Something tragic I just realized about the death of the CD

no more hidden tracks

mysterious untagged mp3s>>>>>>>>>>>>>whatever u were talkin baout

Those are good, too

That sure is a lot of greater than signs.

I didn't realize CDs didn't exist anymore. someone in Best Buy's corporate HQ is gonna fry for selling me fake music!

Are CDs about to die in the same way that vinyl did in the late 80s?

At least we'll still have Search and Destroy threads.

Track 69 - Eurotrash Girl

Hidden tracks always sucked, and they suck even more in the MP3 age where you've got to edit them into their own track!

"This song's so great we hid it after 30 minutes of silence"

xp at least in the MP3 age you can delete the shitty hidden track.

"This song's so great that you'll be happy when it wakes you up after you fall asleep during the 30 minutes of silence"

The CD is not dead, but the hidden track may as well be.

ppl still listen to music?

xxp see Pulp's 'This Is Hardcore'

Just separate the last track and the hidden track with 10 separate 10-second tracks of silence.

i pretty much delete any "iTunes bonus tracks" which are invariably shitty

no more sneaky trick cuts either like the incredible loud-whispered "What do you think you're doing" at the tail end of Ooberman's original Shorley Wall e.p. which brought about a near cardiac arrest on first 'listen' long after i'd forgotten the CD was still running.

Fellini.Kuti, I shake my fist at you. This is the worst, most ungodly shit ever.

i pretty much delete any "iTunes bonus tracks" which are invariably shitty

could name endless examples where the bonus tracks (or even leaks that never made the album) are superior to the "regular" tracks. many artists/labels have a v weird attitude to their strengths.

also w/r/t the premise of this thread, stop this bs faux nostalgia

Eg, pretty much every bonus track on Bionic is better than the album proper.

I do like bs faux nostalgia though.

no more sneaky trick cuts either like the incredible loud-whispered "What do you think you're doing" at the tail end of Ooberman's original Shorley Wall e.p. which brought about a near cardiac arrest on first 'listen' long after i'd forgotten the CD was still running.

omg @ this

i was going to put a hidden track on my ilx anthology mix (that I'm still making)
now it won't be much of a surprise

did you know that some bands had hidden tracks where you rewind the first track?

no but I just stuck a noodle up my nose

I don't like where this is going

Its not like CDs started this either; I have a copy of a Bauhaus album on cassette (lol, shoosh) and there's a spoken word thing after about 20 mins of silence at the end of side 2. Scared the SHIT out of me when I first heard it.

Fuckin goths.

I hate that shit. I can't remember which cd it was but one of them made me fly out of my chair for the exact reason described above. maybe Pig Destroyer?

I also remember when I was a kid I had the Kokomo/Tutti Frutti cassingle (from "Cocktail"), and of course "Tutti Frutti" begins with Little Richard's shout and because I could never mentally time when he was going to come in, everytime I played that side of the cassingle I got startled and jumped everytime he started singing.

Lordy. Cassingles were the worst idea ever.

I still have a whole bunch of them from childhood. including Kriss Kross "I Missed the Bus"

also "Batdance/200 Balloons" by Prince, Coolio's "Fantastic Voyage", Ice Cube "You Know How We Do It/2 'n The Mornin"

They always seemed such a waste of a casette. :/

Just tape some random whooshy noises over it, hand-design the packages et voila -- chillwave.

just tape some random whooshy noises over it, bankrupt the label et voila -- Loveless.

bingo

Raggett smash.

Just tape some random whooshy noises over it, hand-design the packages et voila -- chillwave.

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, October 3, 2010 11:20 PM (11 minutes ago)

Motorpsycho - Another Ugly EP
Hidden Tracks:
6. Deathprod's barely audible mellotron interlude 2:19 (it really is barely audible)
7. Motorhead Mama 3:23

Best Hidden Tracks
CD Secret Tracks Hidden Before Track 01 0:00
Hidden tracks on CDs, S&D, CoD

I am aware that there are stores like best buy that still sell CDs, and I have bought three new CDs myself this year, but I've bought as many cassette-only releases and substantially more vinyl, and then nearly everything else was mp3. CDs are dead in the same way that Rome fell, or something. It is gradual, so much so that it's still there, but the glory days are over.

This thread was inspired by listening to mp3s of cLOUDDEAD's Ten, which has like 15 minutes of silence at the end and then a hidden track that sounds a lot like No Age to me. I never really gave it much mind because it was short and so far after the end, but it seemed like a minor epiphany the other night. And then I realized that that record, from 2004, is probably the most recent thing I have that has a hidden track. And to me, that is a big harbinger of the fall of the format, that people stopped making their albums around the quirks of CDs. Hidden tracks, I figure, were largely the result of bands who grew up on vinyl albums recording their 10 or 12 songs for the album, and then realizing there was still 40 minutes of space on the disc, so they played around in the studio or did some cover, and then they hid it from you, so you could feel like you'd found some rare 7" or something. Most are terrible, sure, as are most rare 7"s in my experience, but it was something I used to encounter a lot and now I don't. I suddenly missed it and thought I'd share. Fuck you guys.

Also, I had a Korn cd as a child that had 12 1-second tracks of silence before the first song, which began on track 13, so I would listen to my CD player hiccup for a bit before the music started. I feel like Merzbow or someone should have made a CD that just manipulated your CD player into making its own noise. That would be neat.

could name endless examples where the bonus tracks (or even leaks that never made the album) are superior to the "regular" tracks. many artists/labels have a v weird attitude to their strengths.

― لوووووووووووووووووووول (lex pretend), Sunday, October 3, 2010 6:58 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ENDLESS EXAMPLES

i'm not talking leaks, i'm talking officially label-sanctioned iTunes "bonus tracks"

Rewindies never took off, really, did they?

yeah yeah yeahs' itunes/ japan-only/ whatever the hell it was bonus track 'Faces' was better than most of 'It's Blitz'.
whoever in their right mind thought this should be left off all official worldwide versions of last year's YYYs albums and singles is clearly insane:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDyAR0C6CBM

I feel like Merzbow or someone should have made a CD that just manipulated your CD player into making its own noise. That would be neat.

seek: gescom's minidisc.

"I Cannot Be Played on CD Player X"

for whatever reason my copy of Candlemass's Epicus Doomicus Metallicus has never worked on my home stereo system's CD player, despite working on all computer cd players (even those 10 or more years old), and my various car cd players.

Has anyone done anything really inventive with the MP3? It seems like it would be well suited to releasing stuff Zaireeka-style, where you line up 20 MP3 files in different players on your computer and let chaos commence.

First I read

Just tape some random whooshy noises over it, hand-design the packages et voila -- chillwave.

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, October 3, 2010 6:20 PM (Yesterday)

and I was like "lol haha"

and then I read

just tape some random whooshy noises over it, bankrupt the label et voila -- Loveless.

― horton whores a ho (crüt), Sunday, October 3, 2010 6:29 PM (Yesterday)

and I was like "LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL"

(the end)

First I read

Just tape some random whooshy noises over it, hand-design the packages et voila -- chillwave.

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, October 3, 2010 6:20 PM (Yesterday)

and I was like "lol haha"

and then I read

just tape some random whooshy noises over it, bankrupt the label et voila -- Loveless.

― horton whores a ho (crüt), Sunday, October 3, 2010 6:29 PM (Yesterday)

and I was like "LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL"

(the end)

clearly my second post is the "hidden bonus track" to my first post which = "album track"

ET VOILA

I didn't know quite where to put this but:

CD-format to be abandoned by major labels by the end of 2012

Inevitable, but still, boo to this news.

RIP longboxes

dammit...I still collect the things. guess that means I finally gotta get an iPod, as I ain't burning shit.

MEanwhile... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zb_YvUwyYw

I still collect 'em too, will continue to do so too, but guess I won't be purchasing any major label stuff.

would be weird if vinyl outlasted cd. i bet cds will still exist in europe for a while yet though.

