I was a bit of a latecomer to the digital music revolution; up until a year ago, I carried a book of CDs in my backpack and a busted old Discman I called Horace the Watchmaker. He lost his family when the Americans pulled out of Vietnam and was forced to play my CDs for me as a form of indentured servitude after I vouched for him on his green card application. Needless to say I got more than a fistful of heckles from my more technologically evolved peers. Only when Horace could no longer hold himself closed, forcing me to lay a pile of books on top of him in order to play music, did my friends finally beat me mercilessly and force me to buy an iPod. The sales clerk told me he'd never seen anyone buy an iPod at gunpoint before.Despite my reluctant purchase, I managed to stay strong on one issue:I refuse to download music beyond the occasional sample and still spend a great portion of my personal indulgence fund on CDs. Is this technophobic? Impractical? You might think so, but I prefer to think of myself as a man who just likes to invest in his media. The culture of music consumption is changing at an alarming rate, and not for the better. Mass downloading has already altered the way we listen to music and could change the way people write it as well.

My reasons for stubbornly shelling out for potential coffee coasters are threefold:

First and foremost, metal is not a profitable genre. Very few extreme bands can make a living off the meager cash pool available, and those dudes probably drive Toyotas at best. Over the years, I've seen too many of my favorite bands throw in the towel (R.I.P. The Crown) over financial concerns, and the fact is that I believe in what these artists are doing and want to support them. Short of setting up a charity fund, laying down straight fat stacks for these fellas' albums remains my preferred method. If only you could pay your electric bill with brutal riffs.

Buying albums in physical form also makes me feel like I'm getting a more complete package. The artwork, the lyrics (lyric sheets are a must in death metal), even the band photos contribute to the listening experience more than you might think. In my experience, some of the densest material can be made more digestible if some killer artwork helps convey visually the atmosphere that the band is trying to evoke musically. Where metal is concerned, eye-catching, controversial album covers rife with gore (check out Cannibal Corpse's Tomb of the Mutilated) have been a part of the genre's history and have played a large part in attracting its early audience. In an age when there were no MySpace samples or MTV, artwork was what you needed to draw in that curious nerd in the corner of the record store.

My last beef is with the iPod and the MP3. Yes, it's true that digital downloads and the iPod have made music easily accessible on a 24/7 basis, but is that really as great as it sounds? Surely there must be a negative effect. Could having music so readily available cheapen the experience? If you think you love listening to music now, think about those poor audiophiles who lived in the days before any recordings were available. If you wanted to listen to a song, someone had to pick up an instrument and play it for you. Beethoven's biggest fans probably only got to hear their favorite hits once a month at best. Imagine hearing your favorite song once a year. Are we losing that sense of appreciation?

Investing money means I'll feel compelled to invest my time on an equal basis. Just because something doesn't immediately make me shake my tushy doesn't mean it doesn't have value. Some of my favorite albums today took months or even years to click with me. This isn't always the case, but that's a risk I'm willing to take. In today's download culture, people move through music at an alarming rate. If something doesn't stick with them, they have a tendency to discard it, never to return. This habit has the potential to change more than just our personal experiences, though. Musical artists, well aware that they now have a minute, at most, to make an impact on a listener will deliberately write more hook-heavy songs, or worse, inject tracks with a sense of humorous novelty in an attempt to simply be noticed. The "this is so bad I have to show it to my friends" ethic behind MIMS' "This is Why I'm Hot" comes to mind. Gone is the sprawling epic, the intricate composition. Gone is a sense of depth.

So that's my case. As we spend less time and less money, artists will expend less effort, creating a downward-spiraling, vicious cycle of declining quality. You call me stubborn. I call myself committed to worth.

Oh. One more thing: Poo on vinyl. Yes, the artwork looks cooler when it's bigger, but that's it. I'm not willing to pay even more for a marginal (at best) improvement in sound quality just so I can look cool enough to enter the copulate-with-the-cute-girl-who-works-at-record-store lottery. Also, those things melt at a lower temperature than CDs, if that's of concern to anyone.