Back in the nascent days of the MP3 era, as I sat /pdccing nontupled nines at mIRC in EFNet’s #mp3 and waiting hours for that Dickies song to come through the pipe, I was convinced all CDs would eventually be delivered physically in MP3 format. The example I used to like to give was that Mozart’s complete works came on 400 CDs, and that MP3s could deliver that same oeuvre with 1/40th of the physical waste.
I flashed back to this (completely failed) prophecy earlier today, when this Bach Pod came through the pipes: it’s an 80GB iPod Classic pre-loaded with 175 hours of Bach’s complete works, with 17GB of room left to spare. Buying a new iPod to get a complete collection of an artist’s works is only for the die-hards, but it’s interesting to see completist classical music collections go down this route.
It’s an expensive iPod to buy, though, unless you’re willing to shell out $450 bucks for the complete Bach: Passionato is selling the Bach Pod for $700.
Bach Pod [Passionato via Cult of Mac]
Scientist and author Lewis Thomas once suggested how the people of Earth should communicate with the universe:
“I would vote for Bach, all of Bach, streamed out into space, over and over again. We would be bragging of course, but it is surely excusable to put the best possible face on at the beginning of such an acquaintance. We can tell the harder truths later.”
I think part of the issue is that people that are so into an artist that they want their entire catalog will probably be so into music that they will not want to purchase a huge quantity of their music in one shot in a lossy medium.
It’s a shame its all so expensive to do this legally. I think there’d be a market for people with limited musical taste to be able to buy an iPod pre-filled with music and with a number of playlists with names like “Dinner Party”, “Back to mine after the pub”, “New Year’s” “Lazy Sunday”. You’d give your age and rough demographic (Or the date when you were 22) and the system would select music you ought to know or would probably like, dump it to an iPod, create the playlists and send it you. It’s the musical equivalent of those high end services that will outfit your wardrobe for a business trip to NY, fill your empty house with objets or populate your empty bookcases.
Then you work out how much it would cost to legally fill a 120Gb classic and it’s just not going to fly for anyone but the mega-rich.
If your local public library has anything like a decent classical music collection, you will be able to get most, if not all, of Bach’s oeuvre for… nothing.