Playlistism, Aubrey explained, is discrimination based not on race, sex or religion, but on someone's terrible taste in music, as revealed by their iTunes music library. Aubrey said an iTunes music library tells a lot more about people than the clothes they wear or the books they carry. Aubrey said Wesleyan students are enjoying a new parlor game -- going through music libraries trying to guess what their owners are like. At any one time, 30 or 40 iTunes libraries are available on the campus network, which is shared by about 2,000 students. Students are starting to realize they must manage their music collections, or at least prune them, to maintain their image, Aubrey said. He confessed to deleting a lot of stuff himself. Everything seems to devolve into Friendster, sooner or later. I would disagree with Aubrey that music is a better indicator than books, if not for the relative lack of critical mass in the book collections of young people today. I think there is a message in here about the evolution of our interaction with media. Popular music is a dominant cultural currency, but in an age in which spending an hour just listening to an entire album (without simultaneously running, driving, eating, playing, or otherwise) seems like an exceptional commitment, the individual "track" has become the denomination of choice. When an outstanding five minute song needs a sub-four minute "radio edit" in order to even compete for airtime, we are collectively suffering from a serious case of attention deficit disorder, coupled with a "super size!" programmer mentality that selects two mediocre-but-short tracks over one great-but-"long" track. Music used to be an event, not a product. For the iPod generation, music as Art is being increasingly devalued, even as it becomes pervasive to the point of ubiquity. Social discrimination by iTunes playlist | Wired News | 
