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10 Ways Apple Changed the Way We Listen to Music

Honoring the memory of Steve Jobs (whose life is explored in just-published official biography by esteemed writer Walter Isaacson) as well as the 10th birthday of the iPod, we think back on how Apple and the iPod changed the way we listen to music.

1. Shuffle: This setting might be one of the greatest ways to remember forgotten tracks or to discover unheard ones, as well as hear how two seemingly disparate artists are similar.

2. Digital downloads (pro): The digitalization of music has allowed for bands to distribute their music easily and cheaply and garner immense exposure through blogs, websites and YouTube.

3. Digital downloads (con): Similar to what the book industry is currently facing, the digitalization of music made it incredibly easy to download music for free rather than trekking to Sam Goody to buy the new album.

4. Album: People who use iPods are more likely to download singles, rather than the entire album. Moreover, people create and listen to playlists and mixes, instead of the album as a whole.

5. Album artwork: Because of album artwork, records became pieces of art that you could appreciate and put on display.

6. Sound quality: As opposed to the record or stereo, the MP3 format of a song is a low-quality version of what the artist actually records in the studio.

7. Hearing quality: iPod headphones aren’t great for your hearing, especially when you listen at over 85 decibels.

8. Quantity: We can carry with us thousands more songs than ever possible before the iPod, allowing us to have an immense variety of artists and genres at our fingertips. And we listen to music much more often than we did before.

9. Permanence: Records can break, CDs can get scratched, and hard drives can crash. Unless you have your iPod backed up on several different platforms, you stand a chance of losing your entire music library.

10. Musicians like Apple, too: Recently, Umphrey’s McGee and moe. have played songs on the iPad. In July of 2003, Phish downloaded their entire catalog on a newly acquired iPod and then discovered some old forgotten songs and decided to play these rarities that night.