Premier Rock Forum

JDanger wrote:

Skronk wrote:I don't think there's such thing as being overexposed to a good way of finding, and trying music. It's there if you want, and you still have other options.

I suppose my concerns are with the invoulantary effects of overexposure. You can choose to listen to whole albums on your Ipod, sure. But if you've grown up in the Ipod age, why would you? I am a fanatic for noise, but if I hadn't been required to listen to certain albums because of a significant lack of other quality albums, would I have developed the appreciation for the finer points of those albums?

If you take a shine to a band, even for a week let's say, that in and of itself would be a good reason to listen to an album. I think your post would mainly apply to listeners that couldn't give a shit about the band they happened to find. They're in it for the single, but they downloaded the album.

There's a whole multitude of ways a person can absorb a particular work, and it hasn't changed even if the format, and means of getting it have.

If you're anything like me, and you have to shift through bands you don't particularly like, it just makes finding a quality band that much better. That hasn't changed, and it probably won't, no matter the way you find music.

In response to Fly, I look at a glut of bands as a positive thing. If there's 100,000 bands popping up every year, throughout all the genres, then that means great bands will pop up, even if the ratio is ten thousand to one. I guess it's the thrill of the chase/payoff that keeps me on the lookout.

ERawk wrote:

JDanger wrote:If I'm being honest with myself, if I had the internet when I was seventeen I'm fairly certain I would have rifled through and dismissed most of the influential albums of my youth and moved on. Mainly, Engine Takes To Water comes to mind. That album rescued me from cookie-cutter, formulated punk rock and opened the floodgates to braver things. But it happened slowly. At that age, initially I loathed it, but I had to play it, because of the investment, and because it was one ofthe few I owned.

Like I said, he's not you. I don't think it's fair to assume that all 17 year-olds will act you think they act or the way you think you would act if you were 17 in this day and age.

I was a 15 year-old weirdo that knew how to put an album on a turntable in 1995. 15 year-olds weren't supposed to know how to do that back then, right?

sure we were -- they still sold new records in mall record stores when we were 8 and most of our parents had turntables.

Skronk wrote:In response to Fly, I look at a glut of bands as a positive thing. If there's 100,000 bands popping up every year, throughout all the genres, then that means great bands will pop up, even if the ratio is ten thousand to one. I guess it's the thrill of the chase/payoff that keeps me on the lookout.

fair enough, but i still see it insulting/infuriating when people willfully pollute what amounts to being the only thing i love.

Skronk wrote:If you're anything like me, and you have to shift through bands you don't particularly like, it just makes finding a quality band that much better. That hasn't changed, and it probably won't, no matter the way you find music.

I suppose I can relate to this. And although it seems the modern site-to-site, blog-to-blog sifting process isn't nearly as painful as paying top dollar for a CD with a minimum wage, it is still a hunt, regardless. I guess I'm saying the game we'd hunt was more elusive back then, so the blood was tastier.

I still buy albums. Real ones and iTunes ones. I do this in hopes that some money will find it's way back to the artist. That's not to say I haven't pilfered my friend's cd collections for upload, some of which I had owned, and some I did not. I don't like the idea of downloading something just because it's free. If you're in a band, one that makes money, or one that doesn't; one that aspires to make money or not, or whether it is just a hobby, like skiing , it would be nice to send a bit back to the creators of this art, who are your contemporaries, regardless of their intentions or aspirations. It seems like the right thing to do, to me. I have bought albums from from people on this forum, through iTunes and by mail, because I listened to their stuff on my space or whatever, liked it, bought the album--ya know, with money.

I think it's great that you are able to sample music before you buy it, carry it all around with you on an iPod, discover new bands, get your band heard, etc...I'm all for it, but I think many people are kind of hiding behind the fact that they just flat-out don't want to pay for it. I'm a bit surprised by someone in a band who says: "I don't expect to be paid, so please don't pay me." If I can pay 7 bucks for a pack of cigarettes, I can lay out a few more for a record.

At the same time, I don't judge those who choose to do it this way. I'm just not buying this idea that if someone like it, they'll go out and buy something that they already have. Some will. But, most won't. I can understand if you bought the physical cd/LP, but if a person had an album via "illegal" download on their iPod, what would be the purpose of buying it from iTunes? Most of them won't, especially the generation who knows nothing but the digital format--a generation, I suspect, that accounts for the majority of music downloads, legal or otherwise.


I'm so confused. Back, technology! Down, boy!

Dr. Venkman wrote:I still buy albums. Real ones and iTunes ones. I do this in hopes that some money will find it's way back to the artist.

if it's an independent artist, money will most likely find its way back to the artist. if it's a major label artist, you would be much more cash-effective if you just went to their concerts and paid to see them.

JDanger wrote:If I'm being honest with myself, if I had the internet when I was seventeen I'm fairly certain I would have rifled through and dismissed most of the influential albums of my youth and moved on.

On the contrary if I hadn't had the internet I would have been stuck with almost mainstream music and some indigenous formulaic punk band of my city. With "almost mainstream" I mean the music that is usually available in record stores and (at least here) you're lucky if you can find some record of, e.g., Gang of Four or Nick Cave. For instance, I would never have heard anything of Slint or Big Black simply by browsing record stores. In the past some people discovered great music by talking with friends and by getting advice from them, nowadays there is simply another means of knowledge which is quantitatively bigger in the terms of the information to which one is exposed. Maybe (we are not sure and I'm an example of the contrary) there could be some drawbacks in the terms of "quality of the listening" (the kind of "risks" you were afraid of for your cousin) but the exposure to as much music as possible, even for people in remote places or without any music-savvy friend, makes internet a most useful tool. Consider that internet is not only made of blogs but also of e.g, message boards like this one which are a great way to discover new bands. Even the crappy musical criticism/journalism can play a role in the positive exposure to new art, for instance I found a lot of bands by browsing Scaruffi's website.

