Todd Dominey, over at What Do I Know makes some interesting comments on the relationship between time and form in our “ownership” of music. He writes:

In the modern digital age, where music (for those with computers) is as abundant as air, there is way too much music to listen to in the limited amount of daily cognitive hours… 

But filling up iPods, hard drives, or jewel case racks full of new CDs before you’ve had time to fully enjoy and soak-in your current batch only robs you of the experience. Enjoy what you have now. Play your CDs or small batch of mp3s as often as you can. Repeat until they become a bookmark of now - this sliver of time in your life. Years from now, you’ll have a cache of vivid memories wrapped around every note, lyric, and album cover.

I may be out of the norm but I still tend to listen to the same music for weeks at a time before I rotate to something new. I think I currently have well over 1200 songs on my 10gb iPod but you wouldn’t know it because I’ve been playing Soul Coughing, Azure Ray, and Poi Dog Pondering all the time. Actually, Poi Dog is on the way out and the Dirty Three are taking that slot. Of course it might be argued that my listening habits have been formed by years of vinyl, tapes, and cd’s. Perhaps kids growing up with computer-stored music will have different listening habits, even a different relationship to music itself.