Recently (O.K about a month ago) I joined with rest of the world in ear-budded bliss. I used my tax return money to buy an iPod. It was kind of impulsive, but I think I'm satisfied. There are some pros and cons to having an iPod (or any other portable MP3 player, for those Mac haters out there)
Pros
-All your music is there at your fingertips, and I you're like me, that's a lot of music. As of right now I have around 2500 songs and 20GB to fill, and I haven't made a dent in ripping my collection.
-Portablity
Cons
-It turns music into a kind of background noise, making it less of the experience it should be, not to say that I don't use music as background noise while I do things ( like write this), but I think the iPod compounds this problem.
-Reduced sociability. I'm guessing on this one, because usually only take it to work, and I don't want to talk to those motherfuckers anyways, but I'm guessing that when you're listening to an iPod in public it makes polite, random conversations more rare. Maybe.
-The Death of the Album. I think this one isn't that big of a deal. A lot of good pop artists are singles artists, and I think the iPod and MP3s in general should encourage more creativity and frequency of those singles, without those artists making albums that are half filler. Besides those artists who feel like it can still make full albums.
All in all, I think the iPod is a pretty cool little think
