Tim Bray has observed youth in the act of Music Sharing:

The mornings when I take the kid to school I see them standing in the schoolyard, sharing two between four or three between five. It’s a primary school, which around here means K-7, and I’m talking about the Grade 7 girls and their iPods. Two can share a listen, an earbud for each and two ears left open for talk, but mostly they don’t, they just listen, maybe bopping a little but mostly not…

I don’t think this is illegal yet, but consult your lawyers.

Tim’s post brought to mind my early adventures in playground music sharing. Nothing so portable as an iPod, let alone headphones. As early as third or fourth grade I would haul my portable tape recorder (this was a few years before the boom-box explosion) to school, playing the hits of the day on the walk to and from and out on the playground.

I could carry it resting on my forearm, with my fingers curled around the end so that a finger could nestle on the indentation of the active “play” button almost as if it were a trigger. As best I recall, the hits of the moment were on the order of Devo’s “Whip It” and Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust.” I don’t really remember who were the members of the little music mafia who would hang around on the playground listening with me, but I do recall that it was a social thing.

This is probably roughly around the time that I got my first commercially recorded music product, Kool and the Gang’s “Celebrate.” In my naivete, I threw away the plastic case, because most of the other tapes I’d had were the cheap-o K-Mart ones which were sold in a plastic sleeve without any storage case, and I thought that was just the natural state for cassettes.

Most of what we listened to, however, was not purchased, but rather intercepted from top-40 radio broadcasts. I prided myself on a fairly hair-trigger ability to recognize the opening notes of prized songs and hit the record button on the tape which was always in the recorder at the ready. Most of the songs would appear two or three times on each tape; there seemed to be no reason not to “get it” every time a chance arose. Now that I think about it, this portable didn’t have a radio, so I can’t quite recall how this recording happened; I didn’t think I got the dual-cassette/radio (in a “boom-box” type form factor) until a few years later.

I do recall using this tape-only portable to bootleg 8-track tapes using its tinny condenser mic by leaning the recorder up against the speakers of our household sound system. The only thing I actually remember recording that way was Steve Martin’s “Wild and Crazy Guy” album, but odds are decent that I might have also made copies of a few Village People tapes, and maybe Kiss “Alive II.” But those weren’t the playground fodder, I don’t think.