How much physical music (CDs, vinyl, minidiscs, cases ingles, whatever) have you bought so far this year?

Without wanting to perpetuate the food packaging analogy too much more, for fear of people will wilfully miss the point yet again- being able to see the food, or at least a picture of a serving suggestion of the food, can and will influence what you choose to buy and cook. If everything came in identical, plain packages with no pictures it would make stacking the shelves easier, but the act of choosing what to have for dinner would be boiled down to a purely functional act. We'd be faced with rows and rows of packets identifiable only by a label to tell us what's in there. Some may find this a good thing. They would find the functionality of this system appealing because all they want to do is go out and get a steak. But others might prefer to browse around, to see what their tastebuds want for tea that night. If this is the case it would become very difficult to get creative or excited about it. There's more to the appreciation of food, music, art in general than the end product itself - there's a whole miasma of factors and influences that inform my personal appreciation of these.

so you wouldn't know what food you'd tasted already tasted like if it you couldn't see it?

this analogy doesn't hold up at all, the music that comes without a packet could potentially sound like nothing you'd ever heard, any expectation you had could be wrong.

There's more to the appreciation of food, music, art in general than the end product itself

the format music is presented in has no bearing on the truth or untruth of this statement. not least because the packet IS an end product.

The idea of being tethered to a computer was one of the main complaints against digital files to begin with, and now people can't think of listening to hardly any music without a computer present.

xp That's cool. I just have nightmares in the wake of that EMP exit poll. It's the Youtube DJs I can't stand... the sound of somebody turning up a Youtube rip of Destiny's Child in an effort to start a party is the most unpleasant sound under the sun

o see the food, or at least a picture of a serving suggestion of the food

how is this analogous to the art on an album? it's not a picture of the music

presumably people never understood music until the days when you could physically buy it, all hail the last 100 years, the best of all possible worlds.

I haven't bought a CD in ~2-3 years, but I buy songs/albums on iTunes. One an hour ago (Lindi Ortega)! I chose 2-6 because we have bought a few pieces of vinyl to go with new player.

fwiw I think the browsing/tactile/visual sense of listening to music in a group, like dog latin is referencing, is only partly about the music and mostly about the shared experience needing props. About half the time I listen to digital music in my living room, I'm browsing through albums on the television screen and the cover displays while it's playing, giving that "in"

i listen to spotify, god, i don't know....30-40 hours a week at least...at work mostly

i does bum me out that lots of people haven't heard really nice pressings on a nice record player...i know skot tries to tell people, but it is amazing! it really is. i genuinely hear new stuff i've never heard on the track on a regular basis...i noticed some subtle, light percussion tracks on court & spark by joni mitchell the other day, like never heard that before...

i think, by now, lots of people grow up never having heard a really good stereo and just assume it's not that different

20-40 CDs (close to 40, maybe a couple more.) That's about 40% of my total music purchases last year. The rest (including three vinyl records and three box sets) all purchased used at garage sales or through ebay/Amazon.

Never purchased any digital downloads, dagnabbit.

I agree that it's a horrible tragedy. Sadly, a lot of music venues have shitty sound, or people only go to see huge bands, so they hardly ever go to a nice smaller venue with great sound to realize how bad their home experience is.

I was in a music venue a couple weeks ago during a festival and, while the band wasn't what I'm into at all, I realized it sounded _great_. I also noticed the soundboard was way oversized for the room and there was nice sound baffling on the ceiling, and figured out the venue was used for recording sometimes.

CD buyers, do you think you'll still be buying them ten years from now? Vinyl longevity issues are different but I would not be surprised if CD production is just, say, a tenth of what it is now in 2022, if that.

I fear that the digital music collection is becoming too personalised, too internal. Part of what got me into music was the way it can be shared and bonded over. And I don't mean sharing over a p2p network or on Facebook. Our music collections are now hidden away on our computers and iPods rather than displayed in living rooms and bedrooms. Flicking through folders on someone else's pc feels a bit like going through their drawers. No longer can we have that 'oh my god, you like Jonathan and the Modern Lovers too?!' moment because how do you know? And if one is granted access to scroll and pick music from the enormous mass of folders of someone else's digital collection, the answer to this is most likely to be 'yeah I downloaded all his albums a while back but I never listened to em'.

This is my problem with Spotify, and yeah yeah it's inevitAble that this is the future of music listening, but imagine a guy from the seventies travelling to the future and being shown this incredible glowing plasma ball. 'Behold! This orb will play any album in the world, whatever music your greatest wish desires, you can hear it right now, simply by thinking about it'. You just know that seventies guy is going to pick London Calling or whatever...

