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I never knew how to work torrents, until i thought I'd give it a proper go earlier this week. I finally got it to work and set about downloading some albums I wanted. I'm no stranger to downloading music, I get bootlegs from a forum and download from Limewire regularly, however when the downloads started finishing from the torrents I started feeling a bit wei
rd. For some reason I felt really guilty as if I was nicking the music (which I do on limewire without any concience problems) and not as excited about finally getting the music as I thought I would be. I think it's something to do with the ease of it and the volumes which you can download in such a short space of time. Even with Limewire there is some work involved it takes time and effort to find rare recordings and full albums but with torrents its just choose and click which cheapens the experience for me. Subsequently I now have about 8 or 9 albums on my itunes which I feel bad about having, and I think I'll have to physically buy the albums to be able to fully enjoy them, which is a strange concept to say the least.
rd. For some reason I felt really guilty as if I was nicking the music (which I do on limewire without any concience problems) and not as excited about finally getting the music as I thought I would be. I think it's something to do with the ease of it and the volumes which you can download in such a short space of time. Even with Limewire there is some work involved it takes time and effort to find rare recordings and full albums but with torrents its just choose and click which cheapens the experience for me. Subsequently I now have about 8 or 9 albums on my itunes which I feel bad about having, and I think I'll have to physically buy the albums to be able to fully enjoy them, which is a strange concept to say the least.Also I usually won't download a full album of a band's material as instead I like to get a cross-section of their whole back catalogue (say 5 or 6 songs spanning their career) then if I like them I can buy their CD. I think this is why I don't particulary like downloading from torrents or exclusivly listning to music on Spotify. Spotify is good if you want to get a feel of a lesser-known band or if you want to listen to a varied lot a music you may or may not like without it clogging up your computer (like playlists of the artists performing at an upcoming festival) but I wouldn't want that much music at my fingertips all the time. I pride myself on having built up a great collection of music on my computer and in my CD and record collection, but it has taken me quite a while. I just wouldn't appreciate it as much if I had downloaded the whole lot in a day or if it had all just been there at my fingertips to stream. Another fault of the endless resource of Spotify or the huge power of torrents is the removal of the mystery and unknown element of bands. I like nothing better than to find music from a band I love that I previously had no knowledge of, hearing a rare EP or a previously unreleased demo feels as good as finding the band in the first place. Being able to download a whole back catalogue is not appealing to me as you have it all there and there is no room for exploration of the band and the chances of you listening to it all become slimmer as you don't need to seek out the music.
I've digressed a bit from my original subject but I think the major point is that I don't like to not have to work to get the best from a band; that sounds unbelivably pretentious and self-congratulating but I really think it enhances the musical experience. Recently I've been listning to quite a lot of 
LPs because you can't really pick and choose like you can with Itunes and Spotify. You put the side on and listen to it all the way through, the effort involved in changing disks and tracks means you generally listen to a complete album or side, and in that way songs you maybe didn't like at the start grow on you and you don't tire out your favourite songs as they come around as regularly as the less liked ones. I've got songs on itunes I've listened to 50 times in the space of a week and now can't bear to hear and I think thats quite sad as my constant cherry-picking of my music database has led to me losing interest in a lot of great music. I believe that the availability of everything all the time in music is harming people's listning experiences as there is hardly any work involved in obtaining the music, so the sense of reward is lessened. I know some people like nothing more than to have gigabytes of music from each and every artist, leaving nothing for the future. But for now I'm done with torrenting and think I'll stick to my slow and steady build-up of a great catalogue of music.
LPs because you can't really pick and choose like you can with Itunes and Spotify. You put the side on and listen to it all the way through, the effort involved in changing disks and tracks means you generally listen to a complete album or side, and in that way songs you maybe didn't like at the start grow on you and you don't tire out your favourite songs as they come around as regularly as the less liked ones. I've got songs on itunes I've listened to 50 times in the space of a week and now can't bear to hear and I think thats quite sad as my constant cherry-picking of my music database has led to me losing interest in a lot of great music. I believe that the availability of everything all the time in music is harming people's listning experiences as there is hardly any work involved in obtaining the music, so the sense of reward is lessened. I know some people like nothing more than to have gigabytes of music from each and every artist, leaving nothing for the future. But for now I'm done with torrenting and think I'll stick to my slow and steady build-up of a great catalogue of music.
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