Nick Carr picks a few bones with David Weinberger over this segment from his new book:

For decades we've been buying albums. We thought it was for artistic reasons, but it was really because the economics of the physical world required it: Bundling songs into long-playing albums lowered the production, marketing, and distribution costs because there were fewer records to make, ship, shelve, categorize, alphabetize, and inventory. As soon as music went digital, we learned that the natural unit of music is the track. Thus was iTunes born, a miscellaneous pile of 3.5 million songs from a thousand record labels. Anyone can offer music there without first having to get the permission of a record executive.

He goes through a long explanation of how the LP came out of a desire to accommodate classical music, and not as a way to force people to buy lots of tracks they didn't want. What he conveniently skips over is what happened with the introduction of the CD: With the LP, we had both long form if you wanted it, and singles (45s) if you wanted a track. During the 50's and 60's, and into the 70's, the single was a great way to get a few tracks inexpensively. Then along came the CD, and the music industry did exactly what Weinberger says above: they tried really hard to kill the single. I bought tons of CDs during the 80's and 90's where I recall thinking "but I only wanted 2 tracks"

Well - I can get that now. As to this, from Carr:

But it's the middle tracks of the platter that seem most pertinent to me in thinking about Weinberger's argument. Between Keith's ecstatic, grinning-at-death "Happy" and Mick's desperate, shut-the-lights "Let It Loose" come three offhand, wasted-in-the-basement songs - "Turd on the Run," "Ventilator Blues," and "Just Wanna See His Face" - that sound, in isolation, like throwaways. If you unbundled Exile and tossed these tracks onto the miscellaneous iTunes pile, they'd sink, probably without a trace. I mean, who's going to buy "Turd on the Run" as a standalone track? And yet, in the context of the album that is Exile on Main Street, the three songs achieve a remarkable, tortured eloquence. They become necessary. They transcend their identity as tracks, and they become part of something larger. They become art.

For the three of you who care, sure. For the rest of us? We're quite pleased to ignore the utter dreck and buy the handful of tracks we want. I just recently avoided the "filler" songs on a Beach Boys collection and picked up the 15 or so tunes I actually like. I can almost hear Nick Carr screaming about that, but hey - he's free to buy the whole thing, and I'm free to buy a few tracks. Back when CD's ruled, I had no real choice in the matter - if I wanted one song from a CD, I either bought the CD, recorded it off the radio, or did without - and mostly, I did without. Now? I actually pay someone real money. Let Carr try to wrap his head around that idea for awhile.

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