An Update on the iPod Experiment

I say "experiment," though I don't think this would hold up to the scientific method. I was inspired by others I saw online, like "Digging the Greats" on YouTube, but while he set out to only use an iPod for music for one month, my goal was always more vague than that: I simply wanted to change the way I interact with music.

To those ends, this has been a rousing success. As it's stretched on, I've gotten more used to it, developed my own patterns that seem to work for me. On Fridays, I sync my iPod, both adding any new music I've found or wanted to add over the past week, and uploading the log of what I've listened to to Last.FM.

I like the idea of Last.FM, and the tracking is so frictionless there's sort of no reason not to do it, but I haven't exactly figured out how to best leverage this into something useful for me. Perhaps letting it suggest music to me based on my listening habits, replacing the music discovery playlists on Spotify (which I rarely used anyways)? Or just a fun way to show friends what I've been listening to? Not sure! This is one of those things that's still developing for me.

Still, I've been listening more to new music, rather than just the old music I already know I like. I've also been listening more to albums, rather than just tracks, which has been a lot of fun. So many artists I've missed, or only heard snippets of; so many bands I like have come out with new music! I wrote about this in the latest Refrakt, but right now I'm just keeping a big text file in my notes app (Obsidian) with an alphabetically organized list of the artists and bands I've added to my music library over the past couple of weeks. It's terribly crude, but I've been writing some notes on albums as I listen to them.

I'm not quite sure what lead this impulse; I guess it was just looking through my rebuilt music library and realizing how many artists I like (hence why I collected them) I'd forgotten about. I recently gave Oranssi Pazuzu (a Finnish psych/black metal band)'s latest album, Muuntautuja a listen. I'd loved an album of theirs from 2016, but somehow didn't keep up with them in the meantime. I first listened to it on a walk around my neighborhood, and did so a lot more critically than I usually do; stopping to note different thoughts on specific tracks, even. It was interesting to see myself shift into that mode automatically—was this because I knew I intended to write my thoughts down? I shared my thoughts on this record in that last issue of Refrakt, but so far, these album notes have been only for me. Interesting to see the switch from passive to active even from something so minor.

I haven't fully stopped using Spotify, for better or for worse. I still tend to put on a random playlist when I'm showering, when I'm cooking. But even on Spotify, I've shifted my music habits a bit, becoming a bit more intentional about what I want to listen to; even if that's just a specific track, or a specific artist. I've also just been using Musicbee (an iTunes replacement) as a music player as much as I've used it for organizing my music library. Here, more than ever I turn to albums. Where once I would've just put on a good-seeming playlist from YouTube, just as often now I'm listening intentionally, turning off the shuffle button, and following the journey the musician intended.

I didn't listen to much music while in Japan. This isn't really about music, specifically; I also didn't read much, or play any videogames, etc. But when I sat down on the plane as we headed back to the West, I reached first for my iPod. Sure, I don't love flying—I get dizzy, making reading hard—but even beyond that it felt right, given the mood I was in, the trip we'd just experienced. I plugged my headphones in, and queued up Nujabes—fitting for Japan—and watched the night-soaked Narita countryside drift away, the lights becoming ever tinier, before disappearing into the clouds. Hours, countries, and a connecting flight later, the view became Chicago, those familiar streets—home.