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The forgotten pleasures of analog media

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Re: The forgotten pleasures of analog media

#31

Post by stryan »

spacemadness wrote: post #27
xdennis wrote: post #3

I got back into analog media for a little while but stopped because the prices are just so ridiculous. A single Burzum tape costs more than £30.

Tape is fetishized like crazy right now so that’s not surprising. I see runs of 500 tapes on Bandcamp sold out immediately all the time for not-so-well-known artists.

I think the vinyl shortage is contributing a lot to this. Right now if you want a physical copy that's not a CD or by a major act (Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran both released vinyl albums that supposedly took up the majority of the worlds music vinyl production), you're stuck with tapes. And very few people seem to want CDs.

I remember only a couple years ago that tapes were the dirt cheap option of getting something physical. At least by me it still is if you're buying in person; most of the punk bands and electronic artists are just recording over old tapes they've found so you can buy em for five to ten bucks a pop at the show.

Re: The forgotten pleasures of analog media

#32

Post by spacemadness »

stryan wrote: post #31
spacemadness wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tape is fetishized like crazy right now so that’s not surprising. I see runs of 500 tapes on Bandcamp sold out immediately all the time for not-so-well-known artists.

I think the vinyl shortage is contributing a lot to this. Right now if you want a physical copy that's not a CD or by a major act (Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran both released vinyl albums that supposedly took up the majority of the worlds music vinyl production), you're stuck with tapes. And very few people seem to want CDs. I remember only a couple years ago that tapes were the dirt cheap option of getting something p…

That is interesting as vinyl can have an audiophile component to it depending on the release but tape is exactly the opposite and often purposefully so. Then there is the ease of skipping around with vinyl. I get the appeal either way, just find it interesting people are being forced to do with tape when it’s not their first choice.

Re: The forgotten pleasures of analog media

#33

Post by [deleted] »

999900000999 wrote: post #13

Another thing not mentioned is the fun in finding media itself. I went out with a girl I met at a record store once, and I’ve met several musicians when I’m out buying music. When you can get everything beamed directly to your house, you miss out on so many adventures. I imagine many marriages originated from chance encounters at Blockbuster. Instead of some cool college student suggesting an old 80’s film, Netflix t…

[deleted]

Re: The forgotten pleasures of analog media

#34

Post by cableshaft »

camtarn wrote: post #30
cableshaft wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could buy an album on MP3 for $10+ now, oooor I could go to the local Good Will regularly and pick up any CDs that look interesting for $1 apiece and rip those, then return them to Good Will when I don't want to hang on to them anymore. This doesn't really work if you want new releases or something specific of course, but I've rediscovered some great music from late 80s to early 2000s artists by browsing it periodi…

Heh, yeah, that's actually what used to motivate me to buy things on CD. Nowadays, I'm very fortunate to have a decent bit more disposable income than I used to, so I'm happy to put some directly towards the artist. I prefer to buy from Bandcamp where I can, which seems to have the largest artist share (up to 100% on promo days!)

I still buy digital albums as well, and I've bought a decent number of albums on Bandcamp over the years. But I also enjoy getting older albums cheap when I can.

Re: The forgotten pleasures of analog media

#35

Post by 01100011 »

camtarn wrote: post #17

It doesn't even need to be physical media. I switched from buying CDs and ripping them to MP3, to just buying MP3, once I realised that the bit that I value most is simply having a finite music collection that I know well. I take my music collection with me by running a Plex server on a Raspberry Pi at home - some of it isn't available on streaming services. (A couple of albums aren't even available to buy any more,…

I was just discussing this with my wife. I switched to streaming services out of convenience but I find that the collection of my 'liked music' is easily 1/10th of my old MP3 collection(160GB?). Since switching to streaming the number of artists I regularly listen to has dropped dramatically. I played a song the other day for my wife and she said she had no idea I liked that kind of music. Well, I never specifically 'liked' it on my streaming service so it never got played(in over 5 years).

One thing I can say is that YouTube(pre-YT music) was instrumental in helping me discover a lot of new music. The suggestion algorithm they were using worked really well. Unfortunately I can't say the same for Spotify, which seems to trap you in a cave of your previous likes.

If I can find the time, I'm going to switch back to my MP3 collection. It will take some work, but I need to undo the damage done by streaming.

Re: The forgotten pleasures of analog media

#36

Post by hulitu »

clktmr wrote: post #20
anthk wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet, AM/FM radio is much better on remote, isolated places than DAB. I woudn't trust DAB on a emergency.

At the cost of a much higher bandwidth. I don't disagree, just wan't to clarify it's not a issue of digital encoding.

The lower bandwidth of DAB results in lower quality. My car radio stays on FM because DAB is horrible.

Re: The forgotten pleasures of analog media

#37

Post by blackbrokkoli »

Reminds me of the Hedonistic Treadmill - whatever your environment, your brain adapts as the baseline and everything slightly below it is now disappointing while everything above it slightly elating. Usually this concept is used to explain why lottery winners do not seem to be all that much happier than the rest of the populace, but it applies here to:

Whatever is required to get media is the normal: You build little rituals around it, you have tiny little traditions in the friend group.

For some guy this is "getting into the old family beater to drive to the VHS-rental", for another gal it's "the Netflix ba-doom sound while settling into the couch" and I am sure they both could write a nostalgic blog post about it 15 years later.

On the one hand, this is aligned with the articles premise that we maybe have not actually moved forward in an emotional sense, but I also like the other, maybe Stoic side of this - the outside world and its offers matter way less than what you make of it in your head and heart :)

Re: The forgotten pleasures of analog media

#38

Post by adrianmonk »

> In that Age of Browsing, you had fewer choices and you had to navigate them carefully.

Even in today's buffet world, you still CAN navigate them carefully. And it's a good mental habit to have.

I consciously watch myself and try to notice when I've failed to do this. For example, suppose I'm looking for an answer to some question on Google, and I enter my query. I can then either:

(1) look at the first 10 and judiciously choose which are worth my time to read/skim and ctrl-click to open a tab for (say) 3 of them, or

(2) aimlessly ctrl-click all and get 10 tabs to look at.

#2 feels good in a way because I'm getting more info. But #1 gives superior results. Not just because I have less to wade through, but also because somehow my mind is in a more focused, active state. #2 is a sign that my mind has checked out and is not really engaged in this part of whatever I'm doing.

This happens more in the digital/streaming world because the buffets are larger. But it's not exclusive to that. I can still fall into the trap with physical stuff. I can still go into a store and try on 10 shirts without thinking carefully about whether I like them, and since I entered the changing room in the wrong frame of mind to choose a good shirt to buy, I'm probably still in the wrong frame of mind after trying on 10 shirts.

Re: The forgotten pleasures of analog media

#39

Post by pmarreck »

I play Christmas records at Christmas for the aesthetics.

The most annoying thing actually (other than that records scratch easily and literally degrade a bit every time you play them) is that each side of a 33 1/3 RPM record only has a few songs... but perhaps that's part of the charm

Re: The forgotten pleasures of analog media

#40

Post by slackfan »

I tried the whole streaming thing, it ended up not being for me.

I still buy physical media, often on formats that are long dead because partially, it's fun to tool around with dead formats, and no silly copyright dispute is going to suddenly pull my ability to watch the original Star Wars cut on laserdisc.

Digital files are as ephemeral as the storage they reside on. Piling more ephemeral storage into the equation does little to help.

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