3 Minutes, 49 Seconds

(Honks horn) "Ten years, man! Ten! Where have you been for ten years?!"*  Well, I've been here. I started this blog in November of 2003. Friends were always asking me, "How's the new CD by blank ?" I was a music obsessive who loved to write, so I decided CD reviews would be the best way to answer that. Over the past 9 years and 10 months I have written 400 separate blog entries on  3 Minutes, 49 Seconds,  nearly 300 of which were album reviews. I created a spinoff site dedicated to pop music films ( Baby, I'm a Star ; worth exploring sometime if I do say so). I got together with some friends and made lists of our favorite songs from the last four decades (and all of them, by the way, have way more visits than this main site). When I look back at what I've done, I'm really proud. But it's no secret that my production on this blog has slowed way down. There are logistical reasons for this, as I explained in my last post, but it's more ...

This November marks the 10th anniversary of this blog. When I started the blog (under its original name, Pop Life), I was 26-years-old and starting my first year as a teacher. I was perennially single, living in a one bedroom apartment near Uptown Minneapolis. I bought two or three CDs a week, minimum. As I write today, I'm 36. I've been married for five years, and I have two sons, aged 3 1/2 and 4 months. I live in a three bedroom house in Saint Paul. I buy, at most, 5 physical CDs a year. I download one new album every 3 weeks, on average. I share this to illustrate a couple of points. One is that my music consumption has declined significantly. There are a host of factors contributing to that decline, but above all it's time. I'll touch on this a bit more later, but it's not my main concern. The other point involves technology, namely the rise of the mp3. The iTunes Store actually made its debut the same year as this blog, and the resultant availability of ...