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

Xposts i'm on my phone now And this discussion is getting quite confusing, especially since ronan's choosing to ignore a whole bunch of things i've explained in numerous ways already and which I can't be fucked to go over again, but here goes.

I have plenty of friends who I know listen to good music and are very passionate about it. My key point is that I feel music appreciation is becoming an increasingly marginalised, personalised, insular pastime as a massive part of it now hinges on having to be at a computer or plugged into an ipod which usually takes place alone. Without physical formats to display and swap and get interested in, and without music outlets in which to browse and possibly bond in, many passionate music fans end up having better discussions with online strangers than they would their close friends. Music taste is now shown through one's online profile, reduced to a homogenous list of names and usually not that indicative of the user's true tastes anyway. So yeah, disagree with me if you like, but I can only state from my experiences. Again, ymmv.

I feel music appreciation is becoming an increasingly marginalised, personalised, insular pastime

for YOU maybe but if this is meant as a ~social observation~ you aren't backing it up at all

a massive part of it now hinges on having to be at a computer or plugged into an ipod which usually takes place alone

a) it doesn't because music in public spaces still exists b) computers and ipods aren't really solitary devices as anyone who's plugged an ipod into a system at a house party can testify c) the way in which digital listening facilitates sharing, on platforms where casual and obsessive music fans rub up against each other no less, makes music listening LESS marginalised and solitary

Without physical formats to display and swap and get interested in

like casual fans ever did this

many passionate music fans end up having better discussions with online strangers than they would their close friends

you can't talk to your close friends online? i feel sorry 4 u

oh god i can't even be bothered any more

No neither can I until you bother to read the rest I the thread

Loads of thirty and forty somethings talk about formative musical experiences listening to records or John Peel in their bedrooms. It's not like solitary listening is a new thing.

^^^

I bet loads of 60-somethings talk about playing Beatles singles on their own in their bedroom, too.

Thanks for your incite on this one. I never knew that.

I mean c'mon where did I say people never used to listen to music on their own?

Neither am I really saying that people don't listen to music together any more, which is what a lot of people ITT seem to think I am saying.

i dunno how you would accumulate numbers on this, but i suspect that being able to get any kind of music whenever you want has increased the kind of communal audience for any number of prickly and unpopular genres that was supposedly being facilitated by physical media trading, though i will get on board the idea that being able to filter for just the music you want contributes to a kind of unhealthy balkanization.

You do seem to be insinuating that there was some kind of pre-web golden time when listening to music, discovering music, was a predominantly communal thing. Maybe we're just inferring that and communication lines are crossed, but people are (mostly in a very civil style) countering your examples with other examples which disprove yours, and, as I said, this makes it seem as if you're mourning your own past rather than a shared history.

xpost.

That's cool mouthy, I'm not discount ing the fact that age plays a big part in this. (love your Devon record club btw - great idea). I'm not here to bemoan anything though, nor am I here to rose spec my twenties. I still see the majority of my mates from back then anyway, tis the way of small town life I guess. I know they listen to lots of music, but yeah it just feels like I have less of a handle on what they're listening to unless I look at their last.fm playlists. It's not as easy to swap music face to face as it used to be, and that could be part of the prob. If someone plays a track and I like it, I can't just ask to borrow the cd. And with no physical album to pore over, I'll generally forget to go seek it online when I get home. I find iPods to be practical, but I don't believe they're that good in a social setting and I don't have a big music streaming tv to stare at either (hate the idea of staring at a screen while listening to music too, especially in a social context).

But anyway, i'm on my phone right now so I'm gonna leave this discussion for now.

When someone plays a track I like, I sometimes just pull out my phone and buy it on the spot

Must admit I've never thought to buy music on my phone. Dumb question but can you transfer it back to your computer after that?

Yup. With iTunes it'll automatically download it, if you want it to.

Aye, I've done that with stuff on the radio, stuff people have mentioned irl or on here, a song from the Olympic opening ceremony. I may be a CD fan but I'm not a freak.