We're defnitely in a transitional period. I, having received my first ipod this christmas, am finally participating in that transition and I love it. There are so many plusses to being in control like that. I can shuffle all songs in the "funk" or "ambient" genres. even in the "cerebral" or "americana" genres I created myself.

But I think every convience has its drawback. I used to have a lot of mp3s on my computer at work. I've changed computers 3 times since then and have barely any of those files. You're in a generation who hasn't lost their first ipod yet. The impermanence of a digital music library will at some point present itself as a primary weakness of the format. I really wish I could hear Converge's live cover of "Snowblind" but I can't cause that was 3 computers ago and I have no idea where I found the file.

A friend and I had a long conversation about the future of music the other night. I decided that I think digital convenience will split music into castes based on disposibility and permanence. On the receiving end, I think there will be a patron class and a consumer class.

People who make disposable records will get famous quickly, sell their music to commercials and bow out. I think there will be a stream of quick flashes--microcareers built for the meme age.

There will be people who view music as more art than entertainment. Those people will still build long careers, make their money playing live and selling a product. People will recognize the merit of their work and want a tactile connection to the band, whether it be records or tshirts or whatever.

think mp3s are great. There is so much music I've been exposed to and learned to love that I would not have given a chance if it required a $15 gamble. Living in Alabama, so much of it I would not have even been exposed to. When I download Uffie, I just want to hear a vocoder. It satisfies me for what it is--a disposable excuse to listen to vocoder. When I download the new Circle record, I will drive 3 hours to see them play and buy the same record on LP and a shirt cause it's music worth having a connection to and worth having in a preservable format.

Jewel cases and computers killed CDs. The jewel case robs you of any sort of tactile connection to the music, and its just a dumb format. Its like holding a baseball in one of those weird preservation cubes--you're near the baseball, but not with it. And computers changed digital music from something that fits on a shelf to something that fits on a flashdrive keychain fob. CDs are like owning a giant, thick floppy disk.

Colonel Panic wrote:I don't get the argument. What's wrong with good music being more accessible?

Shitty music has always been accessible. Hell, it's more than accessible, it's ubiquitous! It's crammed into your earholes everywhere you go. Walk into a clothing store, a grocery store or a fast-food restaurant and what do you hear? Crap music. Turn on the TV or radio, what do you hear? Crap music. Go out to any random club or bar on any random night, what are you likely to hear?

Good music is far less common.

Quoted because it's my opinion as well.
I don't even listen to radio for music anymore. The only radio program I listen when I wake up is a program with news reports, debates, and interviews.

It's extremely rare for me to put a radio station, and hear music that
I like. Most of the "John Peel-style" author programs, where people who were passionate about music would pass it on air, have all but dissappeared.

Whenever I want to listen to music, I just go to myspace, or another music website, where I usually find some pretty nice stuff on a regular basis.
Blogs are a great way to listen to music that I could nevber have heard otherwise. Sometimes, when I have the luxury of travelling, I'll try to go see some local band that I discovered through myspace.

And guess what? even though I rarely hear radio anymore, or see top-10 programs, I still know every single song that's in the charts right now, precisely because these songs are still being thrust inside my throat against my will: it happens on waiting rooms for dentists, cafés, discothéques, working spaces, grammy awards, brit awards, tv news, offices, stores, ringtones, even on the street there's some dick with his walkman too loud for comfort. It's impossible to escape, but at least now, I feel like I can balance things by easily finding music I like on the internet.

I buy few cds nowadays, but when I really love the band I do all I can to support them.

When I was young, I used to dream about a world in which great music would be easily acessible to a lot of people. Now that it's becoming a reality, I'm certainly not going to complain. I just hope that we solve the problems that are arising from this transition period, so that bands have a new infrastructure from which to release their music.

The pricing scheme for the new EPs for Nine Inch Nails is very interesting for me. I would like to see more bands following that scheme.
I would not buy a 300-dollar Shellac vinyl, but I'd certainly support the cheaper options. I don't think that music becomes disposable just because you can get a great quantity of it. I've listened to every single mp3 on my colection of several gigabytes. And there are albums that I just come back to again and again on my wish to listen to them.

A girl that has gigabytes of music which most of it she never listened to, is the same as a girl with a 500-pair shoe colection, of which most shoes have never been worn. There are simply people who are going to collect things, if they have the means at their disposal.

On the other hand, I see a lot of kids who grew up on the mp3 period, who are just as passionate about music the way I was during the mix-tape exchange period. With a large acessibility of music, the end result is simply greater quantities of people who use it either as a disposable item, or as a precious thing.

We are in a period of change, and I'm "realistically" excited about what's coming ahead... I don't miss the old days that much.

ERawk wrote:I also grew up in a town with a 600+ high school where Sponge was considered edgy music and you could count listeners of the Jesus Lizard on one hand, if at all (FTR: I had a prejudice against them because they opened for Bush on some tour. I hated Bush. It took a few years to see what I was missing/had missed).

Similar experience here. Back in the day, TJL was promoted all to fuck, but my friends and I wrote them off before hearing a single note. A band with a Jesus Jones-y name opening for Bush? Pass.

What changed my mind about TJL? Taking 25 minutes to dialup-download a shitty low-bitrate MP3 of "Gladiator" on the original Napster a few years later.