Finally, consider the tactile absence. Unzipping files replaces the tactile pleasure of sleeve art, liner notes, and the ritual of placing a record on a turntable. But that absence is partially compensated by different pleasures: the immediate, global shareability of tracks; the ease of compiling playlists that place a Kylie song next to a track by anyone from Giorgio Moroder to a contemporary house producer; the way a zipped deluxe edition becomes a modular object, recombinable and portable. There’s a bittersweet elegance to that: the physical aura of pop is traded for ubiquity and flexibility. For an artist like Kylie, whose career has traversed formats — vinyl, cassette, CD, download, stream — the zip is just the latest skin in which her music can move.
