I find it super interesting that music is formless. It can be with you at any time—and a song you hear can remind you of a specific memory from 20 years ago.

In just under one generation, we moved from appreciating albums as cohesive works to consuming individual tracks, and then to music becoming reduced to muzak: background noise for gaming, viral videos, or endless scrolling. Disappearing is music as an art in its own right, which commands sustained attention and deep engagement. A song’s success is... See more

Our gradually degrading analog audio media may not sound “better” than digital, but they do sound different , and for some they can sound different in a way that's preferable to digital perfection. My grandmother has often said that she would sometimes rather listen to her old vinyl records, or even digitizations of them, than to a perfectly... See more