A Commonplace Book

Record stores are curious, unmusical places. They bear no trace of the collective excitement that greets even the most humdrum live concert. Instead, they are laced with consumerist anxiety and loneliness. Collectors hover over stacks of eight or ten CDs, trying to winnow them down to six or seven. Amateurs stare helplessly at a sea of Sibelius.

[Y]ou're encouraged to gravitate toward the music that everyone else is listening to. This is what happens all across the corporatized Internet: to quote the old adage of Adorno and Horkheimer, you have the "freedom to choose what is always the same."