In the hard update

Yes, it's hard to stay updated. The resources are easier than ever before in music history. Specially through the Internet. All those newsletters, e-shops, blogs, mags and portals. If you have a minimum serious interest to follow what's going on in music, and if your taste is open to just one band or one very specific type of music, you could very well feel overwhelmed. Furthermore, if you are downloading on a regular basis you are most certainly addicted to the gigabism. Just one, two, three, ten clicks and dozens of new albums are getting installed in your hard disk. More and more gigabytes of music: what for? Are you (we) really paying attention to THE MUSIC?

We all know this downloading craze is illegal and you could be prosecuted for that activity, but that doesn't seem to bother many of my fellow music bloggers who, in a vast majority, care more for linking you to the page where you can click and go then get it for free, than maybe writing a few lines, spending some time to understand and explain the whys and hows, the background, history or merely the feelings they had when they were enjoying the music with attention. It's the ultimate fab: mini-blogs. Ten lines or so basically saying "hey, this is quite good, I got it the other day: check them out!" Does it all have to become so simple?

Don't get me wrong. Use the freedom, space and  opportunity blogging provides us all to express openly, and if you don't care much about the harm downloading and sharing is causing to the music, and stopped buying records a long time ago, it's not a big deal. You never really cared about music anyway, right? 

The freedom and access this situation has created it should revert in some degree to the artists and companies who are offering such richness in terms of creativity and diversity. Every day, often every week I have the chance to listen to lots of new material that I either buy or receive - sometimes from labels or artists -. Then thanks to the streaming technology many companies, artists and sites offer I also manage to remain updated to most realeases who excite me under any possible genre under one rule: originality. Then also beauty and sometimes nonsense (the good old: "I like it").  But my point is, with all that considerable amount of good music in my hands, it takes a long time to enjoy and consider those works before I make a decision about an acquisition. The space at home it's limited too, but that's another story. But my buying rate has not changed: it has only become more accurate. I rarely find myself buying something I will not like. And that's the true freedom my friends. A collection that has a value not in the size (specially in bytes or external hard disks) but in the quality. But the most important thing: a collection to enjoy sipping every second of it with with wisdom.

Bye-ya!