The dangers of digital media | Samuel Walters

PPlease imagine that scene. So I’m lying in bed, earphones in, ready for a song or two to help me drift off to the land of nods. Open Spotify on your phone and access your favorite albums. genius experience. (I know it’s an odd thing to listen to before bed, but some people just happen to like falling asleep to rave classics.) When I opened the album, I realized something was wrong. At first I didn’t know what was wrong, but then I realized that a track was missing. Yes, the entire song “Wind it Up” from this modern masterpiece album disappeared into thin air. It just disappeared, without any trace or explanation.

Curious, I quickly googled the issue and found a forum letting me know that other people had also noticed the missing track. It is available not only on Spotify, but also on iTunes, YouTube Music, and Tidal. Therefore, it is clear that this strange phenomenon was occurring on all streaming platforms. What on earth happened? Was it a problem with the matrix?

Perhaps it was something more mundane about copyright issues or some commercial decision by a record label. As someone who has been listening to Spotify for years, I’m used to the weird little quirks that affect the content on a daily basis. Album cover art may change for no reason. In some cases, bonus tracks or live session recordings may suddenly become available or suddenly unavailable. I accept these as minor issues related to the fluid nature of the mysterious world of rights negotiations and licensing fees. But I have never experienced anything of this scale before. This missing truck business is different. I feel anxious.

When tracks are removed from such classic albums without anyone being told, it feels like cultural tampering. It’s not that the truck itself is that valuable. It’s a staple of modern music, the idea that albums that are more than 30 years old can effectively be retrospectively censored and secretly edited by those in power. genius experience The group’s first studio album was released in 1992, received critical acclaim, and is considered highly original by historians of rave culture. Maybe you’re not into that kind of music, but imagine if one day you went to listen to Oasis’ “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?” Then I realized that “Wonderwall” wasn’t on the album. What happens when you open “Sgt.” Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and noticed that “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” was missing? What would you do if you opened Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro” and the opera overture was missing?

Reminiscent of Stalin’s penchant for record erasure

This feels like streaming platforms are actually rewriting history. It is reminiscent of Stalin’s penchant for erasing records. Not content with killing their rivals, they had to erase them from history as if they had never existed in the first place. Dramatic comparison? of course. Nevertheless, people feel the anxiety of being small individuals at the mercy of great forces. When I had his CD collection, no one could come to my house and scratch tracks off the discs or hint at the track list in the booklet. When you own something, you own it. It’s your property and that’s it. But streaming is a different story.

We’ve all come to think of streaming simply as the modern equivalent of ownership, but it’s not quite the same thing. It gives me the disturbing feeling that we’re all unconsciously, slowly but surely relinquishing control through these seemingly convenient and innocuous streaming apps. Streaming rather than owning makes us vulnerable. Our cultural treasures can be interfered with by big corporations, governments, and anyone else, but there’s nothing we can do about it because we don’t own anything anymore. Where does the album start and end?

… You can make as many changes as you want to a movie “in your collection” without realizing it.

Of course, our music isn’t the only thing you’re streaming right now. Most of us stop buying DVDs in favor of streaming services and consider it a kind of step up. However, these services continue to remove content abruptly. This is usually due to licensing fees. Certainly this month, Independent We reported that some classic titles will be removed from Netflix for UK streamers in 2024. bridget jones diary, There is no country for old people and truman show. It might be frustrating to know that your favorite movie is no longer available, but the real concern is that streaming services can easily manipulate the version of a movie they’re offering and not tell you. is. It’s not hard to imagine that scenes that might be “offensive to modern sensibilities” would be cut. After all, these steaming services are a huge global business. They’re not going to quibble about artistic integrity in the face of cultural correctness, commercial power, or political pressure. Again, as the owner, no one can come into your living room and interfere with your videos or DVDs. However, as a streamer, you can make any number of changes to the movies “in your collection” without even realizing it.

In a Reddit thread from early last year, one reader wrote that a passage from one of Agatha Christie’s classic works… death on the nile, had changed after the e-reader’s automatic update. They reported finding two texts that had been changed without any notice or explanation given. Surprisingly, the texts that were allegedly changed were those deemed too offensive for the modern world, related to race, and were typical of Christie’s time. It was a reflection of attitude.

Now, you have to realize that this is just a Reddit thread. We know we need to take the internet with a few pinches of salt. On the other hand, other readers report to times The Roald Dahl e-books they purchased have been replaced with sanitized versions.The edition I owned, not the edition I borrowed. bought.

By relying on digital media, it feels like we are easily relinquishing control of our culture. I don’t know. Maybe I’m losing it. Maybe I’ve ingested too much science fiction and just need a breath of air. Or relax while listening to some good music. If only it still existed.