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Regarding your point about how digital compression discourages the act of listening, I disagree. It may not be ideal, but I'd argue that universal access via stream and iTunes, despite their relative sonic limitations, has done more good than harm to music.
If hard, intentional listening is on the decline, I'd argue that more culpability lies in how technology has allowed us to so easily change our minds. Smartphones and voluminous access to music have made us impatient, less mindful of our listening choices. We scroll through thousands of songs looking for quick sustenance. Once we find it and it tickles our frontal lobe, that rush of sonic serotonin needs replenishing, so we click to find something else among the files, hit the button for the morphine drip, and repeat.
Committing to put on a particular record or CD, however, is reinforced by energy and intent. In the same way that a bell is struck before a meditation session, the ritual of putting the needle to a record triggers excitable neurons in my brain. One must decide to touch the object, place it on the turntable or in the carriage. Hit play or drop the needle, then sit back down.
When the side or CD is over, you stand up, walk to the stereo and decide whether to commit to another chunk of listening or hunt down something else to put on. There's a simple grace to the ritual, one for which all the shuffling in the world can't compensate.
M.S.: Like you, I believe that quality of listening is the key. My first meaningful musical experiences were as a 7-year-old squawking away on the clarinet as well as exposure to an eclectic variety of LPs on pretty primitive record players. And, yes, in the '30s people thought radio and 78s were just swell — and they were. Believe it or not, there is a beneficial quality to surface noise and static, which acts like white noise. The ear can pick out missing frequencies from it.
Nor is the audiophile world the best place to look for musical taste. I remember the days when the magazine Absolute Sound used to hail the soundtrack from "Casino Royale" (the original 1967 film, that is) as perhaps the finest sounding, and thus most desirable, LP ever made. I don't think Burt Bacharach's score had anything to do with it.
You are certainly correct to point out that every new recording media has gone through significant improvements. As I said at the start, high-definition files can simply take your breath away. The difference this time, though, has been the pervasive influence of Apple's brilliant business model, which manages to marginalize everything that doesn't fit into its scheme. So when technical improvements become practical — as enhanced digital files now are — they aren't adopted across the board, which had been the case with LPs, CDs and tape.
Even more troubling is the way the computer-commerce infrastructure has reduced all music to songs. Listeners may think that their horizons are expanded, but my sense is that we've entered a state of homogenization. As you noted, the inherent temptation to graze rather than devour is the dark side to the thrilling easy access to a panoply of music, namely. When we sample, everything starts to get mushed together. On the other hand, hybridization, which is how music like life evolves, takes time.
R.R.: Apple homogenization is real, and the way that iTunes' interface flattens the experience of discovery is troubling indeed. I'm heartened, though, by what's occurring outside its kingdom, where services such as Soundcloud and Bandcamp are redefining the notion of music scenes, schools and discovery. Soundcloud, especially, is evolving into a fascinating marriage of music and social media, with artists, labels and composers sharing work far removed from Apple's domain in ways that encourage the kind of musical conversation that, ideally, breeds hybridization.
The sound quality? Decent, but not great, MP3 files or streams. Certainly good enough, however, to push the music into my brain's long-term storage, where fidelity matters little as soundwaves transform into the platonic ideal of the song. The other day, for example, I was walking upstairs when Bob Dylan's version of "World Gone Wrong" popped into my head. I don't know what triggered it, but as it soundtracked my morning, the fidelity of the "recording" mattered little. Whether I'd internalized the song via low-quality MP3, compact disc, Spotify stream or super high-res digital file, it was there, every languid guitar stroke and Dylan moan. It sounded perfect.
