It was during one particularly long late-night session of Rock Band that I came to a pretty shocking realization: Not only have I not purposely listened to music outside of the various music-rhythm games for several months, I also hadn’t even realized it until that moment.

Rock Band and its ilk have completely changed how I purchase, consume, and think about music.

A few months ago, a few members of the band Styx were in studio for “The Bob and Tom Show,” a very popular morning radio program that I listen to through a subscriber podcast. I had been somewhat familiar with the group but had never really paid attention to them. However, I was very impressed with many of the songs they performed and decided to look into buying a few of the band’s tracks.

I could have done this by going to the iTunes Store, surfing Amazon.com, or visiting a nearby bookstore. Instead, I went home and bought an entire pack of their music through the Rock Band music store -- for a significantly higher per-song price than the other options. This method was also less convenient compared to the others and requires a bulky plastic guitar in order to enjoy the music.

Truth be told, I didn’t even think of the other options at the time. At some point, “listening to music” became synonymous with “playing Rock Band.” There are many possible reasons for this.

I’m a podcast fiend. During any given week I might listen to 30 or 40 hours of spoken audio content. If I’m walking to class or playing a video game, I'm likely listening to podcasts at the same time. Podcasts are cheap, and the discussions in them might inspire me in ways that music simply cannot while requiring a similar amount of concentration to enjoy.

And while I had previously thought of music as little more than background noise and a means to help pass time, Rock Band requires that I give the music more of my attention. The visual representation of the music, however inaccurate or simplified it may be, helps me appreciate technical aspects of the music that I, as a complete musical idiot, would never notice through just listening. The game is almost educational in this regard.

Additionally, the video game clichés of arbitrary points, difficulty progression, and winning and losing really appeals to the part of me that's been conditioned from childhood to work toward earning high scores and overcoming challenges.

The new downloadable songs keep me engaged with the Rock Band platform, and the small number of new tracks per week introduces me to new songs and artists that would otherwise get swallowed up by the din and chaos of iTunes or Amazon stores.

All of these factors come together to make Rock Band more compelling than simply listening to my iPod.

Depending on one’s view, there may be a significant downside to my attachment to the music-rhythm genre: My taste in music's evolving based on what I enjoy playing rather than the musical merits of the songs. I love the band Dream Theater, but there's no way I'll ever be able to properly enjoy playing the songs “Panic Attack” or “Constant Motion” due to their painful and crippling difficulty.

Instead, I find myself more attracted to relatively simple songs that are infectiously catchy, such as the pieces by Paramore, Maroon 5, or Kings of Leon. These bands aren’t what I would traditionally listen to, but my constant exposure to their songs in Rock Band has instilled a certain amount of enjoyment in me whenever I play them. Whether or not a song is “good” is almost irrelevant to me anymore. Instead, fun's now my prime motivating factor for buying songs.

At this point, I keep music on my iPod out of habit more than anything else. There are quite a few artists that I wish would appear in Rock Band, or even Guitar Hero, such as Murder by Death and Metric. But these glaring omissions are offset by the huge number of new bands that I’ve encountered in a way that appeals to me more than any other way possible.

Maybe one day I’ll drift away from Rock Band and start relying on my iPod as my primary music player again. But I don’t see it happening any time soon.