?) You could find anything and everything, not just a mostly-curated list of downloads. People didn’t even realize what they had on their computer!

And then… I stopped listening to albums.

By the time Napster came out, I was sitting alone in a Chicago office at 3am on a dedicated T1 line downloading song after song after song, as I talked to cute girls on ICQ and nerds on IRC. Rachel turned out to be both.

I lived across the street from this office in a large loft with barely anything in it: a papasan, an air mattress, and a desk. That’s it. Ah, the dot com days…

I didn’t have a collection of anything. No family photos. No art. No records.

Before moving into this apartment, I ripped all of my CDs into MP3s, and gave away all of my records. All of my records. (Man, I had some gems…)

Who needed them? My hearing was mostly ruined, so I couldn’t really tell the difference between a needle and digital. I had more than enough music spread across a variety of hard drives, and I could download a new song in <3 minutes(!!!). When you work 20+ hour days, you have plenty of time to download, and almost no time to experience anything away from your desk.

I stopped experiencing music and just consumed.

This is also the time that I started to expand my music horizons. After a great start to collecting a broad swath of music in the 80s — ranging from Back in ‘72 to Thriller — I got trapped in a punk period throughout the 90s. (I’m including some grunge into this categorization. Deal with it.)

With Napster, I had every chart-topping single imaginable throughout time. If distribution was high, I downloaded it even if I didn’t have a clue what I was downloading. If dozens of people had the song, it must be good, right?! (No, it turns out; Snow’s Informer had broad distribution…)

I still love 90s (and earlier) punk and “punk” music — I can put Repeater on any time and listen to the entire album with a smile on my face — but I now realize that I didn’t like punk for the music as much as I liked the experience.

Sean Parker (okay, Napster) ruined my entire music experience.

I grew up “Olneycore.” You probably have no idea what that means, but it was Southern Illinois’ version of Gilman Street… but, like, 10 years late.

Josh Houchin’s parents had a 2-car garage, a large front yard, amenable (or deaf) neighbors, and a blind eye for underage drinking. It was awesome.

Josh’s band, Toucan Slam, frequently hosted punk shows in this garage—sometimes heated by a jet engine-looking, probably volatile, forced-flame space heater—and surprisingly drew solid lineups and green hair mohawks from all over the country. (okay, maybe that was me…)

It was some of the best times a punk rock kid in Southern Illinois could find.

I picked up 30 Foot Fall’s Jr. High Sucked 7" after seeing them play at Houchin’s garage. They had one copy with them and they were from Texas. It wasn’t a mind-blowing album, but I loved it. And it gave me unique power.

I was the only person in town that owned that record.

I moved to Chicago, or the scene faded. I don’t know which happened first.

A few years later, I caught 30 Foot Fall again at The Fireside Bowl; one of the last good shows at The Bowl before they renovated. It was an awesome, sweaty show. (I think Hot Water Music and 88 Fingers Louie joined them?)

After a year or so without a band, I wanted to start one. So, I posted an ad.

I ended up jammin’ with this bassist who would later join a big rock band. (Again, my memory of this period is pretty much shot…) It wasn’t a fit. He was a great bassist, but it just didn’t feel right. I was a dot commer now. A sellout.

I lost my love for music. It became a commodity, thanks to Sean Parker.

I dug into work and downloading MP3s. I wanted to be a rock star for years, but I became known as a Flash rockstar instead. I basically (and regrettably) haven’t touched a guitar since this time. Yet, I could have made it a career…

I met this guy, Matt, at a friend’s party. We talked about punk music, and reminisced on this strange Southern Illinois scene. We talked about a venue called “The Barn” that hosted this insane, all-day festival in Joliet where dozens of 90s punk bands played in an actual barn—cow dung and all.

Matt: “Do you know Dan?”
Me: “Yea, I know Dan! We did this thing—”
Matt: “—Yea, man I was there. Awesome time!”
Me: “Yea, man. Crazy we haven’t met.”
Matt: “We’re talking about maybe playing together… wanna jam sometime?”
Me: “Meh.… I think I’m done with music.”
Matt: “Bummer. You’ll have to come check us out one day.”
Me: “Deal.”

They did play together, as Alkaline Trio. Damn you, Sean Parker…

Fast forward a few years until I met Currey, my friend and former employee. Currey is a music nerd. [A book nerd. A computer nerd. A baseball nerd…] We worked out of my apartment in Chicago’s Andersonville-neighborhood— back when Big Joe’s had legit turtle races, Latin Kings were my neighbors, and lesbians were just starting to plan their takeover of the neighborhood.

Firewire drives were all the rage then. So, we traded our music collections.

His library was filled with meticulously organized folders. (“Doors, The_”) He wouldn’t keep incomplete albums unless he intended on finding the missing MP3s. A purist, if not a true pirate. My library, on the other hand, was a total mess of random songs, unnamed files, and duplicate files(5).