It'll be interesting to see how this trickles down to the indies, will Sub Pop and Matador follow suit?

Sad thing is, I bet we see another huge rash of record store closings circa Jan 2013.

What will happen to FOPP once they stop pressing old albums on cd

this is some very sad news. suddenly I feel so much out of place within my own generation, that's a weird feeling

The next monument to fall? That will be printed magazines as people will want to consume their information online where they also read most of the news.

What are your feelings? is it a move that you like or not?

i'm hoping for a 2021 hipster revival of the CD format

That article needs a bit more sourcing but at the same time, I can see it.

xpost I was just about to say the same thing... All this means is that hipsters will start embracing CD's more than ever.

It would make sense for CDR's to stick around.. Unsigned bands have to distribute their music at shows somehow..

i buy mostly vinyl if i can, however i still buy a lot of cds. Some stuff is cd only, i like nicely packaged cds too. Sometimes i'll take a punt on a new band (to me) cd if its cheap and the postage isnt much even when coming from outwith the uk as lp postage can be $20. There's still a lot of people over 25 who have always bought cds so it seems a bit early to stop selling them. Cant see my parents downloading or streaming, even if they only listen to music on ipods nowadays, they still like to own the cd. Digital only would need to be half the price of a cd to get them buying mp3s.

what would terry gross say if she couldn't say "...and later, so-and-so is here to talk about his/her new SEE DEE"

I still collect 'em too, but I don't think I've bought a major label release in a decade or more, unless it was used. Indie labels and self-released otoh, bunches. Downloads will never be my thing.

"It's a move that makes completely sense."

Me fail English? That's unpossible!

Sad news, but it's hard to say what'll happen. As long as there are CD-R drives for PC's, I can see more than a few people still burning their mp3's to CD, if that's what they prefer. As for myself, I much prefer the physicality and presentation of a CD or a vinyl record, but over time I've found it much more convenient (not to mention tidier) to 'go digital' - as long as the files are of a high quality audio standard, that is.

It's like, for *how long?* the future was "Video Singles"...

People, in the Sixties, would imagine "Video Players" that you would insert a disc into (or onto), and it would play music and show a film at the same time.

And, yes, video singles existed, but for around three? years.

Then they got sacked.

now, we're back to 'humming songs at each other'.

Just as I was about to buy my first CD this year today (the Smile Sessions - I want the 36-page booklet!)

I was ready to pay for music if CDs dropped to $4.99 a pop

That article needs a bit more sourcing but at the same time, I can see it.

― Ned Raggett, Monday, October 31, 2011 1:10 PM (47 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah this cannot possibly be true, maybe in like 5 years, idk they still sell tons cds

This seems a bit premature - the last I read CDs still account for about half of all music sales. I imagine there will be a few years where new releases and popular catalog items will be the only major-label CDs, kind of like the waning days of other formats.

This seems so astoundingly stupid to me, when there are still so many people who don't know how to do much with a computer (or don't own one at all) but still wanna buy the new Rascal Flatts album. I mean, it seems like a really classist decision, in a way, and not in a way that's likely to do the majors much good. Unless they're finally acknowledging their inevitable implosion and have decided to just go with it.

Locked grooves > hidden tracks

the best thing about CDs is that you can make records out of them with this handy device:

http://www.makershed.com/product_p/mkgk28.htm

that article sounds like a bunch of thinly sourced crap to me.

having a lot of cds = someone walks into your room, they see the stacks, and go "ahh, this guy is the real deal, he knows what's up w/ music"

having a lot of mp3s = "YOU JUST GOT BORED AND LEECHED OFF OF SOULSEEK ONE NIGHT"

> Something tragic I just realized about the death of the CD

> no more hidden tracks

Are there any LPs with hidden tracks? . i.e. a locked groove at the end, maybe with a runoff groove afterward to provide visual space, and then another track? The only one I own like that is Moby Grape's Wow, and the track after the locked groove is at 78 rpm no less, but unfortunately a spoken voice tells you to skip ahead and change the speed. Apparently the first Gorillaz album has a similarly hidden track too. Any others?

An even sneakier way to hide a track would be to have a track halfway with two parallel grooves, one that continues from and to the other tracks on the album side, and one you don't hear unless you drop the needle in the middle of the record in the right place.

Monty Python's Matching Tie and Handkerchief had a version of this trick thereby effectively having three sides.

And both sides are labelled "Side 2"!

I have that record too - that's what made me think of parallel grooves. But the two grooves are likely to reveal themselves after a few plays of that side. I was thinking using that technique only on, say, the third song on a five-song album side, so you always hear the same thing if you start from the beginning, but if you drop the needle on the third track you might get the alternate song.

I haven't thought of an easy way to hide a song in a digital download, at least something that wouldn't require a computer programmer to extract from a file or something.

i'm kind of pro-CD these days, lots of great sounding reissues you can buy used for peanuts...got a good marantz cd player and it sounds fantastic

Speaking of hidden tracks, Raphael Saadiq's Stone Rollin actually has one at the end.

The Pooh Sticks' self-titled one-sided LP has a locked groove before the last track On Tape.

The one on Nevermind sort of put me off the whole hidden track thing, when I nodded off after Something in the Way.

i love endless nameless

that hidden track on Odelay got me SO many times.

if major labels stop making CDs it kinda won't mean much imo, plenty of other people & places will continue to make them

yeah but almost all remaining sales outlets will disappear without major label product

that article is obv bullshit but anyway

at least we still have videosongs

There used to be a hidden track on an Ash CD where the band came back in the studio after a night drinking and puked into the mic :(

Was that what that was?

Monty Python's Matching Tie and Handkerchief had a version of this trick thereby effectively having three sides.

Simpsons producer/writer/golden-age-era showrunner David Mirkin talked about this on one of the DVD commentaries. He'd listened to the record dozens of times, and when he suddenly heard different material, thought he was losing his mind. Apparently, the Pythons got the idea -- parallel grooves of entirely different material -- from horse racing records. The outcome would be different depending on which groove the needle caught.

Was that what that was?

no, it was one of them puking out the window, but they hung a mic out and cheered him on, iirc

never heard that or the Odelay one due to vinyl

this should be bigger news if indeed it's true -- there are no sources in that article.

when this does (inevitably) happen, though, it'll mean more than just no new releases on CD. it's questionable whether many CD manufacturing plants can stay open, so a lot of catalogue material is likely to go out of print quickly. in other words the value of my CD collection is about to go up.

if this doesn't happen at the end of 2012 (which seems unlikely TBH) it will happen eventually.

we already see something of a collector's market, not just for your usual limited stuff, but sometimes for first- or second-generation CDs. my guess is that albums whose "original format" was CD -- e.g. a reasonable amount of indie stuff from the mid-90s -- will see the value of those original CDs increase. i mean who wouldn't be nostalgic for, i dunno, some mudhoney album on CD?

god i sound like geir.

(xp)
I remember those horse racing records too! Also seem to remember some variant of this trick where it would sometimes play something that sounded like Dennis Coffey's "Scorpio" but I'll never figure out exactly what this was- some weird kind of music business board game maybe.

i would not be nostalgic for a mudhoney cd. since you asked.

x-post

The wikipedia article on that topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unusual_types_of_gramophone_records#Unusual_grooving

the cost of metal cds both decreased when distribution in the States increased for a lot of European-based bands, then increased again when a lot of these albums went back out of print in the States cuz nobody was buying music anymore.

basically, with cds and books and records, i feel like there are already plenty out there. no need for more. i'll never be able to listen to more than a small fraction of them. books especially. i don't know why they continue making those things. there are literally a zillion of them out there in the world.

er, listen and read.

mad magazine flexi i had as a kid did that multiple groove thing. i loved that thing. a different record every time.

Odelay final track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvwHi0hPHrM

Looks like the thing I remember was a K-Tel board game called Superstar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xd6S0bVIag0

i had listened to that python disc many times before i heard the third side and it really threw me for a loop. can't remember how i finally figured out what it was (this was well before internet)....

