The real reason for the death of the music industry

[swarfrat]

Way back when .. music did not come in random access formats. If you wanted to listen to an artist. You put the record on, or the tape in. And if you really really really like an artist, you played your favorite records until they resembled spiral wound slinky's.  And the brain likes this. It wears grooves into your brain, much like the ones in the vinyl disc.

With the advent of the CD player - we got this cool new feature called Random Play. This was the beginning of the end. But you were still limited to the same album.  Now we walk around with gigabytes of songs, literally thousands of them, and we play them in random order, and we never really learn them the way we once did.

There's one album from my youth, that I joke is the one album I WOULDN'T take with me on a desert island. Because I believe I could probably learn the parts from memory, after I made all the instruments from bamboo and coconuts and learned to play the ones I don't already. It lived in my cassette player for weeks and even months at a time.  I actually somehow ended up with a vinyl copy a couple years ago, which is way cool, even though I don't own a record player.

Is shuffle perhaps the REAL reason why we don't form deep attachments to newer stuff? (I believe it's more than just a generational thing. Especially when I see 13 year old kids in 2011 wearing AC/DC T-shirts.) Thoughts?

 

[hannaugh]

I have formed very deep attachments to newer stuff, no problem at all. 

 

[Tipperman]

Swarfrat...... If only you knew the POWER of the Dark Side!

 

[Jack Michaelson]

As far as "pop" is concerned, singles are the new albums.

I still buy CDs for the most part.

 

[NQbass7]

I will say that the albums I've become most attached to are ones that I've listened to straight through, in order, many times. But I also make a lot of playlists and use the iTunes Genius function quite a bit.  I do try to buy entire albums though, rather than single songs.

 

[tfarny]

I am just as attached to newer stuff as older stuff - actually I listen to a lot more music now than before because I have better access to it. I also listen to a much wider variety than before because I have more experience as a listener and more years period, so that's a reason I listen to individual albums less. Also they are relatively much cheaper than they used to be - $15.99 for a CD back in 1990 was a lot of dough on a busboy's wages compared to $8.99 in 2011 with a good job - an album costs less than a decent sandwich now.

BTW, it's still possible to listen to full albums in ipods, and to NOT use the random feature - in fact I hate that feature and never use it.

 

[tfarny]

OH, and the record industry isn't dead by any means! It's only the giant labels that are hurting, not all the artists on their own labels selling away with fewer middlemen. I think this is a brilliant time for musicians and listeners.

 

[nexrex]

I have always thought the death of the music industry was always these manufactured teeny pop bands. TV shows like American Idol don't help either. They basically take people who look good, with no talent and then grind away playing their same garbage songs on the radio, until somebody buys into it.

I have always thought garage bands have always been the rebirth of the industry. You can't beat a group of good friends jamming together playing what they like. 

:guitarplayer2:  :laughing8:  arty07:  :guitaristgif:
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[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

The way that it used to be was not always the way it was.  However, blaming the single for the state of the music business? As long as there's been formats, there have been singles.  Records, 8-tracks, cassette tapes, CDs, and MP3s all had singles.  The music business has always been less about music and more about business.

 

[hannaugh]

I have always thought the death of the music industry was always these manufactured teeny pop bands.

Those have been around FOREVER though.  "Sugar, Sugar" by the Archies was the #1 song of 1969, believe it or not, despite the fact that there was a lot of great music made that year.  They've been picking mediocre singers for their looks and writing boring, predictable songs for them to sing so they can make $$$ off of them since the 1950s.  But, when looking back, we only remember the good music, because that was the music that is, well... memorable. 

This scene from the original Bedazzled pretty much sums it up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEtfJ916Y2w

 

[Nightclub Dwight]

MP3s deliver a much lower fidelity experience than vinyl, or even CDs for that matter.  I've read various opinions that state that MP3s will actually fatigue the brain because so much of the musical information is left out, requiring the brain to fill in the missing parts like an audio version of an optical allusion--an audio allusion if you will.  MP3s simply don't sound as good as analog.

As a kid in the '70s and '80s I had a decent record collection-maybe a hundred albums or so.  Plus I had access to my parent's collection that was at least as large.  But today I have over 32,000 songs on my iPod, with even more stored on my hard drive that won't fit onto my 160 GB iPod.  I definitely have access to a much greater variety of music than I did back in the day.

I always try to tell younger people that getting music, especially cutting edge music, was difficult and expensive to come by back in the day before the internet existed.  Unless you lived in New York or Los Angeles, there was a lot that was simply unavailable and you didn't even know that it existed.

I listen to my iPod out of convenience, and it works for me.  I still love music, and I love the variety that I have available at my fingertips.  I remember in college I knew a guy who ran his vinyl through a McIntosh tube power amp (not the computer that is made by Apple, but rather a high end piece of audio equipment) into speakers that were nearly the size of a refrigerator.  That sounded awesome.  My iPod doesn't sound quite as good, but the incredible diversity I have available at my fingertips more than makes up for it.

Rock is dead they say.  Long live rock!

 

[AutoBat]

I've always fast forwarded past songs that I wasn't into, or long intros.  A dual cassette deck empowered me to make my own tapes, thus eliminating the need for the full album, and that was 25 years ago.

 

[Steve_Karl]

In my opinion, vinyl is the original and long standing poster child for missing audio data.
The media is physically incapable of producing the full range of human hearing.
Do the test yourself. There are plenty of good "remastered to CD" examples to choose from.
There are bad ones also.

