Record Industry crashes, dies

[SPACERACE]

i gotta say, GI, i still have no idea what the fuck you're trying to say here. from what i can tell: i said that recording techniques that advance the ideal of accurately recorded sound are better than those that don't. alex said that couldn't be true because none are better than any others. i said she was wrong because, again, using the standard ideal of life-like audio, some formats are obviously better than others. you claimed that standards of "better" changed from culture to culture, so i asked what the standard was in "your" culture, and then you agreed that life-like audio was the standard.

so i'm fucking baffled.

i mean, if you're trying to argue that there's much more to the enjoyment of music than how it's recorded and played back, you're right, and it's completely irrelevant in a conversation about audio recording, and it needlessly complicates matters.

[Good Intentions]

You missed the part where I said that my culture is basically the same as yours (both of which is different from 1920s jazz listeners, or all those kids saving up to buy 8-tracks in the 60s and 70s). You also blithely ignored the part where I said that what phased out older formats, some of them still flourishing in milieus not filled with indie kids on a retro kick, had buggerall to do with the greater amount of information encoded within a particular timeframe.

alex said that couldn't be true because none are better than any others.

That's not what she said, and you shouldn't be so obtuse.

That's completely besides the point, though: Nobody's arguing that there is no difference between different technologies; the fact that you care about that difference is cultural though, as is the fact that one option sounds 'better' to you than the other, and that you equal more audio information with better sound.

Also, remember that what life-like sounds like differs from age to age. When audio recording started, the only other place you'd hear music, the vastly more prevalent setting, was a live show, typically in a music hall, or even a bar if we're talking early jazz, with a large amount of ambient noise pack and parcel with the music. When mass radio came around, and stayed around, that didn't change much at all, the ambient noises of people rustling around got replaced with low-fidelity hiss, but whatever, all those kids who modded their tape players to record straight off their radio got perfectly life-like music to their ears.

All I'm trying to say is that you are appealing to the intrinsic superiority of one medium over another, and act as if everybody that disagrees with you is simply mistaken, which is nonsense. You appeal to your greater experience of high fidelity recording, while seeming blithely ignorant of the fact that it is largely this access to these recordings that make you value the type of sound it produces - one look at the streets filled with people listening to shitty ripped mp3s over bottom-of-the-barrel earphones, and loving it, should make you reconsider the universal appeal of the type of thing you're talking about.

[SPACERACE]

i shouldn't have used "life-like" and "accurately recorded" interchangably. the former, you're right, is entirely cultural. the latter is not, and is determined by the person or team that records it. my basic thought on this is that systems should reproduce what that party recorded.

and actually i did not miss where you said we more or less share a culture, it's why i scarequoted it in my last post, and asked you in my best pointedly-tongue-in-cheek fashion what the difference in standards was between them. also i blithely ignored the part about phasing out formats because it's not relevant to their quality, only to the appeal i made to staying power that i already expressed regret for. also, suck my dick.

i've already given that what alex claims is cultural is so, i just still fail to see how it matters when we are talking about the objective quality of given audio recording formats in the context of the ideal of accurate reproduction of what was recorded. again, suck my dick.

[ellaguru]

I think that part of the deal, though, is that appreciating differences in sound quality is learned, in the same way that, say, appreciating the differences in wine is learned. It's not made up, and all the people in the world running around drinking crap wine and having fun doing so doesn't cast any doubt at all on the skills of the connoisseurs and connoisseuses. The distinctions are there to be made, and appeal to the fact that many people don't in fact train their senses to appreciate the differences is neither here nor there.

This parallel breaks down when you start asking what else enters into music appreciation beyond fidelity or wine appreciation beyond taste. Beyond taste (including all the stuff the wine connoisseurs prides themselves on), there's not too much to appreciate in the wine (well, taste and getting wrecked, I guess). But music? There's a whole lot more, and it is totally possible that those other things cut across sound quality. Almost certainly some of them will at the recording end. I don't know if they do at the reproduction and medium end. It's also fairly likely that lotsa people will think that some of these other features are much more important than how true the reproduction is to its source.

Certainly, what counts as lifelike differs by culture (or at least over time), but it seems like the technology that produces the best (by Reese's criteria) fidelity also ends up being counted as the most “lifelike” by culture (or at least over time). Actually, I'm pulling that claim out of my ass, but I'd be surprised if it's wrong (if we give that the reproduction includes the equipment people use to play the things – a cheap CD player sounds better than a cheap turntable, for instance, regardless of the potential of analog versus digital reproduction). But anyway, talking about people in the before-time (the long, long ago) boasting of “lifelike” fidelity that we'd now call “lo” ain't no argument against what Reese is saying. Or at least not without a bit more work.

