The new measure of "cool"

When I was a teenager you could have lifted me into any scene from Nick Hornby's High Fidelity. I was a major music junkie. I spent all my money on albums (that would be vinyl) and listened to them till the grooves wore thru. And, like any properly cool teenager of the time, LP's were stored in orange crates or other similar packing crates. I maybe had 3 crates worth of vinyl at any given time, but I didn't come remotely close to my best friend, Matt. He must have had 5-6 crates of LP's. Very cool. And my brother-in-law? He had at least 10! He was cool beyond words.

You get it. Music is cool. Having music is cool. And in my youth, the measure of "cool" was the number of orange crates of LP's you had stacked up next to your amp and turntable. That was how you knew who to go to for music advice or to make a casette tape. 

But, the measure of "cool" has evolved over the years. In the 80's and early 90's it was the number of CD's you had on your bookshelves (I was only up to about 500). With the advent of the internet and with many thanks to the team at Fraunhofer-Gesellshaft for inventing the mp3 format, the measure of "cool" evolved into how many gigabytes of mp3's you had on your hard disk. Fantastic! Everything playable on-demand right from my computer or even... wait for it... a portable mp3 player no larger than a pack of cigs!

Well now we've entered the new millenium, and following Kazaa, Napster, Limewire and every other "get your mp3's free" service, it's been said we have created a generation of music listeners who are lacking a sense of ownership. I would argue, however.  that we have simply evolved to the next level in the music coolness equation. 

Spotify founder, Daniel Ek, said recently in an interview that the future of music is not ownership but access. He is spot on, and has been ever since I first had Spotify pitched at me in 2008. In this case, what's important to understand is that "ownership" does not necessarily even need to mean "purchased music". "Ownership" means owning the ingestion, storing, database management, syncing and every other process of the file management - music listening experience. And all we really want and need to make it work seamlessly, is access. Quick, easy, access. Why else would radio still be so popular? I push the button in my car and music comes out. Butt simple.

So, in 2011, what's cooler than 120GB of mp3's on your hard disk? 10 million tracks in the air around you all the time, 24/7, just waiting for you to hit a button and bring them into your headphones, stereo, computer, car, tablet, smartphone, whatever. Has the currency of music lost it's value? Or is it simply that the process isn't worth it any more? Maybe a little of both. One thing is certain: access is the new measure of "cool". Accept it and get on board.