So none of you feels there's anything to be said for having ones entire collection--in my case, more than half of my life--ready to listen to anywhere, anytime (with good etymotic er-4 sound attenuating canal-phones)? I feel like I've begun to connect more fully to the process of my musical appreciation--which is nearly like saying, the process of my life--to know why, exactly, I've been so damned nuts over music for so long. I feel like I'm beginning to know that it does indeed add up to something, that I haven't just been letting a few life-changing musical moments drive an otherwise scattershot addiction.
In the sense that we've all created collections we're incapable of making it through even in a year of listening---aren't we all horders? So what's wrong with being able to "use" that horde? In my opinion, it makes it *less* silly/materialistic/fetishistic and more about the music itself.
How does the fact that a portable, massive-storage (mine being 100GB, ~20,000 songs) makes it possible to listen to music in very casual, "non-ideal" ways (assuming ideal means "intently, to the album as an total artwork") make it any less likely that we'll take the time we used to take to listen intently, too?
Fundamentally, I feel like my player (not an iPod--I resent them as fashion objects, I'm glad mine is ugly and many times more functional and less expensive) makes my collection more justifiable and less absurd. I have a natural nostalgia for physical media, and I'll always buy "hardcopies" of the music, as long as they're available--but especially if the sound quality/bitrates the average person is using to mp3 continue to increase, I'll be able to say goodbye to that physicality, if it means people are listening more/often/broadly/deeper to music.
And aren't most of the people listening "poorly" via their iPods people who listened passively/aquisitively/faddishly to music beforehand? Even if driven by an aquisitive, "must fill 5/10/20/40 gigs" mentality--it seems at least possible that the average person, who doesn't legally own enough music to fill 5 gigs, might stand a chance of finding something that they enjoy regardless of its "approved" status--a possibility of meritocatic evaluation.
As for the "flatness" of high-quality (VBR base-224) mp3s (or CDs for that matter)---I'm glad my ears are apparently not good enough to hear what's so great and live and warm about vinyl. Mine are usually too distracted by the pops/dust/warping/lagging to notice. And cassettes---I loved making mixes, recording the radio, etc.---but good riddance! Tangling, breaking, grating junk.