I wouldn't trust iTunes with anything tbh. Does it download in mp3 or rubbish m4a?

haha

m4a, which is actually a significantly better codec than mp3 and sold without any drm whatsoever?

well, it's a container, I mean aac encoding

Does that play on non-Apple devices though?

M4a is no good for me as it's incompatible with the version of acid pro I use to make mixes, and that's a really important factor for me.

Sure. It's actually the default format for PS3 and a bunch of other platforms. afaik after the drm removal a few years ago, the iTunes store files should play on about anything.

AAC is actually the industry standard replacement for mp3, which is pretty long in the tooth.

You'd think Sony would have had aac support in Acid Pro for years, what with their own hardware using it as the standard for a long time

I think mine's an old version. Actually maybe since I upgraded to acid 7 I may not have tried m4a on it yet

!!!!

ACID Pro 7 software offers increased format support, allowing for more options with media and hardware devices including the PSP®, iPod®, and iPhone®. ACID Pro 7 software also includes the Dolby Digital AC-3 Studio plug-in to export mixes in surround format.

!!!!

this discussion is getting quite confusing, especially since ronan's choosing to ignore a whole bunch of things i've explained in numerous ways already and which I can't be fucked to go over again, but here goes.

if I am then prove it by making one cogent reply that isn't whining because people point out the gaping holes in your swiss cheese theory.

I have plenty of friends who I know listen to good music and are very passionate about it. My key point is that I feel music appreciation is becoming an increasingly marginalised, personalised, insular pastime as a massive part of it now hinges on having to be at a computer or plugged into an ipod which usually takes place alone.

how does an ipod differ from a walkman in this regard? how does a computer differ from a stereo?

Without physical formats to display and swap and get interested in, and without music outlets in which to browse and possibly bond in, many passionate music fans end up having better discussions with online strangers than they would their close friends.

yes, this is your theory, but you have yet to even make one point to prove it or even suggest why the internet would damage people's ability to talk to their friends about music.

Music taste is now shown through one's online profile, reduced to a homogenous list of names and usually not that indicative of the user's true tastes anyway. So yeah, disagree with me if you like, but I can only state from my experiences

why a "homogenous" list? what's "homogenous" about it? please give me some factual answers as to why an online profile contains "homogenous" information as opposed to say, a given individual's opinions or thoughts being likely to be "homogenous".

also how is music taste shown only through online profiles? i can't talk to people about music IRL anymore?

people have already responded to you to say they do discuss music IRL all the time.

this is all total fucking bunkum and you're the one not reading or engaging with responses.

also no more whining about "snark" like some beleaguered child - if you want to throw down some mega theory placing yourself as the visionary that sees the homogeneity in the tastes of the masses then take your medicine.

Don't mean to put words in his mouth but I think he means simply that the titles, artists, etc, are rendered in a homogenous font/format. Hard to argue with that.

sharing on social media includes the art and frequently the record too, and the album and 5 more albums if it's via spotify, it's hardly just lists of the names of artists unless you're on friendster in 2001 or something.

a face to face conversation has more potential for homogenous listing of the names of artists, minus the art, and minus the music.

Depends if they’ve got the record(s) in question to hand but overall, skimming through the above debate, I’d say Ronan is OTM. And yes I’m biased; without the internet I might never have been inspired to start a blog or write about music in any way, and given the way I was ten years ago it’s no understatement to say that music as experienced and felt through the internet probably saved my life. I wrote CoM, I got married again and got my old life back (only better, learning from previous mistakes etc.) – and none of this would have happened with just my physical “collection” of music at home and my general fucked-up widower state. It’s a medium, just as records etc. before them were a medium, and like any medium it’s as social as the individual listener wishes it to be.

My preferences, answering the original question, are thusly:

CDs: still my main way of getting and listening to music for very simple reasons; I am middle-aged and like the old-fashioned notion of record as tangible artefact and also like having lots of them (spines, etc.) but I’m under no illusion that that’s just the way I like it. Also probably the least fiddly non-online way of finding and playing music.

