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

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

#381

Post by zirgs »

ttjjtt wrote: post #380
bazoom42 wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was Gilbert O’Sullivan really that much better than Kenrick Lamar?

Not much to chew on there tbh I have a lot of friends in the music industry since I used to work there until recently, both back end eg A&Rs and agents as well as artists. The common sentiment is that nothing new has happened in the last decade, everyone’s wondering why, and increasingly exasperated. So okay, hip hop.. US trap has been largely in stasis since 2008/2010 (lex lugar era). Uk drill has been in stasis sin…

As I said before - we have reached the end of history of music.

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

#382

Post by filoleg »

mschuster91 wrote: post #256
filoleg wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Venues and their increasing costs have nothing to do with production costs. Production costs refer to what it costs to actually produce a track and release it out there to the public. Not even talking about insane amounts of good educational material available online for free these days, the capable equipment required to produce a studio-quality track fell down in price significantly, and most older equipment is stil…

> These days? Thanks to affordability of what it takes to produce a track and the ease of getting your material released to the public, you can go from a nobody to someone with a hit track overnight. All for the price of a laptop, some decent speakers/headphones, and a midi-controller. And even that list is optional, as there are people who produce great stuff with less than this or even something entirely different.…

> But how many actually manage to pull off that feat?

Quite a few, but that's not the point. Increasing opportunities for everyone does not mean that there will be the same levels of increase in top tier outlier outcomes. Just like if you suddenly gave access to MIT education to everyone, I think the success metric median (whether it is income or achievements) for MIT students will decrease, but the absolute number of successful people due to MIT education being available to everyone will increase.

Off the top of my head in terms of examples: Brockhampton, Skrillex, Billie Eilish, Porter Robinson, Steve Lacy (who produced hit tracks for artists like Mac Miller, J.Cole, and Kendrick Lamar), Flume, etc. The list can keep going on and on, and I listed only the very top tier artists in terms of popularity and lasting presence so far.

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

#383

Post by l72 »

DropInIn wrote: post #328
lenzm wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like the results of the loudness war either but it isn't objectively worse. Lots of people are listening to music on cheap speakers over the sound of road noise while driving or with generic earbuds on a train or any number of situations not conducive to high dynamic ranges. To these people in these situations, the highly compressed music sounds better.

Imo musicians need to make it a norm to release two 'correct' verions: The highly compressed versions for radio play/commoners And A 'hi-fi' version for audiophiles They need to be the same except for levels etc, and neither more official than the other If your song can't be enjoyed in both ways, then either your music is 'specialty' music catering to audiophiles and musicophiles (?) Or it's just garbage and shouldn'…

Why don’t we have an audio format that has different profiles with different mixes?

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

#384

Post by dang »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #95
cubefox wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh poor, poor Sony/BMG/EMI CEOs who absolutely couldn't buy another yacht while lowering their expenses by literally making money out of thin air by literally copying digital music. /me wets a handkerchief with the tears of compassion. You are conveniently ignoring the musicians which are hardest hit by our piracy. They make hardly any money from Spotify. > You would see what by 2017 the revenue is on par with 1981…

[flagged]

Yikes! You can't flame like this on HN, no matter how wrong someone is or you feel they are.

You broke the site guidelines egregiously in this thread. We have to ban accounts that do that. Fortunately you've also posted quite a few good comments, so this shouldn't be hard to fix, but if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules from now on, we'd appreciate it.

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

#385

Post by nick-of-time »

the_only_law wrote: post #169
Night_Thastus wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! One of the many joys of the internet and cheap computers is that anyone can produce music with very little upfront cost compared to before. If you trawl around through youtube videos with 100 views, obscure bandcamps, audiophile forums, niche discord and subreddits, etc, you can find all sorts of absolutely fantastic music. It obviously takes some work, but it's a lot of fun to discover as well!

Oh yeah, I forgot about YouTube, some of the best stuff I’ve found in recent years have been on channels that curate/promote music in particular genre. I have one for all sorts of punk genres, as well as one for doom metal and its related genres. They’re great, because they have all sorts of stuff, old and new, and help cut down on the cruft. My only complaint about bandcamp is the mobile app. As far as I can tell, t…

Basically all of the music I've bought in the last 5ish years I found through the channel Years of Silence. That person apparently has a very similar taste to me. Rujnuj has remained my favorite album for several years, especially since I found translations of the lyrics last year.

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

#386

Post by justsomehnguy »

dang wrote: post #384
justsomehnguy wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Yikes! You can't flame like this on HN, no matter how wrong someone is or you feel they are. You broke the site guidelines egregiously in this thread. We have to ban accounts that do that. Fortunately you've also posted quite a few good comments, so this shouldn't be hard to fix, but if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules from now on, we'd appreciate it.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENT AND ACCEPTENCE OF TERMS
Yep, I felt I'm too deep in the Reddit mode here. Appreciate you decided to tell me that.

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

#387

Post by zirgs »

cubefox wrote: post #371
zirgs wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iTunes was a DRM infested crap. Meanwhile pirates offered drm free files that you could play anywhere.

Steam is also "DRM infested" and non-free.

Steam is DRM-optional. Its DRM is easy to remove and lots of Steam games are DRM free. It also gained lots of popularity with its sales and bundles.

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

#388

Post by dang »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #386
dang wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yikes! You can't flame like this on HN, no matter how wrong someone is or you feel they are. You broke the site guidelines egregiously in this thread. We have to ban accounts that do that. Fortunately you've also posted quite a few good comments, so this shouldn't be hard to fix, but if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules from now on, we'd appreciate it.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT AND ACCEPTENCE OF TERMS Yep, I felt I'm too deep in the Reddit mode here. Appreciate you decided to tell me that.

Appreciated!

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

#389

Post by kansface »

bazoom42 wrote: post #131
jacquesm wrote: 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.

Surely some generation is actually correct? Do you think all music is equally good and all trends are universally good as well?

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

#390

Post by jacquesm »

DropInIn wrote: post #352
allturtles wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the same gut feeling that there has been a decline in quality, but I'm not sure that video makes the case. In the previous 10 years (2013-2022) years the songs that clearly fit your description are "Closer" (2016), "Sunflower" (2018), "Stay" (2021). I'd probably say "Old Town Road" (2019) is pretty bad also, with a very boring, repetitive bass track. And "Despacito" (2017) is catchy but has the same cliche bea…

To so many on that list of "bad" and the reasons for it I can't help but think of James Brown and "I feel good" or a song like "Twist and Shout" which have had pretty damn good saying power and few would say are actually bad. A lot of Amy winehouses music too, as well as many "punk" songs.. repetition is not a hallmark of quality nor lack thereof.

Amy Winehouse could have sung the phonebook and it would have sounded great.
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