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Well - I think I've purchased 5 times more old music than new since I was 19 years old.  So it makes good sense to me. I just hope we don't have to keep seeing musicians die to keep the trend going. 

Quote:Agreed.  To be honest, if I'd had that option back in the day, I would have definitely gone the streaming route.  As it was, I'd line a tape recorder up next to the radio speaker and press "record" when the DJ stopped talking.    That and the Columbia Record and Tape club is how I got most of my music back then.

 

What's a "tape recorder"?

Quote:What's a "tape recorder"?

Get off my lawn! Ya little punk.

Quote:What's a "tape recorder"?

 

It's what replaced my 8 track.

Sheesh, I had an old reel to reel Tape recorder

Both of my kids are Spotify members ($9.99/ month each) so when they want music they just pull it up.  

Quote:Both of my kids are Spotify members ($9.99/ month each) so when they want music they just pull it up.  

 

Yeah streaming is all I use (though I prefer google music just because they often give away free music and I can upload music which is great for music they don't have on their service or podcast), you just can't beat $10 for 35 million songs vs $10 for an album. 

Quote:Both of my kids are Spotify members ($9.99/ month each) so when they want music they just pull it up.  

My daughter uses it as well.  That's the future of the music business. 

I just download the Older stuff from Itunes...... The stuff I grew up listening too.......

Quote:I just download the Older stuff from Itunes...... The stuff I grew up listening too.......

That's what most of us do.  Kids are less inclined to do that. 

 

My wife just got out of the business a year ago.  Toward the end of the time she was in the industry, you could see record labels struggling to deal with the changing market.  There was a time not that long ago when labels would send out promos of every album released.  I know because once they left the store rotation, the CDs usually wound up being given to the employees.  I've got thousands of CDs in boxes around here.  All of it has been copied over to the computers and loaded into our iTunes library.  It covers everything from the late 80's up until probably 10 years ago.  If I didn't have a CD or album (converted them over to digital too), I'd just download it on iTunes.  With technology today, I can carry almost my entire catalog on my phone.  Beats the heck out of cassettes or CDs in the car to go with Bluetooth on the phone.

We composing musicians get royally screwed by the streaming services.  It takes thousands of "plays" to equal the cost of one physical sale or outright download. 

 

Royalty checks from spotify and pandora are an absolute joke. 

I used to have a nice size physical library, but I lost it in one of my moves. Now everything is digital and I have a bigger library now than what I used to have. All on 1 flash drive

Quote:We composing musicians get royally screwed by the streaming services.  It takes thousands of "plays" to equal the cost of one physical sale or outright download. 

 

Royalty checks from spotify and pandora are an absolute joke. 

 

They need to figure out a better way to monetize the product.  That's been the case since Napster and torrent sites started giving their product away for free.  

 

The current model is outdated by decades, and the industry is struggling to keep up with technological advances.  There are some savvy artists who have figured it out and they're able to capitalize, but in general, the labels are going to make their money, but the artists?  Good luck.

Quote:I used to have a nice size physical library, but I lost it in one of my moves. Now everything is digital and I have a bigger library now than what I used to have. All on 1 flash drive

 

You might want to back that up or your library could go from big to zero in an instant.  I have a big digital library that I don't really care that much about anymore.  I just use google music.  "Owning" music is overrated.  Older music is good every now and then for nostalgic reasons, but I don't like to get stuck in the past.  But I also don't really "get" stuff like Pandora, Spotify, and Rhapsody.  I like listening to albums, or my OWN playlists. 

I still have most of the vinyl records (including 45s) that I've picked up over the years.  It's kind of gratifying now that vinyl is coming somewhat back into style.  The sound quality of a good vinyl record is superior to almost any form of digitized music (there are a couple of format exceptions, but those aren't widely available).

Quote:I still have most of the vinyl records (including 45s) that I've picked up over the years.  It's kind of gratifying now that vinyl is coming somewhat back into style.  The sound quality of a good vinyl record is superior to almost any form of digitized music (there are a couple of format exceptions, but those aren't widely available).

 

Digitizing the vinyl would produce the same sound as the original vinyl.  I can't "really" prove that, or disprove what someone else is hearing, but music meant for vinyl records is mastered differently than music for digital medium.  So before it even gets to the record the sound is different.  I'm pretty sure digital releases could be made to sound exactly like vinyl, but it doesn't sound like that by choice.  If I were to believe that somehow vinyl is "superior" to another medium, I would have to believe that a vinyl record could reproduce the sound of the medium that it is "superior" to, which is clearly not the case.  

Quote:Digitizing the vinyl would produce the same sound as the original vinyl.  I can't "really" prove that, or disprove what someone else is hearing, but music meant for vinyl records is mastered differently than music for digital medium.  So before it even gets to the record the sound is different.  I'm pretty sure digital releases could be made to sound exactly like vinyl, but it doesn't sound like that by choice.  If I were to believe that somehow vinyl is "superior" to another medium, I would have to believe that a vinyl record could reproduce the sound of the medium that it is "superior" to, which is clearly not the case.  

