I was on vacation last week and reading by the pool (just had to throw that in) next to a person reading on a Kindle. I think we both gave each other smug ‘poor bastard’ looks.

I bought myself a record player for Christmas. It’s making me more conscious of my music choices as apposed to just hitting play.

Regarding the Kindle – people said the same thing about the iPod’s listening experience that you’re saying about the Kindle. The listening is an inferior experience, why buy tracks from iTunes, etc. It caught on from a combination of fashion and convenience, much like Oprah’s endorsement of the Kindle and the ability to carry several books at one time. The key differentiator is that there’s less chance (in my mind, at least) of needing to read a book at a very specific moment in time, unlike listening to a 4-minute song. Also, listening can be reduced to a passive activity, whereas reading remains an active engagement. The Kindle’s strength lies in reaching persistently mobile customers and folks who require a great deal of knowledge in a compact form factor (like the high school and college students praying for textbooks on Kindle). It’s not about experience, then – it’s about logistics.

The vinyl/digital experience you mentioned does a good job of bridging the two needs of experience and logistics, but I’d also like to see people exploiting the possibilities of new digital experiences, i.e. what we can do to make the Kindle/iPod/portable digital media experience more satisfying and fulfilling than the current models can deliver.

To be fair, though, I’m listening to a podcast of old soul 45s while I’m writing this . . .

No doubt my kids are going to be less inclined to feel a need for that experience but in the meantime…I’ll keep buying and subscribing to the old stuff.

If publishers can monetize their online presence instead of giving it away for free, I think things will turn around.