Wilson Schwenke, The iPod: Another Trendy Revolution

Having a personal soundtrack has always been a small dream of many people throughout their lives. To have a personal track to jam to, any time of the day or night, and to be able to express one’s uniqueness through the music that was on the personal music player at the time. This revolution first started with the Sony walkman in the late 80s. The walkman, a compact cassette player, was small enough to enable people to go about their daily lives, relatively unencumbered by the larger weight and bulk of a portable stereo. This cassette player allowed people to jog, walk, or do any other physical activity with a soundtrack, selected by the person using it, instead of merely carrying around a portable radio player, which merely allowed the listener to tune into whatever the DJ for the radio station tended to choose that day. Because of this versatility, the cassette player was a nearly instant hit, especially amongst the active crowd. As time wore on, and the technology changed, CD players became the dominant portable music player of choice. Although they still skipped sometimes, the ability of a CD to hold more songs and be generally more reliable, as well as a higher sound quality, made them the dominant form of portable music devices. All of this changed with the introduction of Apple’s iPod and other companies’ competing schemes for a digital music player. Boasting exponentially higher storage rates than CDs, and taking the necessity of carrying multiple CDs out of the equation, it seemed to be the answer to just about every problem that had plagued earlier portable players. When the iPod was released in October of 2003, it created a large disturbance in the music industry. Through numerous upgrades and functionality changes, it has become the dominant media player of choice, and still holds a tight grip on the digital music player market. Apple’s adds for the iPod have always catered to the hip, young, and active crowd, and this is where the mythology of the product comes into play. Much like Naomi Klein’s theory in “The Brand Expands”, the iPod became more than just a trendy device on which to hold music. The iPod became a symbol of the digital music revolution.

After a slightly slow changeover from the CD to the digital music age, the iPod took the music-listening world by storm. The ability to carry around one’s entire CD collection, ranging from classical to hardcore rock, was, and is, too good to pass up. Even better, the price for all this was not exactly prohibitive to getting one. The one problem initially was that in order to utilize the iPod’s music, one had to own a Mac, usually a computer only owned by the trendy and quirky artist types. However, by the third generation, Apple had made a windows-capable version of the iPod, and sales shot through the proverbial roof. Originally only carried by Mac stores or online, once the iPod became windows-compatible, it began to be sold everywhere, from computer stores to the neighborhood wal-mart. However, regardless of where it is sold, the iPod is always advertised as a trendy, go-to music library, for people always on the go, and doing big things. Take iPod’s adds, for example. All of the adds show trendy youths, blacked out so only their silhouettes are showing, dancing to the music playing in the background, usually a very popular song from a modern band, and all of the silhouettes have the ubiquitous white iPod and the ear buds in their ears. This style of advertising, mildly abstract, but very trendy, attracted exactly the crowd that would be most expected to buy these music players: teens and twentysomethings who wanted to be part of the ever-growing in crowd of iPod owners. Each of these adds, from the add featuring Eminem’s song “Lose Yourself” to the add featuring the Gorillaz’s song “Feel Good Inc.” feature groups of youths with iPods, implying that to not have one would be tantamount to not being able to feely express oneself with music like the silhouettes shining brightly from the TV screen. This trendy advertising, combined with the minimalist and cool look of the iPod itself, has caused it to become a culture icon, and it has acquired a sort of modern mythological status from this iconography. In many movies, the actors are seen wielding their iPods as they go about their business in the movie. Comparing and sharing music and thus expanding knowledge of bands previously unrecognized has become a hobby of many a teen, and the shuffle feature, which picks songs at random from the iPod’s library, allows people to constantly be surprised by the music playing through their ear buds as they continue about their daily business. Even though the massive sales of the iPod have dimmed its status as an emblem of the counterculture, and even moved it into the area firmly controlled by pop culture, it has not lost its image of cool or hip that the advertisers sought to manifest as they created their adds. Another interesting theme of the adds plays directly into American pop culture. This is that the figures in the adds, though merely silhouettes, display many of the other markings of what is hip and now. All are skinny and young, and most are displaying dance moves on screen that would put most dancers in clubs to shame. Even the adds that feature not so impressive dancing, such as the add featuring Napoleon Dynamite, himself somewhat of a cultural icon, indicate that to have an iPod is to be tied to that culture phenomenon itself, and that purchasing one allows one to be part of the club. As much as the product is used as a membership card to the club of those who jam, the iPod can be used for much more, from music and video playing, or just as an external storage device.