Not all MP3 converters are created equal. I stopped testing when I found Lame.exe.

I rip all of my classical CD purchases to 160 or higher bit rate and have no complaints.
My listening focus is on composition and performance but even still, I don't have any complaints about the audio quality of my classical mp3 collection.
However, if I'd have used one of those converters that I rejected way back, before I found Lame and Razorlame,
I'd probably be suffering big time ... or have .wav files on my PC rather than MP3s.

 

[NQbass7]

MP3s deliver a much lower fidelity experience than vinyl, or even CDs for that matter.  I've read various opinions that state that MP3s will actually fatigue the brain because so much of the musical information is left out, requiring the brain to fill in the missing parts like an audio version of an optical allusion--an audio allusion if you will.  MP3s simply don't sound as good as analog.

I doubt this. First, MP3's are not a single standard quality - there are different sampling rates. Second, I've never noticed a difference between my MP3's and a CD, vinyl, or anything else, so I'm skeptical there's anything there. Third, I'm pretty sure many radio stations would be lower quality than MP3's, but I've never gotten "fatigue" from listening to that for hours, let alone listening to my MP3's for 8 hours straight while on a motorcycle.  Fourth, while MP3 isn't lossless compression, at high bitrates most of what's lost is outside human hearing. Fifth, the sound that comes out of speakers is analog, regardless of what format it was in originally - and if comes from any sort of digital device (CD player, computer, etc) it was digital at one point and then converted to analog before going to the speakers, whether it was MP3 or FLAC or anything else. So the relevant info is not "was it analog or digital" but "how closely does the analog sound from the digital device reproduce the original sound," which these days is pretty well. And sixth, most stuff is recorded digitally nowadays, even if it ends up on vinyl.

If you can find someone who can blindly listen to a modern vinyl album and a high bitrate MP3 and reliably tell the difference between them, I'd be amazed - and I'd tell them to go work in a recording studio.

 

[Steve_Karl]

Good rant! <G>

Also, if you can find someone who CAN"T hear the difference between the original vinyl and a good
"remastered from CD" comparison ... they're probably deaf.

 

[taez555]

When you think it about music has actual done more of a circle when it comes to singles.

If you go back half a century, more music was sold as a single.  I keep thinking back to Les Paul saying he'd just go into the studio, record a song, and release it.    That was really the dominate way of doing things.  Since then putting together a whole package of songs, with one or a few of those songs being the single, has become more the norm.

Another great example is the Beatles.  I picked up the two box sets last year and it's crazy when you realize there are 2 full CDs' worth of Beatles music (Some huge hit singles like "Hey Jude") that were never released on a Beatles album.

Can you imagine an artist in the past 30 years only releasing a single (other than a soundtrack, etc) and not putting it on a full album?

However now it seems to be we're actually heading back to that. 

Look at the internet/youtube sensation Pomplamoose.  They record a youtube video/song, then release the single on itunes all without a record company.  Of course the sad part is they probably make most of their money, or a better chunk, through T-shirt sales and ad revenue.

Maybe that is the new normal. We don’t sell albums anymore, just a few MP3 singles, then offset it as ad whore's with Google ads and T-Shirts to make ends meet.  It's a brave new world for music.

Anyway…

Contrary to what people say though, I don't think CD's/albums are dead.  Concept albums and albums in general paint a full picture of an artist and their music at a given time.    A collection of songs can be just that, a collection of songs.  That will definitely be the main  focus for Pop artists.  But at the same time the album can also be a work of art, with an arch, or telling a story that only be told in a series of songs (think movements in a symphony).  And as long as there still  are "artists" out there, the album as a collective piece of musical art will never die. 

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

Gone are B sides because of format change.  Recording something of equal length that was a throwaway, but on rare occasion an unintended hit, because records and cassettes had 2 sides.  Sometimes it was the same thing on both sides, but that was a losing proposition for those selling it.  You would invariably wearout one side.  If you sold them the same thing on each side, you gave them something at a 2 for 1 price or 1 thing that lasted twice as long.

 

[Steve_Karl]

Look at the internet/youtube sensation Pomplamoose.

Never head ... great find thanks!

 

[ptirman]

Great thread.
btw Swarfrat, what was the album that you wouldn't take because you have it memorized? Just curious. For me it's Abbey Road.

To address your question I think shuffle has certainly changed things in that there is less of a chance of getting attached to a song. Putting together song lists on itunes, downloading only what I want to download has become the norm although I do download whole albums frequently and I still adhere to my "4 listen rule" - don't judge until you've listened 4 times. That increases the chances of becoming attached.

Everything that has to do with music for me has changed with the advances in technology. This is especially true since I took up playing the guitar after a 20 plus year hiatus. Especially learning new cover songs. It has a lot to do with learning aids that resulted from the new formats like the ability to digitally manipulate the music or immediately watch or listen to (or both) someone else's.
Also writing and recording has completely changed for me.
Cheers

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

The one local band I know that was able to break out of the local scene and get a record deal from a major label including a national tour, they are worse off because of it.  They make even less money now per show.  About $50 per member, granted they aren't footing the travel bill, buying food, drink, or drugs, and often get free gear.  Their record deal is the equivalent of a 6 figure mortgage.  They don't see a penny until the label has the recording and tour debt payed back.  From what I hear, that's par for the course.  They'd be banking more booking their own gigs, selling their own merch, and living in a van.