I think it weirded me out the first time too. I recall it favoring one side over the other and the one that came up less often started with a door opening sound effect maybe, which made it that much more startling. Also it ended with a locked groove saying "the record's stuck" no? Also:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75wWitdMUMc

IIRC the locked groove at the end had the line "Sorry squire, I scratched the record..."

Also for Scott, the Mad Mag flexi "It's a Super Spectacular Day":
http://youtu.be/myyc812X1_I?t=40s

Used to have that Mad flexi which I got when it came out: it really blew my mind at the time.

One variation not mentioned in the wiki is the Lint CD (vaguely Swirlies related) where there was a track, playable on a record player, on the CD itself. Not sure if anyone else ever did that.

> Also (Monty Python's Matching Tie & Hankerchief) ended with a locked groove saying "the record's stuck" no?

My copy didn't.... I won't say how the stuck record resolves here, as not to spoil what may be the funniest part of the whole record

Oh yeah, now I remember

i'm hoping for a 2021 hipster revival of the CD format

There's already a hipster revival of cassettes (a medium inferior to CD in every way) going on, at least in here, so a CD revival seems inevitable. Like with the cassette revival, and vinyl revival before it (and all sorts of revivals, to be honest), all it takes is the first generation with no first-hand experience of vinyl/cassette/CD to grow up, and suddenly the old format will feel new and exotic to them... Whereas most of those who lived with the earlier formats just remember them as a regular commodity that was replaced by a superior one.

Vinyl got its revival because vinyl looks cooler than CDs and (arguably) sound better. CDs sound the same as downloads (at least, it will once lossless files becomes the standard) and 5" artwork has never looked great, so what would be the incentive to revive it? Not all obsolete formats get a revival - I certainly missed the 8-track revival, anyway.

The late great Seething Wells still OTM about vinyl.

Not all obsolete formats get revived, true, but the ones that were the most popular are the most likely to; to youngsters they represent some kind of a lost world that was cooler than today. If the cassette (which has even tinier artwork, crappier sound quality, and worse durability than the CD) is now revived, surely the CD will be.

Vinyl sounding better is a mostly false claim, based on some crappy remastering done with the early CDs, but the vinyl revivalists like to repeat it, because it makes their revivalism sound more justified. But most of the people who lived during the vinyl era switched to CD (because it's more durable, easier to use, and the sound doesn't deteriorate with age), and haven't turned back to vinyl.

I dunno, LPs are more what you 'invest' in, in Time, and Storage space.

CDs can be fed into an ipod/whatever, then stuck in the loft never to be seen again but heard whenever. Out and about, maybe.

LPs have to be played at home on reasonable sound systems, so listening is more an active experience.

Does it sound better? I don't know. But a mildly scratchy vinyl will always sound better than a mildly scratched CD.

Cassettes? They were a handy way of distributing music without employing a factory. When CDs became things you could burn at home, the need for cassettes was gone.

dammit... guess this means I finally gotta quit new music altogether.

wait... YAY!!!!

You looking for a job with Guardian Film and Music then?

Something tragic I just realized about the death of the CD

Basically, this is how the music industry keeps itself going.

If people buy CDs, the will save them someplace, or they will send them out to second-hand shops, and those shops will sell them to people, with/for less money. The company that owns the copyright gets nowt.

Whereas downloads are created to prevent any kind of 'second-hand' sales. Try selling off your old collection of mp3s on ebay, see how far you get.

If nothing else this means that my number one albums blog may actually have an ending.

Pete Townshend should give a lecture on it, or a seminar, or children's workshop or something

Um...

old man marcello linking to blog posts from 2008. it really is nostalgia time.

and by dead people at that. where will it end?

in other words the value of my CD collection is about to go up.

lol

Potted version of Townshend’s Jarvis Cocker Lecture yesterday:

“EEEEEE iTunes are devil’s vampire EEEEEE stiflEEEEEEng creativitEEEEEE bring back cylinders you knew where you were EEEEEE we the people caribou barbieEEEEEEE”

After years of believing that vinyl-fetishists were just being precious, I've recently come round to the differences after having been bought a USB turntable for my birthday.

Comparing the vinyl copy of the Studio One comp that I also received, with the free downloadable copy, I've come to the conclusion that different music sounds best on different formats. Despite the turntable being rather low-qual and boasting inbuilt speakers only, I have concluded it's the only way to listen to the album. On MP3, I find the tracks just don't have the raw impact. They're the same songs, the same notes, but these are organic reggae flavours that are flattened when digitally reproduced (even through a much better system than the vinyl). The same goes for Fleetwood Mac's 'Rumours' which I'd had on MP3 for years and never thought much of, but on the turntable happens to be the best album ever recorded.

Listening to that Studio One album on MP3, I'm tempted to skip a lot of tracks to get to my favourites. Putting a needle on the record is kind of a wild ride. You are at the mercy of sequencing. You are forced to listen to the tracks in sequential order and when the side runs out, you have two options - turn it over and carry on or not. Actually, the day I received my record player, I had friends round and the side ran out. My girlfriend said "Are you going to turn it over?" and I said "No, I like the fact it's over - an MP3 player never stops playing." There was something comforting, almost Zen in the way the record had reached closure.

Similarly, there's modern dance and electronica which I wouldn't dream of playing on me old cracklebox. It's written on a computer, it should be played through a computer.

And then you've got labels like Not Not Fun, Magic & Dreams etc whose music is produced in such a way that it sounds best (or so they claim) on tape.

The medium is the message.

Not sure how seriously caek meant his "lol" about CD collections going up in value, but I'm already seeing that a lot of CDs from the 90s, particularly OOP major label stuff (also ran and forgotten alt-rock bands for the most part) going for surprising amounts at times. Nothing to bank your retirement on, but far from as worthless as some might expect them to be.

Actually, the day I received my record player, I had friends round and the side ran out. My girlfriend said "Are you going to turn it over?" and I said "No, I like the fact it's over - an MP3 player never stops playing." There was something comforting, almost Zen in the way the record had reached closure.

Reminds me, a friend of mine told me he thought he'd give Yes a go and so he got a (vinyl) copy of "Yessongs" or "Tales from Topographic Oceans" or something and it was playing away, in the background really, when he noticed the band had gotten into this particularly knotty 13/8 7/4 x/y groove. "Hmmmmm," he thought, "that's quite good, bit repetitive though." Anyway, he sort of dozed off and when he woke up the Yes boys were still hammering away at this impossibly complex riff... like 30 minutes after they'd started... hold on, he thought, records aren't that long are they? Of course, the record had stuck and he'd thought, "Oh it's Yes, that's what the kind of stuff they play I suppose."

friend IT WAS YOU

But a mildly scratchy vinyl will always sound better than a mildly scratched CD.

Wot?? A mildly scratched LP clicks, pops and jumps, ruining the musical experience. A mildly scratched CD in a decent player sounds like it's not scratched at all. A badly scratched CD, yeah, that's just as bad as the LP.

It's worse, you can't play it at all

Tuomas NOTM in re: the cassette - the reason for the revival is an actually pretty interesting object-fetishism, because it's nearly impossible for a cassette to put on airs. Even the coolest looking cassette design is forced, by its size, to acknowledge its own smallness; that's always been one of the neat things about tapes, and is part of what was neat about the brief reign of the cassette -- visually, aesthetically, they're incapable of demanding that you take them seriously. I honestly don't get how people who spend a lot of time thinking about art of any kind reduce their medium/message thought to "clarity of signal uber alles" in this discussion; of course presentation makes a difference. Of course the medium is part of the presentation; that's as true of mp3s as it is of elaborate boxed sets. To claim otherwise is to cop the sort of tiresome hippie pose of pretending you don't notice any externals on a person, just "what's on the inside." A noble goal with people, however often falsely claimed! An infantile aesthetic strategy toward art, however.

aero all kinds of OTM. When I hear people claim that presentation is a disposable extra as opposed to part of the art I think they're either lying or missing something.