 

Actually it wouldn't.  Any form of sampling (which digitizing is) necessarily leaves out information.  Therefor, when digitized music is replayed those missing parts are "guessed" by the DAC (the computer chip responsible for turning the digital information back into an audio signal) so the result is by definition an approximation of the original signal.  For standard CDs (and especially MP3 or AAC formats) this is audible.  In practice the results are a sound that has a harshness that is sometimes referred to as "sizzle".  In addition, the stereo channels are frequently mixed down into a hybrid stereo/mono mix to save space which can make the playback sound muddy.  In some digital formats, this effect is greatly reduced, in particular some of the Blue Ray audio formats and an older format, SACD which comes close to the warmth and sound stage you can get with vinyl recordings.

Quote:Actually it wouldn't.  Any form of sampling (which digitizing is) necessarily leaves out information.  Therefor, when digitized music is replayed those missing parts are "guessed" by the DAC (the computer chip responsible for turning the digital information back into an audio signal) so the result is by definition an approximation of the original signal.  For standard CDs (and especially MP3 or AAC formats) this is audible.  In practice the results are a sound that has a harshness that is sometimes referred to as "sizzle".  In addition, the stereo channels are frequently mixed down into a hybrid stereo/mono mix to save space which can make the playback sound muddy.  In some digital formats, this effect is greatly reduced, in particular some of the Blue Ray audio formats and an older format, SACD which comes close to the warmth and sound stage you can get with vinyl recordings.

 

A lot of what you are describing is the result of a digital format not having enough bandwidth to accurately reproduce the input signal.  Of course, it's an approximation.  But there's no guessing involved, the missing parts are just skipped (or blurred).  But digital has infinite bandwidth.  If you want to reproduce a sound to the point where it's indistinguishable, in the digital world, you increase the bitrate to the point where the sound is indistinguishable from the analog signal.  The old standarnd 128kbs (i think) mp3s definitely had severe sound artifacts even compared to standard CDs.   CDs were way better at representing analog sounds (probably to the point where I wouldn't notice a different).   Then the common streaming formats we use right now are likely better than CDs at this point if I'm guessing.   But it's all about how much data you use to represent the signal and how good or nonexistent the format compression is, and how much digital bandwidth the human ear (which we already know has its limitations) can actually decipher. I'm sure people have maxed this out at least with lossless formats like WAV or FLAC or whatever.   But yes, if you're talking about specific formats that people commonly use, you could be right (even though I doubt I personally would notice a difference).  My whole point is that digitizing something at the right bandwidth could reproduce vinyl to the point where there is no human difference.      

Quote:A lot of what you are describing is the result of a digital format not having enough bandwidth to accurately reproduce the input signal.  Of course, it's an approximation.  But there's no guessing involved, the missing parts are just skipped (or blurred).  But digital has infinite bandwidth.  If you want to reproduce a sound to the point where it's indistinguishable, in the digital world, you increase the bitrate to the point where the sound is indistinguishable from the analog signal.  The old standarnd 128kbs (i think) mp3s definitely had severe sound artifacts even compared to standard CDs.   CDs were way better at representing analog sounds (probably to the point where I wouldn't notice a different).   Then the common streaming formats we use right now are likely better than CDs at this point if I'm guessing.   But it's all about how much data you use to represent the signal and how good or nonexistent the format compression is, and how much digital bandwidth the human ear (which we already know has its limitations) can actually decipher. I'm sure people have maxed this out at least with lossless formats like WAV or FLAC or whatever.   But yes, if you're talking about specific formats that people commonly use, you could be right (even though I doubt I personally would notice a difference).  My whole point is that digitizing something at the right bandwidth could reproduce vinyl to the point where there is no human difference.      

 

We're basically saying the same thing with different conclusions.  Digitizing can produce sound almost identical to an analog recording in theory, but most digital formats don't go that far because of bandwidth restrictions.  The reality is that most digital music (be in CDA, MP3, m4a, ogg, or even the so-called lossless formats like FLAC, etc) will not sound as good as a decent vinyl recording because they're reformats of the source CD material.  On the other hand, if every digital track was reproduced from the analog source (as is Dolby True-HD), then I'd agree that vinyl records are redundant, but 99.99999% percent of digital music on the market aren't of that quality.

I remember every guitar player raving about digital delay pedals in the '80s. I hated them. The sampling rate made the repeats sound Thin and brittle. I stuck with the analog for a much warmer sound. Forward to now where the technology has advanced to the point where pedals with digital audio replicate the sound of old tape and analog delays. That said, some players still scoff at that and use actual tape echo.