I’ve been hanging out at J. Kinyeta’s space a lot lately, and he brought up an interesting topic last week that I’ve had a bit of time to reflect on. The music industry as a whole is indeed in shambles, and you’ve heard me (and some readers) bitch about it before so there’s no need to reopen old wounds. Check out his post for more discussion on this topic.

As a result I felt like writing about another aspect of music consumption. I was talking to a friend a few days ago about one of the CDs he recommended to me, and he asked me what my favorite tracks were. I named them off, to which he responded “um…what track numbers?”. And I couldn’t relay them (well, not right away).

Whenever you get a new CD, do you ever look at the track listing at the back? Sometimes it isn’t there, but in that case do you go right for the liner notes? The song titles are there. Yes, that’s right, those wonderful pieces of music have names. I suppose it is yet more evidence that for media to be consumed by today’s society it must be immediately gratifying. Don’t bother learning the title of the song you like – instead remember the track number. Makes perfect sense to me.

So how many times have you referred to a song by track number? I get that shit all the time. And whenever I ramble off a few song names on a given album, and the person says “Uh…what? I need a track number”, it enrages me because you end up trivializing the the song into a fucking number. I mean if it was meant to be that way, do you think musicians would invent song titles? Stop being so god damned lazy. Now that creating mix CDs is more accessible than ever, track numbers have become irrelevant. I can’t wait for the CD to become obsolete.

I wonder, did people do the same thing with cassettes? I can’t remember if anyone dumbly pointed out “Oh the third song on Side A” as if it meant something. I’m almost positive this phenomenon arrived with the advent of the CD; I suppose it has just become a convention of the medium and modern consumers of music.

The order of tracks on the album is indeed important, but the songs have names for a reason. Appreciate them.

Afterword: Props to anyone who can get the reference for the title of today’s post, but it’s not too hard. Don’t expect a prize or anything.