Yeah, aero is otm, although I don't collect tapes because a) I have nowhere to play them and b) I don't need yet another physical media taking up untold amounts of space. A lot of recent metal tapes look fucking awesome though.

But, yeah, I'm a luddite and I'll prefer any physical presentation over the lifelessness of digital files, no matter how great they sound.

most of my collection from about '85-'94 is on tape. the reason is that, commuting between oxford and london every day, the only chance i got to sit down and properly listen to new music was to do it on the walkman on the coach (or train if i was running late/feeling particularly flush). then i got a discman and that was that, but i've still got all the old tapes and must admit they do look rather handsome. no idea how much they would fetch today as i suspect there's almost no market for them, but i'd never sell them anyway. in that period labels did put more effort into making the package as equivalent to the album/cd as possible (even with microscopic sleevenotes) whereas you look at seventies tapes and they were definitely for the bottom end of the demographic.

(and you'd have to look at seventies tapes; you couldn't play them since they'd start warping after two listens)

Grey plastic

Yeah Seventies tapes were hideous - lots of yellow sleeves. I quite liked the 80s ones with the ridiculous foldouts. Pretty much the only tapes I still own though are my own mixtapes or those live bootlegs they used to sell at Camden market.

I've got hours of tapes of me and my brother trying to playing music in our bedroom (me on bass + him on guitar usually), or doing stuff separately.

... schoolboy attempts at emulating Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle et al

tapes sound great. which is why i still make tape comps from vinyl. they reproduce vinyl the best (well, reel-to-reel tape does it best and then cassette tape). which is why i always scoop up sealed high bias tapes at thrift stores. they sell for too much money online!

and tape never really went away as far as underground metal/noise/etc goes. always been plenty of tape labels. but i guess now that chillwave bands or whatever are making tapes its more of a thing. they are way more fun than CDRs. CDRs are kinda the worst thing ever. i can usually only get them to play twice and that's it.

every mix i ever put on ilm was made from vinyl onto tape and then transferred to the internet. and they sound really good to me.

So am I the only one who plays new cassettes once to record them into my computer so I can just play them there?

Tapes are nice and chunky and fit in your hand and don't smash on impact like CD jewelcases. There's a neat compactness about them that I like.

give me tapes over cdrs any day.

I think it was Dave Marsh who said re: cassettes, "rewinding is the longest distance between any two points."

I spend WAY too much time scrolling through MP3 libraries making the perfect playlists for whatever fleeting mood I might happen to be in, only to listen a fraction through and forgetting to save them anyway. Before MP3s, I didn't spend ages at social gatherings staring into a screen trying to select the best music for the mood. You stuck on Music For a Jilted Generation and listened to it all the way through, warts and all.

I know that's a really obvious thing to say, but I'm kind of sad that the album cover has been replaced by the iTunes library. I know which one is more aesthetically pleasing.

Tuomas NOTM in re: the cassette - the reason for the revival is an actually pretty interesting object-fetishism, because it's nearly impossible for a cassette to put on airs. Even the coolest looking cassette design is forced, by its size, to acknowledge its own smallness; that's always been one of the neat things about tapes, and is part of what was neat about the brief reign of the cassette -- visually, aesthetically, they're incapable of demanding that you take them seriously. I honestly don't get how people who spend a lot of time thinking about art of any kind reduce their medium/message thought to "clarity of signal uber alles" in this discussion; of course presentation makes a difference.

I never said there wasn't a fetishism to these revivals; of course there is, otherwise there wouldn't have been a cassette revival (nor a vinyl revival). My point was that the people who are most likely to succumb to this fetishism are those to whom the object is a bit foreign, a thing of the Golden Past. The cassette revivalists I'm familiar with are people who buy and produce local rap music (sometimes US rap too) on tapes. I can tell you that for them the size and "non-seriousness" of cassettes is not what they fetishize: they're into cassettes because they identify with a particular era of (underground) rap, when they were the main way of distributing music, when people made tapes at home or in small studios and sold them from their trunk.

These people feel that particular types of rap (underground, rough, non-commercial) feels better, even sounds better on cassette. But it's just not underground distribution methods of rap they're fetishizing: otherwise they'd just produce and buy stuff of CDRs, which obviously are today's true equivalent of 1980s "street tapes". They rate cassettes much higher than CDRs. And I don't think it's a coincidence that most of these people are in their early 20s or late teens. You don't see too many 30+ year old rap fans, who actually had to buy most of their music on cassette, longing for the glory days of that format.

i loooove opening up old sealed blank tapes. fresh as the day they were born. i just cracked open a sealed tdk sa-c90 this morning. putting tons of old reggae 45s on ebay and i wanted to tape some.

Also, I don't understand how anyone can claim cassettes sound better than CDs. AFAIK the dynamic range of cassettes is much narrower than on CDs, so the sound on them is always compressed.

(x-post)

I know that's a really obvious thing to say, but I'm kind of sad that the album cover has been replaced by the iTunes library. I know which one is more aesthetically pleasing.

I wonder if similar feelings held sway in the 50s, like, "I'm kind of sad that this opulent book-like album of 78s has been replaced by a single cardboard sleeve."

80's stock tapes of rap albums can often sound better than the cd versions. 80's rap cds could often sound really bad in comparison to the vinyl or tape.

You stuck on Music For a Jilted Generation and listened to it all the way through, warts and all

Nowadays the ball kicks itself with unswerving accuracy everytime while a young boy looks through the window, wondering what's missing. The ball goes in the net each time and Mrs Nevin's greenhouse window is finally safe as chance is finally bested. Yet look at the little boy's face, "but where is MY childhood?" he types to the head of the Romulan high council

Yeah, but that's because in the 1980s many people hadn't really mastered the art of CD mastering. It's not some inherent quality of cassettes or CDs. Remastered CD versions of those albums are bound to sound better.

(xpost)

To be fair, when I wrote about the soundtrack to South Pacific on Then Play Long, I dug out the original vinyl issue, complete with its opulent book-like sleeve (lots of colour stills from the movie, sleevenote by Richard Rodgers himself), rather than the one-dimensional CD reissue, and I think I appreciated the record much more as a result.

80's metal tapes can also sound better than the vinyl AND the cd version. i just chalk this up to small rap and metal labels using crap cd-making plants/manufacturers at the time. harder to fuck up a tape? i dunno. the samples on 80's rap cds could be ridiculously loud in comparison to the music. like, they were still figuring out the digital medium? i have no idea. i'm no expert. but they didn't sound that way on tape or vinyl.

yeah x-post

yeah but no remastered CDs are often worse/no better than the original versions. new problems, but worse.

i will take an original tape of south of heaven over the unlistenable cd remaster any day. def jam always made nice tapes though.

Also - and this is something I think we as music fans take for-granted - I think casual music listeners are still more comfortable with walking into a shop, browsing through a few albums, maybe asking the shopkeeper for information/recommendations and coming home with a physical object with an album cover to consolidate the act's overall aesthetic, than actively purchasing music online.

If the music industry is flagging, it could be down to a lack of passive, walk-in trade. With physical formats, one is more likely to make an impulse decision. You're walking through town or the supermarket on an errand, and you spy the CD rack and have a flick through. Unless you actively subscribe to record shop email lists or are targeted by online ads via iTunes or Spotify, it's unlikely that as a casual music listener you will go out and buy an album on impulse. Similarly, those less computer literate still struggle with the idea of online music shops and downloads.

With physical formats, it's not just a personal thing of "Oh I like the artwork, I like something I can hold in my hand and touch" - it's more than that. If you're at a friend's house and they're playing an album, you can ask "What is this?" and they'll look at their iTunes and say "Oh, it's [Belle & Sebastian / Rustie / The Slits]" or whatever. And that's it. All you've learnt is that the music you're listening to is made by Belle & Sebastian/Rustie/The Slits and that they make music. Other than that, you're none the wiser. Now if you're lucky enough to be listening to a CD or vinyl, the conversation may also involve the passing of packaging to said inductee so that she may get an idea of the act's aesthetic - the names of the songs, the angle of their artwork, the year it might have been made, whether the band sport beards or not etc. And this is all important stuff. It really is, because sometimes a little background is the thing that can connect or disconnect you from the music. With digital formats, you're boiling everything down to JUST THE MUSIC, which is fine in some cases, but terrible in others where an act's mythos extends beyond JUST THE MUSIC.

