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

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.

don't say things like that, you'll summon the spirit of Albini

The last time I bought a casa ingles was in 2001. it still holds up today.

i always wished someone would make a coffee table book about the day jobs of indie rock stars, or maybe even a directory. like say you wanted a punk rock dentist, and oh, there's Jerry Only, D.D.S just 15 mi from you.

i have bought over 100 records this year, easily.
probably 75% used.

My thoughts...all music I buy is purchased in the form of cds. There are personal reasons and - er - logistical reasons, I suppose. Personally I have always felt more connected to the music if I actually own it. I have always felt this way - even in the 80s when I started buying records, if it was something someone had taped for me I wasn't interested. If it wasn't something I owned, it wasn't mine. That mindset has stuck with me - people could rip cds for me or I could download music (as I have, through libraries etc) but I don't think of that as mine. I still prefer the artefact, the disc, the sleeve etc. Maybe it's just the era I grew up in. As for the logistical element, well I only have access to the net through my phone, so Spotify or itunes or whatever aren't an option. We don't have the net in our home, I have limited access and my wife has a wifi hotspot if she needs it. I no longer work so have no net access in a workplace (which is where I used to do all my ILMing). We have downloaded a few songs from itunes for our six yr old son but even he prefers to put a cd in his Early Learning Centre cd player. I did the poll this morning but got it wrong, I think I've bought more than 60 cds this year, but not a lot has been new releases. My gradual re-entry to ILM (and slow unsure use of Twitter) has given me some ideas of what I want to get next (Swans and Grizzly Bear sound right up my street) so I'm sure it'll be up to 100 by years end. But I love the physical format, and even if I could download, I wouldn't.

Totally agree with the ownership thing, Rob. I hate being made mixes, copies of things, etc. always wanted the real thing.

I used to feel that way until I realized that value in physical things was just turning me into a hoarder

I'm very good at getting rid of stuff I don't use, thankfully. Emma stops me purging half the record collection.

to be fair, she probably wouldn't appreciate if you got rid of her half

I average between 2 and 3 CDs per week. A lot of that is me catching up on old classics, though, so I'm not really helping many Grizzly Bears.

or grizzlebees, as they may be called

I hate being made mixes, copies of things, etc. always wanted the real thing.

But "the real thing" is just packaging really. And mixes are an amazing way to discover new stuff. There are so many ways of discovering music you miss out on if all you do is buy CD albums, so much great music that you never get to hear.

I buy 10-20 CDs a year, and probably about 60 digital albums a year. Once I have a space that seems suitable I plan on getting a record player and starting all over, well only with my favorites.

But mixes and copies of albums lack that "authenticity" amirite

thought experiment: Imagine that your local record store, or your favorite mail order record store, is an extremely good counterfeiter and you've been buying intricate bootleg copies all along. Do you lose anything by learning this?

copies and mixes are mere xeroxes compared to the authenticity you get from thumbing through (never touching or picking up, those are barbaric terms) thumbing through faded but still breathing leaves of vinyl and cd

I mean "physical music" just doesn't exist, it's not a thing. People just think it is because they happened to have lived at the one brief point in human history when it was necessary to store it physically.