LOUD MUSIC!!

Music has been always been man’s prized passion. It is beyond comprehension how various forms of music originated and evolved into such complex forms as we have today. It has been a long way since the chirping of birds and conch shells to the latest digital music systems capable of delivering any intensity of sound at any rate.

Another significant change I observe around me is in our way of listening to music and appreciating it. There was a time when ones favorite music was close to the heart and the gadgets like walkman allowed us to lock it within our ears. These days, no one wants it to be kept locked so. Instead there is a growing tendency of playing music at loud volume such that it is audible to everyone in the near vicinity. I can hear them from hostel rooms, corridors, on the road, in restaurants and where not!

I happened to ask my friend as to why was this trend growing? He told me, “It’s simple! People want to show off their mobiles”. That set me thinking into the different new versions of mobiles that have beautifully transformed from a communication device to more of an entertainment device.

In India mobile phones have come into the market on a large scale in late nineties. The cellular phone boom in India can be said to have happened with the penetration of Reliance mobile phones (whose offer of cellular phone with connection for lifetime at Rs. 500 was irrefutably attractive) and the sudden increase in the service providers. Today, there are around 37 cellular service providers in India according to the TRAI website.

Looking at my friends too, I find a significant change in mobile phone purchase and usage. Today, people prefer the latest camera phones, music player phones over other models. They all have the Motorola L series, Sony Ericson’s K series or Z series or Nokia’s music-series phones. People have all of a sudden become rich! (Or the phone rates are drastically coming down?!)

Whatever be it, I definitely see evolution of a new trend at the behest of an existing one. A new kind of music is evolving, mobile phones are becoming mini-computers, and entertainment is becoming an integral part of mobile phones and to end it all, the growing passion for loud music among people is threatening the very existence of walkmans, Discmans and iPods that do not provide them.