Live data from Hacker News

Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

openculture.com

201–210 of 397 posts

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the quality has absolutely cratered You just got old. It happens to everyone, and every generation says the same thing: The music I enjoyed when I was young and impressionable was great, but all the stuff they make nowadays is crap. People were whining about how Beatles destroyed music, how rock’n’roll was just monkey noise, how crooners like Sinatra wasn’t real singing.

It’s also a sign you aren’t looking. Yeah, music is going to be trash if you’re just looking at what’s popular on the radio/TikTok/charts. Spend some time on bandcamp going through what’s been posted in your preferred genres.

“what’s popular on the radio /TikTok/charts” being gutter tier hogwash is exactly what they’re talking about. Humans didn’t lose the ability to create good interesting music, and nobody legitimately thinks that. The publishing industry prevents independent artists from reaching any kind of mainstream popularity. Indie artists need money and the publishers that decide the winners/losers by controlling all the traditional distribution networks have no incentive to signal boost independents.

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#202
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is the service forever? Nope, probably not, but that's an issue for later me. I don’t want to fuck over later me, so I’m still buying music. Probably not saving money, but I also get some music not on streaming services.

What is not on streaming services? From my experience - if it's not on spotify then it's on youtube.

Spotify routinely removes access to songs. Half of my "favorites" playlist, going all the way back to 2016, is just gone, off of spotify, and I'm unable to listen to those songs.

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the quality has absolutely cratered You just got old. It happens to everyone, and every generation says the same thing: The music I enjoyed when I was young and impressionable was great, but all the stuff they make nowadays is crap. People were whining about how Beatles destroyed music, how rock’n’roll was just monkey noise, how crooners like Sinatra wasn’t real singing.

No it's objectively worse. The average complexity is at all time lows.

Look up King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard if you want complex music. Polygondwanaland especially if you want something really out there.

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> About a decade ago there used to be a site in the Polish internet called "Strata Kazika" (Kazik's Loss). At that time Kazik was one of the most vocal anti-piracy artists who equaled copying to stealing. This is highly irrelevant. I didn't say anything about stealing. The actual music revenue collapsed starting from 1999. Due to pure magic apparently!

Of course industry's revenue will collapse when you steal billions from them, duh. After all, we all know there's no other rational reason for these profits to plummet than piracy... It's not like people's habits and technology has significantly changed around that time.

Yeah. The new habit was to illegally download music from the Web instead of buying it on CD or from iTunes. Or do you think that around the millennium, people suddenly lost interest in music?

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#205
post #7

"Home taping is killing music" The record companies did a fantastic job of killing music all by themselves, the quality has absolutely cratered and the occasional great artist that has made it through the long slog to recognition has done so despite the music industry, not because of. I spent a fortune on various formats and when streaming came along I simply refused to participate. I'm simply not going to pay a thir…

> the quality has absolutely cratered You just got old. It happens to everyone, and every generation says the same thing: The music I enjoyed when I was young and impressionable was great, but all the stuff they make nowadays is crap. People were whining about how Beatles destroyed music, how rock’n’roll was just monkey noise, how crooners like Sinatra wasn’t real singing.

Ehh. I was in high school and college throughout the '90s and still think pop music quality peaked sometime between 1966 and 1986. It's not necessarily an age thing. I mean, I remember thinking that at the time too.

There are still tons of great musicians and bands making new music today, but the stuff that most people are familiar with is dreck compared to what most people were familiar with fifty years ago.

Among other things is that popular attention, once focused by a handful of local radio stations and three national broadcast networks (in the US), has been atomized by a billion channels. The stuff that gets shoved down the big expensive earball-rich pipes is pablum for broad but weak appeal, processed by self-affirming accountants and algorithms, to a degree it simply was not a generation or two ago. It's simply not the same.

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the quality has absolutely cratered You just got old. It happens to everyone, and every generation says the same thing: The music I enjoyed when I was young and impressionable was great, but all the stuff they make nowadays is crap. People were whining about how Beatles destroyed music, how rock’n’roll was just monkey noise, how crooners like Sinatra wasn’t real singing.

