Mitchell Stephens — Posts

Mitchell Stephens, one of the editors of this site, is a professor emeritus of Journalism at New York University, and is the author or co-author of nine books, including the rise of the image the fall of the word, A History of News, Imagine There’s No Heaven: How Atheism Helped Create the Modern World, Beyond News: The Future of Journalism, and The Voice of America: Lowell Thomas and the Invention of 20th Century Journalism. He lives in New York and spends a lot of time traveling and fiddling with video.

When Our Music Collections Melt Into Air

by Mitchell Stephens

This is a complaint – about modern times, on behalf of my music collection.

I’m not often inclined to quote Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. But, when it comes to the song “I’m Free” by the Rolling Stones (in particular), to the various iterations of said music collection (in general) and to the experience of my generation (in even-more general), Marx and Engels were onto something. “All that is solid,” as they put it, does indeed “melt into air”….

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