I’m pretty sure he deleted all of my stuff…

Currey’s library significantly widened my collection and changed my listening behavior back to listening to full albums. Instead of shuffling songs, I shuffled full albums. And I rediscovered the art of the album.

I was so in love with albums again, that I discarded all of my MP3s, and started buying albums again. I completely rebooted my music library, again.

I didn’t want to waste any money, so I started reading album reviews for the first time. One day, I tired of Pitchfork throwing 404 pages and “welcome to nginx” messages (which happened about 40% of the time) and decided to cold call Pitchfork’s founder, Ryan Schreiber. I told him that my agency could fix the stability issues, as well as the design, usability, and brand.

For the next 2–3 years, we were the agency-of-record of “the web’s most popular independent music resource.” Music was fun again. We had first-look at everything. We developed a (hidden) search tool that allowed us to find album reviews with ratings over 8.0 to streamline the listening process. We integrated LALA.com into the core experience so you could read an article and listen to a song or two to make a quick judgement. The entire office was filled with music topics, work, and, well, music. We had backstage passes to the Pitchfork Music Festival. Later, we were asked to build brands for MTV. My music knowledge, collection, and rolodex grew fast. I loved it.

And then Sean Parker invested in Spotify.

I mostly stopped buying new music again. I stopped reading Pitchfork and other blogs. There was little incentive to play the 30-second iTunes clips when you could listen to the whole track on services like Spotify, Rdio, etc. And I really haven’t had my face melted off by music lately. But I don’t think that’s because of the music, rather I lacked a face melting music experience.

I stopped experiencing music and just consumed again.

I love and hate Spotify. I love that a large majority of what I would want to listen to is there, somewhere. I love that we can develop on the platform without having to negotiate all of the licenses. But, as a user, I hate that I have to pick a specific album before listening. I hate the recommendations.
I hate that Nickleback continues to find its way into Hip Hop radio stations. I hate that it plays any edited song, and it’s impossible or kludgy to find the explicit version using the web or mobile versions (see: Biggy’s Ready to Die). I hate that it doesn’t have a full list of album releases for the year. I hate that it rarely provides any sense of serendipity—radio playlists are all obvious.

Then Sean Parker helped integrate Spotify with Facebook. Dude…

There’s nothing “social” about these services. I don’t care what my friends are listening to if they don’t specifically tell me to listen to it. I don’t want my friends seeing what I listen to because, often times, I’ll listen to a bunch of crap just to see what the hype is all about, and give it an honest listen. Discovery is highly personal. Recommendations are something completely different and, too, very personal. (Hey, this song reminds me of that time…)

The world doesn’t need another promotion and consumption channel.

The following is the first slide for my company’s deck (more on this in a bit):

This pretty much sums up how I feel. The fact that Gangham Style has nearly 2,000,000,000—that’s BILLION—views on YouTube is ridiculous. Are we, as a society, okay with the fact that more people have probably watched this video than, I don’t know, Jimi Hendrix shredding the Star Spangled Banner?

Digital music services have again killed music at scale. Horrible music floats. Users (I won’t call them fans) have made the industry respond by focusing more on singles. And more single-driven business, means more crap music.

More crap, arena-scale music means less intimate music experiences.

A few things really bugged me about the Beats Music launch today:
1) The onboarding was HORRIBLE (claim your name, but we won’t tell you how to log in with it…) and issues seem to be ongoing (understandable);
2) It’s almost 100% geared toward single track/playlist listening (ahh!);
3) In my quick searches, it didn’t have nearly the album support as Spotify;
4) My first playlist listens were meh. Songza is still my “radio” go-to until Beats convinces me that their playlists will be better and more human;
5) And their use of “emotion” irked me — “a new music service curated by people who believe MUSIC IS EMOTION AND LIFE”— this may be true, but it isn’t represented in-product by anything more than bold type and colors…

Where in the hell is the emotion?! I’ve certainly found no joy as a user.

I’m tired of being just a consumer of music. I miss the emotion. The joy… They have the right words, and people (Scott’s a former Pitchfork client). But music emotion is about the entire music experience. Not just listening.

We are not consumers of music. Music consumes us.

I had high hopes for Beats Music, but it has yet to deliver on any promise. The design is fancy. So are the people involved. The bugs are bugs. (it’s new) I know they’ve worked hard to get it here, so that’s easy to forgive.

However, today has cemented my decision to stick with Spotify. (for now)

So, Sean Parker, you haven’t ruined my entire music experience. You’ve helped a team build a solid product, API, and music library that lets me build a product that makes me love the entire music experience again.

But, seriously, you could make up for ruining years of music experiences by addressing some of those things above…

But wait… How about a sneak peek at what we’re building?