I say this because my girlfriend had all but stopped buying music until the other day when she came home with a clutch of CDs she'd just happened to buy herself on a whim while out in town. This was in Letchworth, as there are no longer any record shops left in Hitchin at all. This was the first music she'd sought out herself since the decline of the physical format in the mid-2000s. Needless to say, even though her choices included the Black Keys and Fleet Foxes, I was overjoyed to see she'd actively bought some music for herself rather than asking me for a copy or a mixtape on CD-R.

ou stuck on Music For a Jilted Generation and listened to it all the way through, warts and all

Nowadays the ball kicks itself with unswerving accuracy everytime while a young boy looks through the window, wondering what's missing. The ball goes in the net each time and Mrs Nevin's greenhouse window is finally safe as chance is finally bested. Yet look at the little boy's face, "but where is MY childhood?" he types to the head of the Romulan high council

― post, Tuesday, 1 November 2011 14:51 (10 minutes ago) Bookmark

Somehow I knew this would happen when I wrote that.

Also, I don't understand how anyone can claim cassettes sound better than CDs. AFAIK the dynamic range of cassettes is much narrower than on CDs, so the sound on them is always compressed.

compression isn't necessarily a bad thing for music, T

I always hated the sound of cassettes, but it wasn't the compression. It was because I listened on a shitty walkman and tapes always sounded like someone was very slowly turning the treble up and down.

This also goes back to a thread a while back where we argued about whether TOTP should be axed or not. Some argued that what with YouTube etc, people can watch music of their choice whenever they like, rendering shows like TOTP useless. But you kind of have to actively WANT to watch a YouTube video to do that. A casual music listener wouldn't necessarily go on YouTube to do this, but when it's on TV straight after Eastenders, there's a captive audience made to sit through songs they do and don't like.

There are handy tools online, like Last.FM and Spotify and YouTube recommendations to encourage passive music discovery, but none of them are as accessible as simply having the TV on. So are we coming closer to a time where only active music seekers will be purchasing music?

xposts

...whether the band sport beards or not etc. And this is all important stuff. It really is.

Love this, and identify with it 100%. My wife, otoh, finds all the aesthetic stuff pretty much of no concern.

Somehow I knew this would happen when I wrote that.

― Mum-Ra Gaddafi the Ever-Living (dog latin), Tuesday, 1 November 2011

Sisco looked in the mirror, Benjamin? is that you? He looked gaunt, tired, and felt it too. So many light years had passed, but here he was in his quarters where he had always been, Ginsters pasty in hand, ball at his feet, The Fat of the Land on repeat. If only there was a way to skip past some of those tracks. When they'd set off from base, a younger, leaner crew, he'd loved this album. Always played it on the way to Rigel V

He turned and looked at his antique kettle, but wandered over to the replicator instead. That review wasn't going to write itself, Admiral Hartley and the rest of Starfleet command didn't trust him anymore, since he filed that Klaxons review late. The Klaxons, who even gave a shit? Didn't they know what he had to put up with out here, that damn shape shifter meddling in everything, and getting bands to play out here was virtually impossible. Those Bajorans didn't know shit about music. If they ran a decent shuttle service out of here it would at least be something

"ah fuck it, who even cares" he shouted into the void and kicked the ball square into the wormhole. Suddenly he was back home, in his old ford fiesta, parked outside the petrol station, the cassette had jammed. Where the fuck was Worf? that prick was somehow in every series but nowhere when you needed him

tapes sound great. which is why i still make tape comps from vinyl. they reproduce vinyl the best (well, reel-to-reel tape does it best and then cassette tape). which is why i always scoop up sealed high bias tapes at thrift stores. they sell for too much money online!

man it kills me seeing how much tapes can go for (as in like $80 or w/e), & tangentially the presentation that then has to go into an ebay auction (florid description, tasteful photography, origin backstory) in order to assuage people's fears that they're actually just buying a 99c cassette tape at 1000% inflation. otm about opening them up too!, that is sensory nostalgia i can get behind.

a lot of this got argued out in a good thread a while ago, so i won't reprise, but yeah i think it is kinda a mistake to get too quality orientated, particularly given where a cassette is realistically going to fit in your life, at the moment - on a tape player in the kitchen or keeping you company on a car-ride, situations through which the priority is not going to be dynamic range, & in which fidelity might not even be the ideal aim for the rendering of the music. they're still great for mixes, too. i just replaced my tape deck & made my friend a tape, & even it being palm-sized felt part of its charm in handing it over, w/a cover & all my scribbling.

am really interested in what happens to redundant medias & how they change in their afterlife. it's funny with vhs now, because it really can connote something on a familiar, subconscious level - some sort of bleary over-saturation that puts you back in the aesthetic/semantic field of what it was like being around then. or super 8, now being used to evince nostalgia, warmth, memories of innocence. cassettes, maybe people would trade off a sense of intimacy or ownership that accompanied the time at which they were currency, but that just seems like another cool layer to be aware of while listening.

good post Schlump. Part of the fun for me in playing tapes is the nostalgia thing you allude to with VHS- playing a free tape I got with the NME in 1997 which reminds me of going to Glastonbury with friends, for example.

ive still got a 10 pack of tdk 90s sealed. used to buy shitloads of these. I love buying tapes from diy indie and metal labels. so cheap!

With tape, there's this thing about "hidden potential" - this sort of aural world neatly stowed away on a brown film that unravels and spools its way out into your ears as the tape plays and then just as quickly reels its way back in. I remember buying new cassette albums and feeling this way, like, "there's a whole unexplored void ready to be filled between me and the end of this tape" - A quest in which you walk linearly from beginning to end - point A to B - with each track given equal treatment. The skip button is like introducing a teleport device to this journey - if things get rocky, you can dissolve and reappear wherever you want, like a neutrino. So in this way Frodo goes from the Shire to Mordor without encountering Worm Tongue or meeting Tom Bombadil. He learns nothing on his journey other than how to drop a ring in some lava.

i feel like i could argue an opposite point by luxuriating in the memory of rewinding your new-favourite-song & occupying the suspense that was generated while the tape whirred, but yes otm. i think w/that though we're back to each format having its perks, kinda like books vs internet, with both linear consumption & promiscuous intake both having their perks.

5xtdk 90s are like £7 or something ridiculous here atm, tho i think they've come down a lil recently.

used to get 10 tdk 90s from woolies for £4

it was a sampler time

With tape, there's this thing about "hidden potential" - this sort of aural world neatly stowed away on a brown film that unravels and spools its way out into your ears as the tape plays and then just as quickly reels its way back in. I remember buying new cassette albums and feeling this way, like, "there's a whole unexplored void ready to be filled between me and the end of this tape" - A quest in which you walk linearly from beginning to end - point A to B - with each track given equal treatment. The skip button is like introducing a teleport device to this journey - if things get rocky, you can dissolve and reappear wherever you want, like a neutrino. So in this way Frodo goes from the Shire to Mordor without encountering Worm Tongue or meeting Tom Bombadil. He learns nothing on his journey other than how to drop a ring in some lava.

― Mum-Ra Gaddafi the Ever-Living (dog latin), Tuesday, 1 November 2011

Quark? is that you? Its sisco here, I think our communications may be being tapped. I'm back on earth, holed up in a ford fiesta, can you get me back to the station. I kicked a ball, you know, just like old times, and it went straight into the wormhole and now I can't get back.