Spotify turns the act of sharing music something that you do over the net, not face to face. I'm no gamer but I was recently disappointed when I realised that the majority of multiplayer games HAVE to be played over the net, and that very few rely on two controllers which you can use in the same living room. That's bizarre to me, as someone who used to sit for hours with his friends and brothers and sisters playing each other at mario kart and streetfighter ii.

I understand I sound like a Luddite here, but these developments, while being useful, are putting up walls in the way people share their tastes. Nowadays the word 'social' is all too often succeeded by 'media' - a boiling down of like lists and Spotify recommendations.

The crush tape is practically a dead format. Those handwritten, lovingly selected compilations can't be reproduced with digital. A 7GB USB stick filled with 3 days' worth of music isn't exactly the most romantic token of affection. But hey, so it goes, this is progress.

We're served a blank slate with no other information about what we're hearing, nothing about the artist and why they chose to make that music. as such it becomes homogenised - it may as well be musical wallpaper to the casual listener.

this too, is rubbish. it's the internet, do you really think people aren't reading about things as they listen, or before? there's more "context" than there ever has been, we could do with less.

also what is "musical wallpaper", please define.

presumably this is why white label releases are known for their safety first approach, because the casual listener just devours music that comes with no info?

No longer can we have that 'oh my god, you like Jonathan and the Modern Lovers too?!' moment because how do you know?

frictionless sharing. google it.

it's the exact reverse, the info and trimmings are more often for the layman. if you doubt that then just have a look at how the industry bolstered itself once things started to go tits up, every "big" album coming with an extra dvd and some other gimmick.

look at the biggest selling cds of the last 20 years and the biggest selling digital music and tell me which is more bland, to you personally.

Sorry this is many xposts now. mh - I agree that there's loads of information on the web, more information than ever before, about the music one is likely to be hearing, but I don't see this as a replacement for, say, an album cover because really you have to have a vested interest in the musi in the first place to go and read an artist interview, and most people don't at first.

Ronan before you could physically buy music, you had to go out and listen to it being played by musicians, hence you were placed in a perfect context.

so recorded music itself is a problem too?

frictionless sharing. google it.

dude some of us are on work computers

thing is, I'm old enough to remember when vinyl LPs came with just the facts, ma'am, on their sleeves; if it was a greatest hits/best of you got a picture of the artist, a track listing and that was it. Anything else you had to conjure up in your mind or go find out about elsewhere. Consequently there was a bit of mystique; you didn't know about the artists, you just heard the music and came to your own conclusions. Now with deluxe reissues there's no space for the listener to breathe; every little pore is spelt out and there's no means by which a new or casual listener could find their own way to the music.

All records are "musical wallpaper" really, regardless of format. They get half-listened to and then put on the shelf to stare at. The solution is for a record you could only listen to once (meaning you'd HAVE to concentrate and listen to it) but the technology for that hasn't been developed yet.

So my heart sympathises with Dog Latin but my head agrees with Ronan.

I can see thirty three CDs that I've bought this year, around my room.

It's a bit of an odd one in that this year is the first I've really been able to afford to buy CDs since quitting music journalism (for the most part) and my new "proper job" (as my gran would have called it) kicking in.

so recorded music itself is a problem too?

I'm not gonna get into it but actually yes!

not even nostalgia is as good as it used to be

well if you're at work i doubt a friend is in your living room going through your modern lovers vinyl.

which leads me to the obvious point that the idea people are somehow discussing music (or anything else) less is just utter fucking mentalism.

if anything people's musical taste is waved around far too much. how often would somebody realistically be going through your records in your living room?

the main way friends get into records that we end up discussing is by... LISTENING TO THEM, not looking through my collection.

xpost fwiw i have started buying vinyl again recently, but it's because of sound quality and the inability to get certain things digitally. i find a lot of dog latin's points on this thread are part of some odd but common need to be either/or when it comes to formats, but there's some incredible assumptions about other people and how they consume music.

i don't do digital when it comes to books and i can't honestly say i've ever had a friend pick up a book in my living room. but i have talked about books with friends on numerous occasions.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8455/8047923011_10c9aaa846_c.jpg

I'm not gonna get into it but actually yes!

you should get into it, it'd be a better discussion!

hahah looking forward to seeing how this develops!

CDs in that pic too far away to identify, Nick.

I can make out a few of them but only a few. First Modern Lovers album, eh?