The question of whether or not people, generally, care about sound quality is a separate question than the question of whether some medium actually delivers better sound quality than another. A lot of us don't care. Some of us because we don't live and breathe music, some of us because we think there are more important aspects of music, some of us because we value other aspects of the medium (like convenience or whatever), and some of us because we haven't trained our ear (the way I haven't trained my palate to tell a good wine from a poor one). But whether and why we don't care about sound quality is all autobiographical remark – it doesn't touch on, y'know, how we can get as close as possible to what the artist signed off on in the studio. Sure, “why should we care getting as close as possible to what the artist signed off on?” is a good question (it is – and another good question is, “at what point should we start and stop caring about sound quality?"), but it's not the same question as “what medium in fact does get closest to what the artist signed off on?”. The first two questions sound like interesting questions about people. The last one just sounds like a math question to me.

Wow, I should post drunk more. I totally get all assertive an' shit. Also, if it turns out that I'm wildly wrong, I can just blame it on posting drunk. Everybody wins.

[SPACERACE]

that was a damn good argument for being drunk

[Good Intentions]

it sounds better, otherwise it wouldn't have outlasted every other technology that came after it

Premise 1: Tech A records more accurately than Tech B
Premise 2: A has outlasted B in common usage
Conclusion: A has outlasted B because of its more accurate recording.

I accept premise 1 and 2, but I deny that the conclusion follows. I do so because I deny that the deciding factor for the common appreciation of a recording technology is the fidelity of the recording. If you want, you could draw out a third premise: it is the accuracy of the recording that determines the longevity of a recording technology. That is the premise that I deny.

[jebreject]

For fuck's sake. This has become the most retarded argument I've seen in a long while. And guys, we have a lot of retarded arguments.

[jebreject]

anyway, premise two is wrong anyway

[alistarr*]

quit dismissing retarded arguments, jeb - some of us like them.

re premise 2 i think he just made a poor word choice.

[SPACERACE]

gi, i said i SHOULD NOT have made my argument based on staying power. twice. read what i am saying. when i dismiss something i said earlier twice, you can take it as a concession and stop quoting it and arguing against it.

you cannot get all GI-douchebag-mode about me blithely ignoring things when you do this.

[Andrew_TSKS]

i honestly think that gi's point about how most people don't care about relative quality of sound is far more relevant to what this thread was started to discuss than reese's point about how good cds sound versus vinyl--the relevance of which i totally can't remember anymore.

maybe i shouldn't try and bring this back on topic, though.

[joseph scott]

maybe i shouldn't try and bring this back on topic, though.

I'm all for getting back on topic. The sound discussion is interesting but it pretty much deserves its own thread, given the level of details it's gotten to.

Spoon's album debuted at #10 on the Billboard charts, and I think this means something, the same way the Arcade Fire's debut at #2 meant something and other "blogger-supported" (if not truly indie) bands like Interpol--who debuted last week at #4--the Shins, and Feist (to name a few off the top of my head) have also been charting pretty regularly.

My (unproven) theory is that all the crying about the death of the music industry is 99% geared toward the majors, and that the indie world is actually experiencing a boom. Seeing more and more indie bands chart either means that their sales are increasing, or that their sales remain steady as usual and the only bands suffering major losses are the corporate rockers, who used to enjoy a wide gap in week-to-week sales. At any rate I think it's telling that Spoon's album has been available for months as an illegal leak, yet it's sales didn't seem to suffer by the same percentage that a coporate album would.

[Andrew_TSKS]

At any rate I think it's telling that Spoon's album has been available for months as an illegal leak, yet it's sales didn't seem to suffer by the same percentage that a coporate album would.

same was apparently true of the shins most recent album.

[joseph scott]

Plus there's been a slew of articles in the last week or two about the concert industry and how that's thriving for the most part. Just goes to show that the record industry is a lot more than just record labels. Only the latter are "dying." (okay, record stores are dying too.)

[C of heartbreak]

IMO record stores are already dead, or at very least endangered. But maybe that's just because I've never lived anywhere with a good record store.

[RavingLunatic]

As far as I'm concerned, record stores suck. I've never been to an indie one, but I've never yet found a place where I could buy CDs for as little as on the internet, shipping included. I think I've only ever bought 2 or 3 CDs at a store, and those were because they had a special.

[SPACERACE]

you should 1) move out of indiana, and 2) go to a store in a reasonably populated area with used CDs. they're all $5 and sometimes they're good.

[RavingLunatic]

There's a Wooden Nickel in Fort Wayne, but the used CDs there are $8-10, and shit, if that's the way it's gonna be, I might as well buy new. Or I could just buy from the really indie guys who sell 'em at that price to begin with.

[SPACERACE]

well that's because where you live is lame.