Are you with bombadil now? is he mixed up in this somehow? I can't leave you guys alone for 5 minutes. and who the hell is warm tongue? I can't keep up with this, get me Bashir

Yeah, I love having an MP3 collection. It's still my preferred way of listening and I remember thinking what a drag having to make taped compilations was and wishing I could whack my whole CD collection into a giant changer so I could listen tot the whole thing on random. But there are definitely perks to the analogue physicality of CD/Tape/Vinyl formats that maybe we forgot in our rush to adopt digital, and I think the main impact has been on the casual listener - the passive shopper, the dilettante who stumbles onto music through chance encounters - people like my parents, or my brothers and sisters who might have once upon a time bought a new CD on their lunchbreaks, or received music as a present - no longer make new discoveries. I couldn't imagine buying someone an MP3 download for their birthday or Christmas.

xpost

putting tons of old reggae 45s on ebay and i wanted to tape some.

Ever make up edits and mixes on cassettes? Spending ages with your finger poised on the pause button to punch in on the exact right beat? I've got lots of reggae mixes I made up on tape (y'know, song plus dub/version edited together), some of which I re-did later on computer. Ha, first edit I ever remember making was of Can's "I Want More" and "... And More", I re-did that on computer but the original cassette version is much better, for some reason.

"there's a whole unexplored void ready to be filled between me and the end of this tape" - A quest in which you walk linearly from beginning to end - point A to B - with each track given equal treatment. The skip button is like introducing a teleport device to this journey - if things get rocky, you can dissolve and reappear wherever you want, like a neutrino. So in this way Frodo goes from the Shire to Mordor without encountering Worm Tongue or meeting Tom Bombadil. He learns nothing on his journey other than how to drop a ring in some lava.

No one's forcing you to use the teleport option on CDs, though. But if you can't resist the urge, just smash the "skip" button in your CD, and voila! No teleport for you. Also, IMO CDs are better for the kind of immersion you describe, because unlike with tapes and vinyls, you don't have to awkwardly zap back from Middle-Earth to the real world mid-travel just to change sides.

OTOH, during the tape era I remember often fast forwarding past boring tracks on some albums. So I was glad when CDs made the teleportation a bit easier.

xpost I did this. My dad had a rather nice Technics hi-fi and I used to spend ages splicing things together. Later I'd make "mix" tapes made using this technique in conjunction with Mini-Disc edits and the "blend" option in Winamp. This goes back to the "void/journey" thing I mentioned upthread - a mixtape you receive is more than just a bunch of tracks lined up. Putting together a CD-R for someone isn't the same - it's so disposable, so easy to do. Mixtapes require artisanship. You know the compiler has spent a long time dubbing and listening back to the selection of songs, possibly adding their own personal touch to the mix with edits, even fragments of material sourced from elsewhere. By listening back to the tape, you're sharing this journey. Plus, because you can't skip any of it you're automatically subscribed to every twist, turn, surprise and hiccup laid out over those 90 minutes. There's no way of anticipating what is to come when listening to a tape for the first time. The cassette tape is a sort of palette ready to be "painted" on by the compiler. It's a work of art in its own right.

xps &c
that's rad, tom D. weren't non-logic decks a critical instrument in the rise of that kinda thing?

No one's forcing you to use the teleport option on CDs, though. But if you can't resist the urge, just smash the "skip" button in your CD, and voila! No teleport for you. Also, IMO CDs are better for the kind of immersion you describe, because unlike with tapes and vinyls, you don't have to awkwardly zap back from Middle-Earth to the real world mid-travel just to change sides.

i feel like acting like you can ignore it is going back to judging cds as an idea rather than based on how you actually use them, though; you do skip, & that's just part of what they're like. the argument in favour of tapes is that you end up listening through things which you could perfectly ably skip past - the technology is there - but don't, as part of a cost/benefit analysis of it taking slightly too much effort, & so ending up having an experience of hearing things through, for better/worse.

i still want a dragon. so cool. never see any and i don't want to buy a $$$ one online.

http://www.blatata.com/uploads/posts/2008-06/1212660316_dragon.jpg

that's rad, tom D. weren't non-logic decks a critical instrument in the rise of that kinda thing?

I don't know what a non-logic deck is, so I can't answer that

xp Is that the auto-reverse deck that physically flips the tape around?

By listening back to the tape, you're sharing this journey. Plus, because you can't skip any of it you're automatically subscribed to every twist, turn, surprise and hiccup laid out over those 90 minutes.

yes - i feel like it's part of the same argument of embracing that the presentation of something matters & figures in how you receive a thing; being aware of the thing's context and origin totally colours your listening experience every time.

i saw a restored digital print of last year in marienbad recently & it's weird being at one remove from something, w/o the signifier that would usually communicate or reinforce the thing's origin - it was less like itself for not being presented the way it would have been at the time. that kind of recontextualisation can really work, also, but i think that there's probably a lot of music that fits neatly onto a cassette better than it does onto something else.

c&p-ing a thing about decks from here, tom; i'm kinda quoting myself as it isn't something i've been on both sides of using, but it's def useful:

Full-logic decks of course are considered high-end. The controls on these are electronic, which means that once you press PLAY, the deck itself goes through a circuitous step of its own before it actually plays the cassette. The problem then is that little moment of time between actually pressing PAUSE and the tape actually pausing, which means you can’t place an edit exactly where you want it.

The controls on a non-logic deck, however, are far more mechanical; the play button is literally attached to the mechanism that actually brings the head to bear on your tape. When you activate the PAUSE, the music stops in that very instant. When you release the PAUSE, the music starts instantly. That is why a non-logic deck actually works better here.

i like flipping the vinyl over. long albums ie double or triple vinyl dont seem to feel as long as a double cds does. that wee break flipping the vinyl over is great for me.

No one's forcing you to use the teleport option on CDs, though. But if you can't resist the urge, just smash the "skip" button in your CD, and voila! No teleport for you. Also, IMO CDs are better for the kind of immersion you describe, because unlike with tapes and vinyls, you don't have to awkwardly zap back from Middle-Earth to the real world mid-travel just to change sides.

OTOH, during the tape era I remember often fast forwarding past boring tracks on some albums. So I was glad when CDs made the teleportation a bit easier.

Sure, no one's denying any of this, and having the option to skip is fantastic. It's brilliant being this all-powerful multi-limbed creature who can send tentacles out around the portable harddrive's 1TB universe to retrieve only the cream of the crop of music and compile it into a playlist with the minimum of fuss. Brilliant. I'm not lamenting it. But saying "smash the skip button" is also very much missing my point.

(xxp @ myself, i kinda went too far in that post a coupla times but i basically agree w/it; not that you are constantly aware of where something came from all the time, but that you're slightly primed to hear something knowing its origin & in light of where it's coming from, like its place in a tracklisting)

yeah, the dragon physically flipped the tape. which was crazy. i would settle for a mint marantz though. they made great decks.

http://www.audioscope.net/images/marantzsd9000dbx.jpg

Yes, non-logic desk, totally mechanical gear-grinding stuff, perfect (xxxp)

Does that thing transform into

http://inadawords.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/g1-soundwave.jpg

"Soundwave, fire!"