> You just got old. It happens to everyone, and every generation says the same thing: The music I enjoyed when I was young and impressionable was great, but all the stuff they make nowadays is crap. Thing is, there are objective metrics about quality. One aspect is "loudness war" aka compression, where subjective loudness gets increased at the cost of dynamic range [1], another (in)famous aspect is the increasing use…

I too agree that music was ruined once loud orchestra's were formed. The only good music was chamber music. Orchestras anonymized the musician and were basically the end of musicianship.

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You just got old. It happens to everyone, and every generation says the same thing I hate how people decide something is an inevitable eternal cycle that started in the 20th century. Recorded music hasn't been around long enough to think that platitudes like this actually have any meaningful content. I'm here whining about how you're using a Beatles example because your argument is literally a teenage Baby Boomer a…

> I hate how people decide something is an inevitable eternal cycle that started in the 20th century. People were complaining about the loudness war in _classical music_ in the early 19th century, unfavorably comparing Beethoven to his predecessors, and how his imitators were ruining music. Human nature doesn't change, and the phenomenon of people having their taste in music frozen in their teens and twenties is not…

If you read that more carefully you'll see that the letter writer isn't complaining about Beethoven or his music but that his imitators can't do it as well as he does.

He's not complaining that the burgeoning romantic movement sucked compared to the true classical music from his youth but that the quality of the music being produced has tanked because the new practitioners suck at making it: Beethoven, because he was a genius and could get it right, gave them carte blanche to break the rules that previously kept the music good.

Although it's true to say that Beethoven didn't know how to stop.

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the quality has absolutely cratered You just got old. It happens to everyone, and every generation says the same thing: The music I enjoyed when I was young and impressionable was great, but all the stuff they make nowadays is crap. People were whining about how Beatles destroyed music, how rock’n’roll was just monkey noise, how crooners like Sinatra wasn’t real singing.

> You just got old. It happens to everyone, and every generation says the same thing: The music I enjoyed when I was young and impressionable was great, but all the stuff they make nowadays is crap. Thing is, there are objective metrics about quality. One aspect is "loudness war" aka compression, where subjective loudness gets increased at the cost of dynamic range [1], another (in)famous aspect is the increasing use…

While the Loudness War is indeed a race to the bottom for the dynamic quality of audio, it would have occurred sooner if the medium for recorded music had allowed for it. Vinyl records simply cannot go as loud as today's modern records because of physical limitations in the medium.

Nevertheless, for 70+ years producers, record executives, and artists have been using every sonic trick at their disposal to make their record "pop" and stand out from the competition. The advent of digital audio simply opened up more headroom with which to push the record.

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#209
post #7

"Home taping is killing music" The record companies did a fantastic job of killing music all by themselves, the quality has absolutely cratered and the occasional great artist that has made it through the long slog to recognition has done so despite the music industry, not because of. I spent a fortune on various formats and when streaming came along I simply refused to participate. I'm simply not going to pay a thir…

What do you mean, the natural evolution of music wasn't meant to be face-tattooed, cough syrup-drinking suicide-flirting mumble rappers who all talk about the same shit?

Oh so you prefer the wealthy old white guys who were born with a silver spoon in hand pretending to be "down and dirty" rednecks who's woman left them, who's tractor won't start, and who does nothing but drink cold beer?

Lyrics are dumb in popular music.

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't listen to the same things I listened to 25 years ago - at least, not often. I want new music from time to time, It sounds like you want new music all the time. If you don't listen to "old" music often and only listen to new music from time to time, what do you listen to? So technically, 25+ years is considered classic. What is the definition of "new"? 1 year, 5 years, 10 years? What is newer than classic, bu…

My interpretation of that is not they want recent music but they want novel music.

Pretty much.

My tastes have changed during adulthood - I've very much expanded tastes. Less rap, less grunge, more jazz and alternative metal. I like folks using traditional instruments in modern music (some metal is good for that) and I like folks mixing genres (electroswing, for instance). I try for more recent music (last 10 years or something), but I'll listen to whatever I find interesting. After all, there is a good deal of music that just wasn't available to me 15 to 25 years ago that is easy to find now.

Post reply on HN