2008: The Year Without Music

Reading the Slate end of year round-up regarding pop music, I went into iTunes and discovered that I bought only two albums this past year: Lou Reed's Berlin and The Black Angels' Directions to See a Ghost. I didn't buy any single tracks in iTunes, either, though I did download a handful of freebies from Starbucks.

For a man with a collection of seven hundred CDs, give or take, that's a startling reduction in the amount of music I'm buying. And it's not as though I spent this year delving deep into my archives and playing a lot more music from there, either.

Most of my music-playing came via iPod while on airplanes.  And even then, I probably listened to more non-musical podcasts than I listened to music.

So what gives?