{"id":3203,"date":"2016-04-08T20:08:12","date_gmt":"2016-04-08T14:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=3203"},"modified":"2016-04-08T20:08:12","modified_gmt":"2016-04-08T14:38:12","slug":"the-lost-art-of-downloading-music-and-compiling-mixtapes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=3203","title":{"rendered":"The Lost Art of Downloading Music and Compiling Mixtapes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I<\/span><\/p>n 2003, I had two best friends. Nakul and my computer. While Nakul was imaginary and could be quite flaky sometimes, my Windows XP kept me company during most of my teenage years. It bore silent witness to my <\/span>Road Rash<\/span><\/i> marathons, embarrassing <\/span>MSN Messenger<\/span><\/a> screen names, and constantly changing <\/span>Winamp<\/span><\/a> skins. Despite running on a decrepit Pentium III, there was an inherent fluidity to the <\/span>XP<\/span><\/a>\u2019s UI which effortlessly blended robustness with synchronised efficiency. No Windows operating system since then has quite managed to emulate that precision (Come at me, Windows 7 Fanbois!). But mostly, I love it so much because it introduced me and my fellow \u201990s kids to the internet, which has played a huge role in who we are today.<\/span><\/span>\n\nThe internet was still brand spanking new for my peers and I. We hadn\u2019t quite grasped the magnitude of it and were too busy being the last generation to enjoy outdoor recreation without digital interruptions. While 12-year-olds today are \u201cbuilding their brand\u201d on <\/span>Instagram<\/span><\/a>, we were spending our summer vacations picking up rubber balls from gutters and trying to fix clearly <\/span>out-of-shape<\/span><\/a> shuttlecocks. And spooling a cassette tape into shape with the help of a <\/span>Natraj pencil<\/span><\/a>. <\/span>\n\nIn contrast, my teenage cousins today can\u2019t imagine their lives without the endless streaming of <\/span>Netflix<\/span><\/a>, Amazon Prime, and YouTube. They\u2019ve never known the struggle of going to a Planet M to pick up the latest <\/span>Now That\u2019s What I Call Music<\/span><\/i> CD and looking bewildered when asked what a VCD is. <\/span>\n\nBut around the early 2000s, our almost-but-not-quite pastoral lifestyle hit a standstill when the beeps and clatters of dial-up modem connections began resounding in our homes.<\/span>\n

I found that because I knew the fine art of burning an MP3 CD and curating a decent party playlist, I was immediately hot property among my batchmates.<\/blockquote>\nWith the advent of Limewire and other P2P file-sharing clients, all of a sudden, the era of cassettes and CDs began to crumble and the age of the MP3 was upon us. MSN Messenger Chats now went hand in hand with your favourite Winamp playlist playing in the background. All you needed was a fairly okay modem or cable internet connection, access to Kazaa or Limewire and <\/span>virtually any song or video<\/span><\/a> ever recorded was available to save to your hard-drive. And then of course, for you to conveniently place on your Winamp playlist. <\/span>\n\nNot to mention, Winamp, on its own, was a wondrous app. Light years ahead of its time, <\/span>it really did whip the Llama\u2019s ass<\/span><\/a>. In hindsight, it\u2019s no wonder I became a P2P junkie by eighth grade. I found that because I knew the fine art of burning an MP3 CD or curating a decent <\/span>party playlist<\/span><\/a>, I was immediately hot property among my batchmates. The die-hard romantics who knew I had access to Nero Burning Rom hounded me to create mushy mixtapes for their significant crushes. I was like cupid; and Hoobastank\u2019s \u201cThe Reason\u201d and Hinder\u2019s \u201cLips of an Angel\u201d were only a few of the arrows in my arsenal. This ever-growing repertoire of eclectic tracks boasted of tens of thousands of songs spanning hundreds of genres ranging from \u201cBole Chudiyaan\u201d to Foo Fighters. I had playlists for gaming, chatting, browsing, studying \u2013 even for porn. What a time to be alive!<\/span>\n\nPerhaps my nostalgia for the era of Winamp, Limewire, and the Songs.PK download boom is so intense because globally, the MP3 boom represented an \u201cin-between\u201d era of sorts. A strange anomaly in time where record sales were still very much a measure of success but the prospect of a digital downloads-based business model was becoming impossible for the music industry to ignore. The world began understanding just how many teenagers preferred listening to music online. Before we knew it, YouTube was born. Thus ending any need or novelty to download music. <\/span>\n\nI now see CDs in people\u2019s houses, repurposed as decorative coasters or wind-chimes that have the dubious effect of confounding and frightening crows and pigeons. Where do we go from here? Vinyl + streaming, if you believe <\/span>Rolling Stone<\/span><\/i>. Earlier this year, the magazine wrote <\/span>a piece<\/span><\/a> titled \u201cThe End of Owning Music: How CDs and Downloads Died\u201d and quoted one half of The White Stripes: \u201cJack White, arguably the most visible vinyl advocate in recent years, agrees: \u2018I definitely believe the next decade is going to be streaming plus vinyl \u2013 streaming in the car and kitchen, vinyl in the living room and the den. Those will be the two formats. And I feel really good about that.\u2019\u201d<\/span>\n\nThanks, Jack White, but I\u2019m happy being a CD nostalgist. Here I am, living in an age where Netflix decides what shows I\u2019d like to watch next, and an algorithm determines my playlist on Soundcloud. Sure, the diversity of content and ease of viewing have made my life simpler, eliding over the need to choose anything. But there\u2019s still some days I can\u2019t help but feel wistful for the days when, armed with just my clunky desktop and pirated MP3 burning software, I felt like a more accomplished DJ than Tiesto himself.<\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the early 2000s, millennials triggered the shift from cassettes and CDs to MP3 downloads. Armed with P2P clients like Limewire, we realised our internet connections gave us all the power to be amateur DJs in our own homes and cars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":3204,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[6239,6240,6241,2918,6242,6243],"class_list":["post-3203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop-culture","tag-downloads","tag-limewire","tag-mp3","tag-nostalgia","tag-winamp","tag-windows-xp"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Lost Art of Downloading Music and Compiling Mixtapes<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In the early 2000s, millennials triggered the shift from cassettes and CDs to MP3 downloads. 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