Posted on 06/01/2011 12:25:28 PM PDT by GSWarrior
“My point is, without specialty shops, you have a harder time accessing specialty content....unless you actively seek it out.”
My point is, I guess, specialty shops themselves represented actively seeking things out. If it became a habit to some, well, so can surfing the web. Only moreso, as it’s infinitely easier.
That’s only true if you’re from a town with nothing but big box chain stores.
The indie shops represented a community, a curated pick of quality material that wasn’t initially promoted in the mainstream. There were artists with regional popularity, or hometown support now.
You don’t get that with a massive database virtual store, flooded with titles that never sell a single copy.
Computer harddrives are prone to crashing and CD-Rs are highly unstable (10-20 year shelflife tops). Unless the digital files are forever flying around the web, the content will disappear from the face of the earth.
I don’t see why an unplayed record would not still be playable 100 years from now (apart from warpage which still could be tracked, even old 8mm films like the Zapruder film of JFK can’t run through a projector anymore but can be scanned in to reveal information (including the imagery that extended to the sprocket holes)). The plastic groves aren’t unstable or “prone to rot”. Accetates can flake, yes, but pressed vinyl, not so much.
I spent a career around jet engines. A close & play record player (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3mqNbgXxXE&feature=related) would give better audio than I can hear. I’m fine with downloading mp3s that I can carry in a matchbox sized stereo giving me tunes while jogging.
People have access to unlimited information on the internet. They are still idiots when it comes to politics, history, economics, science, and music.
Guidance and mentorship can be good thing. Doesn’t mean that you can’t discover some things (or truths) on your own. But wandering in a vast wasteland (or the warehouse at the Smithsonian) doesn’t mean that you will automatically gravitate to what you are looking for.
Life experiences provide understanding and context. Being told that some obscure cut is “good” may not sound that way if you haven’t heard “this” or grown up in that environment.
The signal to noise ratio of people hyping things has become higher than ever. And now we have hipsters for food called “foodies”.
No one would put up with their friend telling them EVERY meal what they had for breakfast, lunch and dinner the day before. On line, they think we all give a damn.
The internet music options are pretty much the same. You’ll be advised on a lot but you’d better have a good BS filter. And if you want to BUY something rather than just copy it, you still have to find a vendor.
Another way to look at it - the music industry hasn’t raised the technological bar. They should have pushed the tech standard to SuperCD and beyond. They should have innovated to deliver more compelling content made possible by the new technology. This they didn’t do and became a commodity in the process. I’m not sure what all the innovations should have or could have been - I guess some of these will emerge some day. Take Guitar Hero for example - basically someone figured out how to merge technology and music to create added value and the public ate it up. For the music industry to think that just sitting back and churning out 3 minute songs and that they could collect a King’s ransom in so doing seems wrong, certainly in retrospect, but also seemed wrong at the time.
Eh. So instead of the record store, it's just the local club that books the indie acts. You go to the show and then go home and download the mp3. To me, the best thing about mp3s is being able to buy a single track. If every artist was like Guy Clark and put out brilliant records start to finish, I wouldn't have a problem with buying the whole record. But even with artists I like, there's typically two or three tracks on an album that are worth listening to more than once. I'm not interested in paying $15 for two or three tracks. Lame.
I think he forgot how to go find them. It’s always been the case that indie stores rise and fall quickly, they lack the financial strength to survive setbacks, so the store you know and love tends to disappear when you don’t have time to go there for 6 months. That doesn’t mean they all died, just your favorite. Here in Tucson we’ve got a handful of indies, including an actual RECORD store no digital, but you can’t be surprised when one goes away, you just need to keep your eyes open for the others.
The problem with surfing he web as a way to find music, books or movies is on the web you find what you’re looking for, but rarely anything else. When you frequent a personally run media store you get exposed to things you weren’t looking for. You walk in to music on the stereo, the guys behind the counter get to know you and your taste, you run into other people and can chat with them. Some of my favorite bands I was exposed to because the record store guy said “well if you like them you should give these guys a try”, the web can’t do that. Amazon tries with “others who bought this bought” but it’s not the same as a person you see every couple of weeks. The web creates tunnel vision where the indie stores create buffets.
“it’s just the local club that books the indie acts.”
The problem is very few artists break even, or break out of just playing for their friends. It costs money to print posters, postcards, and drive to a gig. It still costs money to produce creative work on a level where you can make a living at it. Yes, some doors will open as a result of where things are going, but by and large, not even the big names are making money any more.
LPs are the only type of recorded music that dont require electricity to listen to.
I can’t argue with that, but I don’t really believe that thing were much different in the world before mp3s. There were still a bunch of people that wanted to play music for a living that were broke.
Just seems like this article is pure nostalgia. “Gee, wasn’t it great when I could go into the record store and find this great new band I’d never heard before?”
Sure, I guess, but I’d just rather listen to XM, hear a band I like, go on the Internet to the band’s website to see its tour dates and find when the band is coming to my city, buy tickets for the show on the Internet, and then download its album on iTunes. To me, that’s a heck of a lot better than standing in a record store with a set of grungy headphones that umpteen sweaty people wore before me. But that’s just me.
You must not have a Pandora account.
We have a good coffee shop, record shop, and hookah bar all in one. I just bought Music from Big Pink on vinyl.
Also, besides Pandora, there are a lot of music blogs that go pretty in depth to particular genres. I don't know your cup of tea for music, but two pretty good music blogs are Nine Bullets and Big Rock Candy Mountain.
I’ve played with Pandora, but with my music library it’s pretty rare to leave the playlist up to somebody else. 99% of what I remember about Pandora is that it had a really hard time accepting that I don’t like the Beatles, no matter what I started a list with the 5th song was always a Beatles song, I kept saying no but it kept pushing them anyway. It did remind me how much I like Joe Jackson though so it wasn’t a total loss. But it’s still not the personal touch. There’s a dramatic difference between the guy you see all the time at the record store saying “you gotta here this” and Pandora sticking it in some playlist you might not even be paying attention to.
Were you someone who actively sought out music before the Napster and Itunes era?
It’s definitely easier for the music fan, it’s just a different experience. Like home video or cable, that means more to chose from, and more access to the good stuff .... but ultimately, less good stuff, and the end of one culture for another.
Yeah, I don't like the Beatles, either. And it's gotten better. I found that Pandora is a bit better than Slacker with respect to the dislikes. I agree, though, the personal touch isn't there with Pandora.
But again blogs aren’t the same. That’s more of the tunnel vision, if you like genre X you might go read the blogs about it but you’re not going to go read a blog about a genre you don’t like or don’t know anything about. You could walk into a record store and hear anything, or be recommended anything. The web gives you what you’re looking for, the real world gives you what you didn’t even know existed.
And even more for me there’s just no reason to use it. Currently the MP3 library is 316GB, there’s a copy of it on the PC at home and a portable drive at work. For me to listen to Pandora I’ve got to be at a computer without the library, last time that happened the sister-in-law died and being the resident geek I was tasked with closing accounts and stuff, that was almost 2 years ago. I’ve never been much of a radio guy, I respect the technology of Pandora and it can be kind of fun to try to stump it (though I’ve never succeeded), but I’ve got the library.
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