OP pointing out the author is Damon Krukowski of Galaxie 500, Magic Hour, and Damon and Naomi.
Here’s “Passing Words” by Magic Hour, 1995.
There Is No CD Revival
71–80 of 201 posts
Re: There Is No CD Revival
#72I still buy Music CDs. Why? Because once I have the disc in my hand, no-one can legally take it away from me. I can enjoy the contents legally until I'm dead, all for a single one-off payment with no-expiry. However, my households use of streaming media (mainly Spotify) has increased for 'casual' listening, so I think there is a balance, and I hope that buying physical media for music wont disappear completely any ti…
> I still buy Music CDs. Why? Because once I have the disc in my hand, no-one can legally take it away from me.
Precisely. The same reason I am wary of digital money. Its just too easy for the powers that be to flip a bit to make it all inaccessible. I do not trust them enough to give them that much power. They can still make things inaccessible, but they would have to put up with some inconveniences.
Mark me old school, but I like the physical cover designs, art work and well done liner notes too.
Re: There Is No CD Revival
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Sure they have the most popular stuff That sounds like you need to try bandcamp, because they are missing the most popular stuff ;)
Bandcamp really is a treasure trove for finding releases of established and new independent artists. It seems that their business model is quite fair towards artists as well. It also seems that their acquisition by Epic games hasn't negatively affected them so far. [Edit]: And they offer all downloads I've encountered so far in several lossy and lossless formats, including FLAC and WAV
Pretty much every metal band I discover, nowadays, is on bandcamp. I’m at 75 albums* and growing :) I really hope Epic won’t ruin it.
*: Mostly albums, some few are EPs or single tracks
Re: There Is No CD Revival
#74I still buy Music CDs. Why? Because once I have the disc in my hand, no-one can legally take it away from me. I can enjoy the contents legally until I'm dead, all for a single one-off payment with no-expiry. However, my households use of streaming media (mainly Spotify) has increased for 'casual' listening, so I think there is a balance, and I hope that buying physical media for music wont disappear completely any ti…
There are a few good providers of lossless audio files, so you can get still get a lossless, DRM free version of your music to own forever without having to have a printed CD. The two that I frequent are: - bandcamp.com - mostly indie, but I've actually purchased a few more "mainstream" artists from here in the last couple years. - hdtracks.com - have a wide selection, but tend to be pretty pricey.
Yeah, I've moved back from being full on Spotify in the last 2-3 years, largely because of music being taken away. But I never cared much for the physical aspect of physical media, so it's drm free music from itunes/qobuz for me.
Doing similar with movies/tv but more slowly. Partly because the only legal option is ripping blurays/uhds (Need to clarify I'm not in the US), which is more hassle and also they're bulkier to store and finally there's less tv/movie content I'm inclined to rewatch. But movies/tv have the plaftform fragmentation/content going away problem even worse, and the streaming services love to try serve low bitrate content, or even refuse higher resolutions altogether if you're not using a locked down enough setup, so that's been picking up steam for me
Re: There Is No CD Revival
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ok, I guess the "something else going for it" differs from person to person. I grew up with LPs too, but I don't have a lot of nostalgia for them. All the ceremony of carefully taking a record out of its sleeve, checking for dust, putting it on the record player etc. is too much hassle for me. A CD I can just pop in the good old stereo I have sitting on my desk and listen to it, or rip it and copy the files to my pho…
There are only about a few dozen records in the world worthy of the ceremony to me, to be honest. They're the ones you can listen from start to beginning in order every time. The ones you never get bored of and if you do, you have a need to listen to them again pretty soon. The chance of me grabbing an LP off the shelf and listening to 6 Underground by the Sneaker Pimps from their Becoming X album is exactly is zero.…
My favorite band is Queen, so only counting their studio albums, that already gives me more than a dozen LPs I will listen to all the way through over and over again. Then there's their live albums, the band members' solo albums, singles/45s...
I also think listening to one side of an LP and then switching to a different one isn't that much more work than flipping it over, so it's OK if only one side is flawless. I will listen to Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant" anytime, even though the songs on the other side are not as iconic/necessary.
Finally, I think you may not know ahead of time which albums become beloved and worthy of the ceremony upon repeated listening. I bought my partner "songs" by Adrianne Lenker (of Big Thief) because she loved "anything" from that album, and now that double album is one of our favorite albums that we're currently wearing out. I think it's worth taking a risk sometimes, and if you don't love it, you could sell it to a used record shop for someone else to love.
Re: There Is No CD Revival
#76And yet the author uses figures to also generate a false dichotomy. Just because a gap in income might be wider does not mean everyone is worse off, it is not a zero sum game. There is now far more music variety available than ever before, and I'm sure it's more and more difficult to stand out. What has probably been lost is some word of mouth for music, the algorithms have taken much of that over for better or worse…
> And yet the author uses figures to also generate a false dichotomy. Just because a gap in income might be wider does not mean everyone is worse off, it is not a zero sum game. It is, in fact, zero sum. Spotify puts the money for music streaming into a pot and payouts out proportionally to how much time a particular artists is listened to. Given there (a) a finite amount of money in the pot, and (b) a finite amount…
There is a finite but variable amount of money in the pot.
It is not a zero sum game.
Re: There Is No CD Revival
#77Good article except for this part of the conclusion: "The revival we need, urgently, is of recorded music income"
For centuries before recording, regular musicians made income without it. And even when regular musicians made money recording, only a few survived solely on recording.
I think we need to dispell the presumption that musicians must make money recording.
Re: There Is No CD Revival
#78The revival we need, urgently, is of recorded music income Why? That ship has sailed. In 2022, as in 1922, 1822, 1722 etc musicians will have to earn their income by playing live.
As a general trend, I’d expect people to not return to mass events (theaters, concerts etc.) in the same numbers as before.
It started before covid, so I think live events won’t be much of a revenue source in the future, except for a select few artists who will attract those still enjoying the crowd experience.
I kinda hope memberships programs and other direct artist/fan settings come to fill that gap at a larger scale.
Re: There Is No CD Revival
#79The revival we need, urgently, is of recorded music income Why? That ship has sailed. In 2022, as in 1922, 1822, 1722 etc musicians will have to earn their income by playing live.
This is sort of like how Disney makes more profits from theme parks than from its media, but the media serves as advertisement for the theme parks
Re: There Is No CD Revival
#80The revival we need, urgently, is of recorded music income Why? That ship has sailed. In 2022, as in 1922, 1822, 1722 etc musicians will have to earn their income by playing live.
But there are plenty of genres and artists (1-person bands recording in their basement) that don't make sense live or aren't able to perform live.
There is a big difference between a musician and a performer. The bands that are both certainly have the biggest advantage, but we shouldn't discredit people who are just making music.