The Need for Control

Historically, music lovers had little control over the music that they listened to. They could turn on the radio and choose a radio station, but would have to listen to whatever that station decided to broadcast. Or they could choose a record (later a cassette or compact disc [CD]), but would have to listen to the songs that the artist and the record label had decided to group together. And in most cases, they could only listen to one artist at a time. The Sony Walkman was a revolution in mobility, but the listener’s control over the choice of music changed very little. Today, the idea of being forced to listen to a set of songs designed by others is becoming as obsolete as using a typewriter. Technically savvy teens and adults now find it perfectly natural to have thousands of their favorite pieces of music stored in their iPods. The music they store in that device is only the music they want to listen to. With the advent of iTunes, they no longer need to buy an entire collection of songs just to get the two or three that they really like. iPod users can put together their own “playlists” or wait for the end of the current song they are playing before deciding which song they will listen to next. Consumers of all ages have taken advantage of the revolutionary ability to control their personal entertainment—control that was impossible before the technological development of the iPod.