"Wait...wait, hold on. I'm rewinding."

xxxxxpost or what schlump said. People get confused with what you can do with tapes/vinyl/CDs/Youtubes/MP3s and what you do actually do. With MP3s, I have the power to listen to music however I want, so why do I find myself spedning up to an hour blankly staring at the computer, with the random button on, hitting skip skip skip skip skip while trying to compile that ultimate "songs for when I'm feeling a little bit rural and Scottish but also like a cyborg" playlist which I will never ever listen to again. With MP3 my associations with so many albums are nothing more than a list of songs on a PC monitor.

as far as object worship goes AND high fidelity its hard to beat a nice reel to reel. i've never gone that far. though very few things sound as nice on the right equipment.

http://retrothing.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83452989a69e201116858d0e4970c-800wi

Yowzah

that's actually a custom-made technics. costs about five grand.

imaginary playlist lol, dog latin. it's so much another insane alternate reality philosophical discussion, just about where what you chose ended up taking you & where you would have been otherwise; there are pluses to tapes that makes it a neat medium though so yeah.

that marantz deck is amazing.

going back, slightly, to the quality thing, i don't listen to cds while listening i had a better stereo, or to records wishing i had even better speakers, even though those things would improve the delivery & quality of the sound, & it's similar w/tapes, to me; unless something is totally wiped (& not even always then) they are usually doing their thing well enough, & imagining them being on a superior format wouldn't necessarily correlate w/a huge leap in my enjoyment

i don't listen to cds while wishing i had a better stereo, rather

Also - and this is something I think we as music fans take for-granted - I think casual music listeners are still more comfortable with walking into a shop, browsing through a few albums, maybe asking the shopkeeper for information/recommendations and coming home with a physical object with an album cover to consolidate the act's overall aesthetic, than actively purchasing music online

I’d like to see stats for that since the rate of record shop closures suggests otherwise. Personally I feel much more comfortable getting my music online; it’s cheaper, there’s a wider range of stock available and there are no counter staff issues (either miserable as sin or “characters”). Going into record shops now, one just sighs at the amount of stuff there that I could get for half the price and none of the hassle on Amazon, and at the vast amount of stuff that isn’t there, yet appears to be in abundance (again on Amazon).

Of course you lose the random/serendipity factor but that’s the fault of record shops for not rising to meet the online challenge; if they had better and more records, then “we” wouldn’t need to resort to getting them online.

The shops that are good – and consequently still get my money – are those wise enough to know their demographic but not to take it for granted, e.g. Phonica, where I bought the Factory Floor EP from last year on CD on Sunday. That’s the way forward; making things available that aren’t on Amazon.

Another thing I can't stand is watching YouTube videos - I can't bear it. What a horrible way to enjoy music. The next big step in formatting will hopefully free us from staring at a screen while listening to music. Of course, that ain't gonna happen.

Marcello, you're talking from the point of view of a music lover who's probably bought a lot of music from shops in the past and are au fait with the online music shopping experience. It suits a lot of people to shop online - especially if they have some idea of what they wish to seek out (or that they wish to seek music out in the first place).

People like you and I have stopped buying much of our music from shops for various reasons, and as regular music consumers we make up a huge demographic for the music industry - hence why it's gone into decline.

But for many people buying music isn't something you do on a day-to-day basis or as an active thing. Many people walk past the record shop and think "hey, you know what? I'm going to buy myself a CD" or "I know what I'm going to get sis for Christmas" or something. And I can imagine this not really occurring to them if there were no record shops or CDs and if everything was kept to online downloads.

i think there are aspects of buying music online/"the new model" that appeal to whatever we're calling non-intensive-music-people here (laypersons, normals); like i think being able to buy a couple of songs instead of an album is huge for people who don't give a shit about the album as an artform and just want the good songs they heard and want those ones and not all the shit they didn't even like, you know. not really arguing that the physical possession of an object is a big thing inspiring spontaneous purchases but i don't think the new alternative is totally dead - again, convenience, being able to hear samples, etc etc etc

Another thing I can't stand is watching YouTube videos - I can't bear it. What a horrible way to enjoy music. The next big step in formatting will hopefully free us from staring at a screen while listening to music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kXMcjKhBgU

xpost ...and to compensate for this, music advertising is on the increase: record companies and online shops have gone into overdrive trying to entice people into buying their wares through Spotify slots, TV ads, Facebook and Google targeting and pretty much the whole of MySpace. This is a tragic way to discover music IMO and I always think less of a band if I see a TV advert for their new album, but what can you do.

I still think my favourite way to discover new music is in a record shop - hearing something that catches my ear over the tannoy; chancing on some fantastic-looking compilation while idly flicking through the racks on a Saturday afternoon. Miles better than reading online reviews or looking at thumbnails on Boomkat.

xxpost , schlump, this is true.

Many people walk past the record shop and think "hey, you know what? I'm going to buy myself a CD" or "I know what I'm going to get sis for Christmas" or something. And I can imagine this not really occurring to them if there were no record shops or CDs and if everything was kept to online downloads.

Well, maybe, though I’d be inclined to say supermarkets or department stores rather than record shops. The only time I ever see casual shoppers in HMV is at Christmas.

Haven't heard or thought about the dragon in decades

i zoom out a lil too far w/this argument because i think probably mainly the non-commercial part of the music-internet is so movingly awesome in terms of artistic reach & migration, &c, that it can compensate for everything else. but yeah, record stores <3, my favs comport entirely w/every claim for what they should be itt; places where you hear stuff, get things that aren't on the radar elsewhere (they might be available elsewhere but, you know, how would you know &c), can rely on knowledgeable/enthusiastic staff, &c&c&c

i still miss buying singles. i would never buy a single online in a million years. i knew the labels were cooked years ago when i could no longer buy even a cd single (let alone a vinyl 12 inch) in a record store. but i understand why they had to stop doing it. it looked bad that you could buy a 40 minute single for 3.99 and have to buy a 40 minute album for 17.99.

My local record store made me a music fan to some extent.

Killing the single was pretty much what started the record industry down its current excrement-rich path to certain doom. In the late 90s it was, "No, you can't buy one song by the Backstreet Boys! You have to buy the whole CD! And, oh, it's like $18 now." The initial attraction to Napster wasn't "Cool, it's free!" as much as it was "Cool, I can get the one song I want without shit I don't!"

xp

"Cool, I can get the one song I want without shit I don't!"

pair this with illegal price fixing for albums full of shit that people didn't want and it's no surprise that they moved in the direction of 99-cent downloads.

Yeah, but that's because in the 1980s many people hadn't really mastered the art of CD mastering. It's not some inherent quality of cassettes or CDs. Remastered CD versions of those albums are bound to sound better.

it's true, imaginary records can just just as good as you want them to

I wasn't talking about imaginary records, rather than new 90s/00s CD remasters of albums that originally came out on CD in the 80s.

I bet scott was thinking of lots of records that haven't had remasters though

and ones that came out on CD in the 90s and sounded shit then

if it was scott, I'm too drunk to ctrl_f

is "endless nameless" on the Nevermind reissue?

Yeah, tacked on right after "Something in the Way" on the same track.

and ones that came out on CD in the 90s and sounded shit then

For example?

Anyway, it doesn't matter. Of course you can still release a badly mastered CD even today. But the main reason so many 80s CDs sound worse than the same albums on tape or vinyl is that CD mastering was only taking it first steps back then. By the 1990s things had generally gotten better, though of there were still individual exceptions. My point was just that the reason why 80s rap might've sounded better on cassette is not that cassettes have some inherent qualities that make the sound on them better than on CDs (it's the opposite).

"though of course there were"

Early, cheaply-made CDs tend to oxidise. See my rather funny-coloured copy of SAWII.

That said, very early good-quality CDs technically shouldn't go wrong.

Early, cheaply-made CDs tend to oxidise. See my rather funny-coloured copy of SAWII.

The oxidisation was a problem caused by faulty processing in one particular CD pressing plant. Unfortunately it helped the spread the myth of "CD burn" (the idea that all CDs will eventually turn useless), which is a story some vinyl heads love to repeat even today.

Sorry, I think the term is "CD rot", not "CD burn".

Read more about it here:

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

I remember those stories about SAWII at the time, for which reason I bought the cassette edition, which plays perfectly to this day.

Oh crap - I gave away all my CDs a wee while ago thinking they'd never be worth anything in future.

No, I like the fact it's over - an MP3 player never stops playing

this isn't true.

you sound like the alan partridge audiobook on this thread. it ended tonight on my iphone and stopped playing. i put on something else as quickly as possible.

There are handy tools online, like Last.FM and Spotify and YouTube recommendations to encourage passive music discovery, but none of them are as accessible as simply having the TV on

so inaccessible that dense, lazy, prefabricated sentences about these "handy tools" sound less homely than the bloody good ones about the tv.

