andrew dodson

Ok, I admit it. I’m addicted to the MP3 player shuffle craze. “Shuffling” (as it sounds) is when your MP3 player randomly cycles through a selected playlist, or your entire collection.

A couple of weeks ago, I created a “CLS” playlist on my Creative Zen. It’s named “CLS” because it includes music that I’ve deemed “work safe.” Don’t get me wrong - it’s not like I listen to inappropriate music. However, some of my musical tastes can be classified as “weird” by a great majority.

In response, I created the CLS playlist that includes more of the upbeat, enjoyable portion of my music collection. I think it’s worked great so far. I’ve noticed several customers humming along to a recognizable tune, or even commenting on the music in the past couple of weeks. Not only that, but I’ve enjoyed it more than I thought I would. It’s like having your own personal radio station that plays nothing but music you enjoy.

This has led to spending more time “MP3-ing” some of the more popular music in my CD collection. Tonight, I dug up a collection of CDs from my days at Georgetown College. They are CDs I put together during the Napster craze. The days when a college student’s daily routine included at least two hours of browsing Napster and illegally downloading all of their favorite songs (I’m not joking about this - it was nuts). This led to the buying of my first CD burner. I went through a spindle of 50 CDs the first month I owned the burner. But, I digress….

Artists that are back in the rotation include Nine Days, Default, Evan & Jaron, Fastball, Shawn Mullins, Duncan Sheik, Silverchair, the Matthew Good Band, Jimmy Eat World and more.