Vinyl: only really get vinyl if I can’t find the record in any other format, e.g. particularly elusive Then Play Long entries. I don’t have a “fetish” for vinyl as such but neither am I blindly going to knock it (considering the stupid crazy amount of the stuff I actually have); I acknowledge that something like Far Side Virtual is a concept which really could only have worked as a vinyl record.

Online: basically YouTube, MySpace and suchlike. Don’t “rip” CDs and for whatever reason Spotify doesn’t talk to Internet Explorer so I can’t get at it. Yes, iTunes, but I wish actual physical singles hadn’t gone the way of the Sinclair C5 (i.e. now only fetishable “limited edition” 7-inches for £9.99). I like the jumpy nature of random play iTunes though.

new stuff never but on occasion if i'm near a mve with time to spare i'll set myself a little £10 challenge and dig in the r&b/ragga vinyl sale bins just for nostalgia's sake, and that'll be largely for 90s stuff searching for alternate mixes and suchlike that hasnt been digitised somewhere or stuff pertaining to mini projects. probably only 4 or 5 this year

i mean i have a great big discogs wantlist too but when push comes to buy i can never be bothered

someone should really do a second hand shop insisting on selling only stuff pre 2000 cos there is such a vast useless wasteland of 00-05 clogging up the world it's dispiriting

It’s a medium, just as records etc. before them were a medium, and like any medium it’s as social as the individual listener wishes it to be.

yes! this in a nutshell.

hahah I love the wider notion of the years 2000-5 as a "vast useless wasteland" for music!

Less MVEs to be near these days; the Camden one's gone and I don't reckon the Notting Hill Soul & Dance one is long for this world either.

Far Side Virtual is a concept which really could only have worked as a vinyl record.

Why's that? I've only ever heard it on mp3

actually i did buy a few new hardcore/punk lps as a gift for the missus recently and it was a pretty cool throwback experience... very niche obviously but limited pressings, reasonably priced, worthwhile attention to detail as a desirable object. real ingrained sense in that community that mp3s are meaningless and the physical artefact is still a thing, it's nice

tbh if all my fave little things were pressed on £2.50 7"s like dancehall used to be i might still spend a fair wedge

hahah I love the wider notion of the years 2000-5 as a "vast useless wasteland" for music!

Less MVEs to be near these days; the Camden one's gone and I don't reckon the Notting Hill Soul & Dance one is long for this world either.

― Here he is with the classic "Poème Électronique." Good track (Marcello Carlin), Thursday, 4 October 2012 11:07 (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

heh obviously i meant within my narrow little avenue of stuff

perhaps there is a wider point in that that was the era of greatest physical/digital concurrence and thus most disposable stuff but the generalism goes without saying

doglatin xpost:

Hard to sum it up briefly but it's to do with the packaging and the record's general half-backward glancing. I just think it works beautifully as an artefact; on CD it would probably look all cramped and forced. I too listened to it on mp3 prior to buying it and I think the packaging and presentation enhance the record. No scientific idea why that would be the case, though. I wonder if anyone's ever done a study on listening to music and how packaging and presentation affect people's reactions to it (a bit like a recent study where people apparently found travelling by boat or train more of a "journey" than flying; see this article for instance).

> hahah I love the wider notion of the years 2000-5 as a "vast useless wasteland" for music!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landfill_indie

don't get Far Side Virtual-as-vinyl-experience even slightly tbh. it has an ipad on the cover!

that said I get the impression Ferraro is p invested in what formats he does and doesn't present his releases on. but anyway

Subtle blend of past and future media innit.

Hard to sum it up briefly but it's to do with the packaging and the record's general half-backward glancing. I just think it works beautifully as an artefact; on CD it would probably look all cramped and forced. I too listened to it on mp3 prior to buying it and I think the packaging and presentation enhance the record. No scientific idea why that would be the case, though. I wonder if anyone's ever done a study on listening to music and how packaging and presentation affect people's reactions to it (a bit like a recent study where people apparently found travelling by boat or train more of a "journey" than flying; see this article for instance).