The iPod, as well as being a cultural icon, is what it was made for. It is a digital music player, a sort of mini-computer that can store and replay music, and for later versions, movies as well. It can also store picture albums. This proliferation of music players and programs that need nothing more than an MP3 file has had unforeseen consequences though. Pirating music has become a major issue, and the RIAA, or Recording Industry Association of America, has become concerned with it. Pirating used to be a relatively inconvenient process, where, in order to pirate a CD, people needed to copy it wholesale onto another blank CD, and then re-sell it. Now, with the advent of CD rips and a digital age set to handle them, programs such as Kazaa and Limewire, among others, have become breeding grounds for illegal music that is accessible at the click of a button on the now nigh-ubiquitous computers. Because of the illegality of this action, many ads have been produced showing the counter, in theory, to the hipsters shown on the iPod adds. Instead, these ads show these supposed hipsters as criminals and thieves, with a common slogan being “you wouldn't steal a car, so why would you steal a movie?” Thus, many people claim that the easy-access digital format of the iPod and iTunes, the iPod’s associated computerized music player, is directly conducive to online pirating. Although definitely a crime, music pirating is hardly a deterrent to the millions of youths who are willing to break the laws of the land in search of free copies of their favorite bands. Although these problems are prevalent throughout almost any iPod anyone checked, this does not mean that all music on iPods is totally illegal. Apple’s iTunes, the program used to sync with the iPod, has an online music store where one can purchase single songs, or even entire albums, at cheaper prices and at less inconvienience than going to the store. These songs, encoded and protected, enable the iPod to keep a veneer of legality, although its image shall forever be blemished, at least in the legal eye, by the fact that, more often than not, it is a vessel for pirated music. This blemish is no deterrent to the people to whom the iPod is a cultural image, and even an image of American consumer culture at its finest. A device that allows one to choose the song for the particular moment, from the soft song for those lonely and loving moments, to a rap song for playing a particularly intense video game, yet another major cultural phenomenon, is almost the essence of the American dream, at least musically so. And, just as a owning a gun does not make a man a murderer, so does owning an iPod not make a man a musical pirate. The product is independent of its uses.

The portable music player was invented to be able to listen to music of one’s choosing as one was on the go. As technology has evolved, the player has evolved right along with it. Although all music players have had an impact on the society at large, no single player has had such a large impact as the iPod, made by Apple. This single music player, in all of its multiple incarnations, has affected the culture more than any other music player, save perhaps the Sony walkman. However, even the walkman did not become such a cultural icon such as the iPod has. Through the hip add campaign, and through the minimalist, simple, and visually appealing design, the iPod has become an almost necessary accessory for todays on the go person. Through its multiple incarnations, from the original version that could only sync with the relatively fringe Macintosh computer, which has also become more mainstream, to the windows compatible music and video powerhouse that it is now, the iPod has maintained its death grip on the market of digital music players. But even more than just controlling the market, it has even built itself a mythos of accessibility and cultural atuneness. The iPod has become the very image of the American music scene, and few music junkies will be caught anywhere with their iPod set onto their favorite track as they jam out their daily lives. Even the blemish of online piracy has not diminished the appeal of the iPod. In fact, it might even increase the appeal, because a player that can play free music means an almost non-existent upkeep cost to keep new music flowing right into the ears of the listener. Because of this accessibility, it is no wonder that the iPod is today’s membership card to the musical in-club, much as owning the right vinyl was the ticket in days gone by. Thus is the mythology of the cultural icon known as the iPod, and it does not look like it is going to change any time soon.

WORKS CITED:

Klein, Naomi. "The Brand Expands." Chapter 2: How the Logo Grabbed Center Stage. 21 Apr. 2008.

"IPod." Wikipedia. 21 Apr. 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod

"IPod Homepage." Apple+IPod+ITunes. 21 Apr. 2008 .

(EDIT: I forgot to add the Works Cited earlier, and noticed while doing my comments. Apologies for any inconvenience)