[alistarr*]

As far as I'm concerned, record stores suck. I've never been to an indie one, but I've never yet found a place where I could buy CDs for as little as on the internet, shipping included. I think I've only ever bought 2 or 3 CDs at a store, and those were because they had a special.

for me, good record stores are such wonderful places that you'll not begrudge the extra couple of dollars (and it should only be a couple) the records might cost. i am of the strongly held belief that there is no substitute for impulse buying in a good record store and it's part of the reason that, now my two favourite manchester record stores have closed, i've bought maybe half as many discs as would have otherwise been the case.

i also fear online buying because of the ease of price comparison - i find it much harder to justify (financially) buying a record from an indie retailer if i can get the same record for less from play.com or asda in a couple of mouseclicks. this is dangerous for very obvious reasons.

i think i've reached the point of simply accepting this as something that happens - the good stores close, the ones that can sell to the most predictable audience at the cheapest costs will stay open, and people who like the odd little niches of the market will have to go searching in odd little places that don't quite satisfy the same way the old places did. if i buy less discs, i'll spend more money on something else i love, so i won't necessarily lose out much - this does not mean i'm not filled with sadness at the prospect.

[Trousers and Pat]

I went to a "record store" a couple days ago and they were selling off their old cassettes- I got some good stuff; public enemy, fleetwood mac...

[diesel_powered]

As far as I'm concerned, record stores suck. I've never been to an indie one, but I've never yet found a place where I could buy CDs for as little as on the internet, shipping included. I think I've only ever bought 2 or 3 CDs at a store, and those were because they had a special.

for me, good record stores are such wonderful places that you'll not begrudge the extra couple of dollars (and it should only be a couple) the records might cost. i am of the strongly held belief that there is no substitute for impulse buying in a good record store and it's part of the reason that, now my two favourite manchester record stores have closed, i've bought maybe half as many discs as would have otherwise been the case.

This is exactly my situation. Apparently, a few months before I moved to Detroit, all the good record stores closed and left one place that is great if you want dance vinyl (not as appealing to me as it once was) and one place where Zeppelin records go to die at $12 a pop. Gone are the days when I was in Omaha and could impulse buy 4 records I'd never heard of for $8 apiece, and that's not counting lingering over the dollar bin.

[Maaik]

As far as I'm concerned, record stores suck. I've never been to an indie one, but I've never yet found a place where I could buy CDs for as little as on the internet, shipping included. I think I've only ever bought 2 or 3 CDs at a store, and those were because they had a special.

for me, good record stores are such wonderful places that you'll not begrudge the extra couple of dollars (and it should only be a couple) the records might cost. i am of the strongly held belief that there is no substitute for impulse buying in a good record store and it's part of the reason that, now my two favourite manchester record stores have closed, i've bought maybe half as many discs as would have otherwise been the case.

This is exactly my situation. Apparently, a few months before I moved to Detroit, all the good record stores closed and left one place that is great if you want dance vinyl (not as appealing to me as it once was) and one place where Zeppelin records go to die at $12 a pop. Gone are the days when I was in Omaha and could impulse buy 4 records I'd never heard of for $8 apiece, and that's not counting lingering over the dollar bin.

Dude, did Car City Records close?  I kinda liked that place.  It was the only brick and mortar store I'd ever seen that actually stocked Jandek.  It's actually where I bought the Jandek on Corwood doc.  If it's still there, it's on Harper Ave. in St. Clair Shores.

I'm lucky that I've got some great record and CD shops practically within walking distance.  I'd actually rather shop and special order stuff from there than online because my business helps to keep them open.

This talk of "Record stores are dying/dead" strikes me as a strictly the-view-from-my-front-door arguments.  So yeah, okay, Indiana sucks as far as record stores go, that doesn't mean that the industry is on its knees--NOR does the fact that I can hike on down to Wuxtry and get the new Feist LP in a pinch (not that I'd actually want to--what a load of shit) mean that record stores are prospering.

[justinh]

Minneapolis has a bunch of pretty amazing record stores, so that's good.  Unfortunately, a bunch have closed down as well, but I'd still say it has some of the best record shopping in the midwest. 

As i understand it, juggling a "cool" inventory can be difficult when you're trying to pay the bills.  My friend in Philly who runs a record store deals with 90% used stuff, which has a much better profit margin, evidently.  And he's blowin' up, and opening a second location this year. 

Also, Indianapolis must have a couple of decent shops, at least.  A quick google search turned up these two:

http://www.lunamusic.net
http://www.missinglinkrecords.com/

[Andrew_TSKS]

There's a Wooden Nickel in Fort Wayne, but the used CDs there are $8-10, and shit, if that's the way it's gonna be, I might as well buy new. Or I could just buy from the really indie guys who sell 'em at that price to begin with.

new cds that are selling for $12 or so are still $4 more than they'd be used at $8. and new cds on the higher end of the retail price scale, which are $17-20, are totally worth buying used, even at $10 a pop. i don't see why you'd think otherwise.

also, maaik, i can't let that crack on feist slide--she's awesome.