― Here he is with the classic "Poème Électronique." Good track (Marcello Carlin), Thursday, 4 October 2012 11:20 (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Cool. I'm a big fan of that album as it happens. You've pretty much hit on something I've been trying to express about physical releases here, and yeah I wonder if there is a study (surely there must be?). It's all very well saying "MP3 is a medium same as CD and vinyl" but that's the same thing as saying "boats are a medium same as cars and planes" - there appears to be, for a lot of people a subconscious difference once packaging and presentation comes into play. It happens with food packaging all the time and there have been umpteen trials where people will be given two identical foodstuffs in different packaging to try out and they definitely believe there's a difference. So it's naive to think that appreciation of music isn't affected by the medium on which it's heard.

I think the packaging and presentation enhance the record. No scientific idea why that would be the case, though. I wonder if anyone's ever done a study on listening to music and how packaging and presentation affect people's reactions to it

We talk about this quite a bit at DRC (two of us work in marketing / design, and one of us did a degree in colour chemistry or something), the idea of a record's sleeve influencing your perception of it. I often think of music in quite synaesthetic terms - a record will sound/feel colourful to me, or monochrome, or whatever, in terms of how I think of the music sounding, and I'm sure that sleeve design is a major factor in this. I think that the John Talabot sleeve has detrimentally affected by perception, and enjoyment, of that record; I think of it as being quite dour tonally, but I suspect other people really don't.

This might sound mental to people, and is probably more fuel to say "well if you will insist on physical media etc etc".

actually i did buy a few new hardcore/punk lps as a gift for the missus recently and it was a pretty cool throwback experience... very niche obviously but limited pressings, reasonably priced, worthwhile attention to detail as a desirable object. real ingrained sense in that community that mp3s are meaningless and the physical artefact is still a thing, it's nice

funny you mention that as earlier this morning I stopped myself from buying this EP bcs I didn't feel like I should be spending £9.50 + postage for less than 15 minutes of music when I have vinyl that arrived a few weeks ago I've still not played

I linked to that blog specifically cos it's about a niche punk band w/ a fairly developed aesthetic but also addresses what rtc mentions. you can substitute punk for techno or whatever if you like

t's all very well saying "MP3 is a medium same as CD and vinyl" but that's the same thing as saying "boats are a medium same as cars and planes" - there appears to be, for a lot of people a subconscious difference once packaging and presentation comes into play.

this is a different conversation to the one you've been having. nobody is arguing that there are inherent differences between formats.

nobody is even arguing that there are good things that may eventually be lost due to digital music dominating.

people are arguing with your extremely narrow and unempirical theory about what those things are, and the vaguely expressed argument that somehow nobody discusses music IRL because they are discussing it in FAKEWORLD - THE WORLD OF COMPUTERS WHERE WE ARE ALL ROBOTS.

*nobody is arguing that there aren't inherent differences between formats

that was only a tiny part of the wider point which you decided to focus on, ronan. never mind though..

make a cogent argument or walk away humming the verve to yourself, whatever.

I'd never seen that John Talabot sleeve before. I always heard it as a white/brown/light green flavoured album.

funny you mention that as earlier this morning I stopped myself from buying this EP bcs I didn't feel like I should be spending £9.50 + postage for less than 15 minutes of music when I have vinyl that arrived a few weeks ago I've still not played

I linked to that blog specifically cos it's about a niche punk band w/ a fairly developed aesthetic but also addresses what rtc mentions. you can substitute punk for techno or whatever if you like

― please do not post on reddit as reusal often offends (DJ Mencap), Thursday, 4 October 2012 11:40 (26 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah it's funny, the actual amount of music didnt really strike me as a factor and to some extent i found the brevity pretty enjoyable - very twee objet impulse of course but idk it works for that stuff i think when it's so tied to an overarching community scene

doubtless if i spent longer than a couple days' holiday in that mode i would find it a trudge same as anything

i had to laugh though, i was expecting a traverse thru this byzantine undie netherworld and then everything's freely online, takes 20 minutes a piece to listen to, diligently blogged, physical easily obtained if you're quick enough... absolute piece of piss. try having to dig for some proper music sometime you lazy posers :)