Nowadays the word 'social' is all too often succeeded by 'media' - a boiling down of like lists and Spotify recommendations.

this sentence actually reads like something from the daily mail, genuinely.

or that simpsons with the kids news show that had "bart's people" in it

http://sickmouthy.com/2012/10/02/on-buying-physical-music/

Link to large photo for ID purposes - http://www.flickr.com/photos/njsouthall/8047923011/in/photostream/lightbox/

dude some of us are on work computers

belated lol at this btw... penny dropping.

because really you have to have a vested interest in the musi in the first place to go and read an artist interview

dog latin, are you kidding me? I know I was really into reading as a kid, but even with music readily available for streaming it's amazingly easy to read /about/ music and read the words of artists. Even if people don't buy magazines, they read sites like pitchfork or resident advisor or whatever else your taste leads to and participate in communities where people talk about music. Do you think people buy magazines or go to websites and only read articles about the artists they've already heard? I'm not talking about fandom, I'm talking about engagement with music.

like I go to pitchfork and go "welp, haven't heard of any of these artists" and close the page

lol

I mean, I may do that anyway, but that's not how I learned about all kinds of music over the years.

The thing about CDs is they seem like such a shitty half-measure at this point. They were useful when because of technological limitations they were the best means available to distribute digital music files, but that hasn't been the case for years now.

At any rate, probably about half or more of the music I listen to now isn't available on any physical format, whether it's rap/r&b mixtapes or random dance tracks downloaded from soundcloud or whatever.

Tbh, Soundcloud is presently the most exciting music distribution model as far as I'm concerned.

there also is a culture associated with digital music and the way it's distributed and consumed. obviously.

the idea that it somehow automatically becomes machine-like or a fascimile is basically akin to saying dance music cannot have the emotion of the beatles or some shit. it doesn't actually make any sense except it sounds easy on the ear because of preconceptions.

^^^yes!

btw I've never owned a Beatles album, kind of think of them as audio wallpaper

the problem with audio wallpaper is you can't actually paper your walls with it. when a friend comes around, sure they can hear it, but they can't reach out and touch it like the wallpaper of old.

the taste of youth is in the gutter, they don't know how to listen to real music

btw I've never owned a Beatles album, kind of think of them as audio wallpaper

― ɥɯ ︵ (°□°) (mh), Tuesday, October 2, 2012 3:00 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

would you say you hear the beatles more or less often than you eat pizza?

Nick you're conflating "buying CDs" (or vinyl, or physical music in any form) with "rewarding the artists for their work". I've spent as much, probably more, on digital downloads this year than I would have spent on CDs back in the day. I very much doubt I'm alone in this. CDs are so dirt cheap these days, and the manufacturing and distribution costs are still relatively high, so the margin on digital downloads is actually higher. Whether that goes to the artists, that's a different issue. For artists with a much lower profile than Grizzly Bear, it means the barrier to getting their music actually on sale is much lower.

Really though you can't stop people from taking the path of least resistance, and streaming services like Spotify and whatever Apple launches will probably lead to a big decline in illegal downloads after a while.

Maybe the way forward is for major labels to pay artists a living wage like everyone else who works for them, paid for through a retooled revenue model, rather than unrecoupable advances based on projected sales that may never materialise.

I love cds for their newfound state of useless dejection. Their sheer unsexiness and obsolete functionality is very appealing at a time when the resurgence of vinyl and cassettes bespeak a fetishization of older, physical media. Cds aren't quite tactile and aren't quite digital, they're small, and there's not much nostalgic about them. I love them for their abjection.

In the last 16 months I've bought maybe like 170-190 cds.

used? they are cheaper than mp3s weirdly

If I am conflating buying physical product with rewarding the artist I think that's fair enough - revenue models for download services vary massively, and somewhere like emusic can't be paying the artists as much as iTunes. It's great that you've spent as much or more on downloads as you'd have spent on CDs, and I'd much rather people buy a download than stream via Spotify, even premium, and that download systems mean more people can get their music out there than via physical methods. But it's not for me, and I've seen artists state that their preferred mode of sale of their work is via physical formats. That's what I prefer, and to me it seems fairest.

"Ultimately my concern isn’t that Grizzly Bear can’t afford to buy houses or pay for health insurance. It’s that they ... and everyone else whose music I love, won’t be able to afford to make ends meet so much that they’ll give up, and stop making music, and go and get day jobs. That would be a tragedy."

lots of people work part-time or even full-time day jobs and still manage to make great music. it's not an either/or proposition.