Steve Jobs and Music

With all the accolades and remembrances choking the Web surrounding the death of Steve Jobs, surprisingly few folks have commented on the extraordinary impact Apple has had on music. There is no doubt that the iPod – which will be 10 years old next week – has forever changed the way we engage with music, allowing us to carry around our entire music libraries on a device roughly the size of a deck of cards. (Or, in the case of the Nano, a watchface.) The simple, intuitive way in which iTunes indexes and delivers our music – by genre, composer, album – is nothing short of brilliant. And, it's hardly hyperbole to say that the iTunes Store singlehandedly saved the recording industy.

For all its convenience, though, the iPod (and, more recently, the iPhone) can also be seen as a major menace, reducing an musician's passion and artistry to a soundbyte that can be randomly "shuffled," or skipped altogether with a quick swipe. These sleek, sexy devices have fed our collective musical ADD: does anyone listen to full albums anymore?

It took me a long time to get on the Apple bandwagon: I still carried around a CD Walkman as recently as 2008, when I finally gave in and bought a 4th generation Nano. I was immediately blown away by the ease with which I could switch from Beethoven to Fleet Foxes, from Coltrane to Steve Reich, all with the flick of a finger. Suffice to say, that Walkman hasn't seen the light of day in quite some time…

And, lest we forget, the Mac is far and away the computer of choice among performing musicians, who use it to run everything from Ableton and MaxMSP, to random samples and beats. It is also the device on which virtually all of today's composers write the symphonies, quartets and operas of the 21st century. In short, the Mac has advanced the development of western music more over the past 20 years than in the previous 1,000 years combined. 

So, thanks Steve for a lot of things, but especially for giving us the tools we need to keep the music that we love close, and the ability to create bold new possibilities we can't yet imagine.