A casual music listener wouldn't necessarily go on YouTube to do this, but when it's on TV straight after Eastenders, there's a captive audience made to sit through songs they do and don't like.

there are music shows on tv though, just not totp. the most popular tv show in recent history which gets viewing figures people thought would never be clocked up again in the uk is a music show.

i'm going to stop cos i can't post hilariously about deep space 9 and i'll just appear mean, but trust me when i tell you these "casual listeners" you romanticise about while patronising as total luddites don't really exist.

people who don't use the net for music now listen to utter fucking dreck that is spooned out anywhere and everywhere.

My dad isn't exactly searching out new music and he mostly listens to satellite radio while driving

^^^

Thats my dad.

also my dad, who hilariously went through a 3 year phase of listening to house and techno when he got satellite radio

my dad has mysteriously gravitated to the "indie rock" style station

or I guess I should say "alternative rock"

a lot of dads like indie rock cos it mostly sounds like shit from 30 years ago

sorry, 40 years ago, getting old

Indie rock sounds like Kraftwerk?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ag9y6_LfdyM

Think there is a lot of alt-rock sounding kids music, often made by people with formerly sticky-uppy hair, exploiting this parental weakness.

My dad seems to be fixated on the Grateful Dead satellite station.

his dealer must be doing right by him.

Hey ronan, glad to know casual listeners who don't buy digital music downloads (my parents, my brothers and sisters, my girlfriend and many friends for example) 'don't really exist'. I must have my definition of 'patronise' all wrong because apparently saying 'some people would rather buy music from a shop' is patronising, but 'people who don't buy music online listen to
Spoonfed dreck' isn't. Going on to reference tv shows like xfactor as a natural replacement for totp isn't really an argument against such dreck now is it? And when I said 'mp3 players never stop playing' I think you know what I mean. I won't go so far as to patronise you with an explanation.

And when I said 'mp3 players never stop playing' I think you know what I mean.

I have no idea FYI

Obv if I treat my mp3 player like a cassette, i.e. load one album into the playlist, listen to it from beginning to end without skips or random, it will stop playing; but all too often it's tempting to load up a huge number of files, hit random repeat etc, which leads to a near-perpetualisation of music until I switch it off. I'm not saying 'mp3s play and play and play until time itself collapses',

sometimes i put one cd on after another until i switched them off.

why are you so weirdly beholden to formats? do you have no agency over your consumption of music at all? if you don't want something to carry on playing then switch it off.

Sorry, I must be mistaken in thinking that this is what this thread's about? Formats and the differences between them? how they affect our listening and purchasing habits? Is that not what we're talking about? I'm typing this from an iPhone while listening to music. There's no problem with that. It is different from listening to cassette or vinyl or cd. There's no secret there.

you can pick and choose tracks on cd or vinyl too. on cassette if you can be bothered.

like as soon as cd players existed they came equipped with features to avoid playing the cd from beginning to end then stopping.

Yes of course you can, and that is one step towards the Tralfamadorian 4D listening of the digital music experience. If I wanted I could get a dozen albums on tape, cue them up so that each one is at the start of my favourite track, and then play a little DJ set in the sequence of my choosing. Doesn't mean I would. The ability to mix and match tunes has always been there, but it's infinitely easier when working with digital. As Schlump said upthread, there's a difference between how one can use a format and how one does use it. MP3 players and programmes actively encourage the building of playlists and the ability to sculpt your own bespoke listening experience.
This is really good in most cases, but in rediscovering the LP, my experience is that it's quite unburdening (not to mention time saving) to let the sequence of one side of an album play its course. I find myself, and others in the room, interacting with the music more than if I'd put together a playlist or randomised my collection until it becomes this flatscreen technicolour blur of styles and sounds. The fact there's a physical object with attached artwork being dragged across a needle is part of it. The fact I don't have the option to change the music through a mere click of a button is another. Skipping through a randomly ordered playlist is a bit like running through a zoo or a museum at top speed. The lions are asleep - BORING! The chinchillas aren't moving - NEXT! Sometimes I find myself spending minutes skipping through looking for the ultimate track simply to complement my walk to the railway station. So in this way I felt a remarkable relief, satisfaction maybe, at the concluding clunk of the record needle lifting itself back into its holder at the end of 'Gold Dust Woman'.

Anyway, I've said all this already and it's only going to make this thread all the more boring to those who've read it all the way through.

my experience is that it's quite unburdening (not to mention time saving) to let the sequence of one side of an album play its course. I find myself, and others in the room, interacting with the music more than if I'd put together a playlist or randomised my collection until it becomes this flatscreen technicolour blur of styles and sounds. The fact there's a physical object with attached artwork being dragged across a needle is part of it. The fact I don't have the option to change the music through a mere click of a button is another. Skipping through a randomly ordered playlist is a bit like running through a zoo or a museum at top speed.

as long as you recognise this all about your subjective experiences and beliefs, and almost nothing to do with technology or any other objective criteria.

the advent of the vinyl album didn't dictate the listening experience, a certain kind of listener chose to dictate to the album, rather

multi disc CD randomisers are as old as the CD player, what limitations existed were only temporary delays in tech, not in the desires of listeners.

the sedate, reverential plod thru the museum of dead culture was only ever one way of approaching sound - an aberration really, pop is speed, the Sacred Album is just another killing and pinning butterflies instinct

I've said it so many times in this thread, but I'll say it again: I'm not championing one way of listening over the other. I don't prefer one way over the other. But I will maintain these are different listening experiences on the whole. It's very very easy to put your entire music collection into Winamp and hit random (or make a playlist of only your favourite tunes or whatever) - in fact it's actively encouraged. It's not the same as putting three CDs into a changer or listening to a tape in a linear fashion (maybe with a few FFWDs and RWDs), or dropping a needle on a record. I'm not talking up the album format, I'm just saying that I'd forgotten how liberating it can be to have that path marked out for you.
This goes double for a mixtape given by a friend, where the order and sequencing has been preordained for a reason. As for the album, I don't necessarily see it as sacred, but is it not the case that the sequencing of an album is often part of the artist's vision, as much as the drum patterns, lyrics and instrumental arrangements? Sometimes a track has a particular resonance for being placed between two others.
Another analogy would be that of a music festival. Oftentimes the weekend ends and I look back at the programme and think "Fuck, if only I could have a time machine so I could go back and watch all the bands I missed". I wish that I'd been able to witness each band at every angle in every crowd during every set - to magically appear and disappear at various points in space-time so I could squeeze every drop from the performances. But as it happens, I live a linear lifestyle and don't own a time machine, so my real festival experience is waylaid by mundane, time-wasting necessities like trudging through mud, waiting for friends, going to the toilet etc. But that's kind of what a festival is about, no? Most of my festival memories aren't of watching the bands, they're of the happy accidents that occur along the way.

dog latin you do realise you can listen to full albums on mp3s in itunes, right? i have done it once today already! and am midway through another! i also cherrypicked a few random tracks in between them.

how is randomising itunes encouraged? i have literally never done it

Oh it's very easy, there's a button I believe.

it sometimes even gets switched on by mistake

you should try it. it makes you feel like Doctor Who.

Another analogy would be that of a music festival. Oftentimes the weekend ends and I look back at the programme and think "Fuck, if only I could have a time machine so I could go back and watch all the bands I missed". I wish that I'd been able to witness each band at every angle in every crowd during every set - to magically appear and disappear at various points in space-time so I could squeeze every drop from the performances. But as it happens, I live a linear lifestyle and don't own a time machine, so my real festival experience is waylaid by mundane, time-wasting necessities like trudging through mud, waiting for friends, going to the toilet etc. But that's kind of what a festival is about, no? Most of my festival memories aren't of watching the bands, they're of the happy accidents that occur along the way.

I'm pretty sure not many happy accidents happen while you're switching the sides of a cassette or vinyl though. To user you festival analogy, it's like if you were enjoying to a nice gig in a tent, then in the middle of the gig you're all of a sudden teleported outside the tent, and you have to walk back in to listen to the rest of the gig.

Haha, true that. Although I wasn't really referring to the physical flipping over of a tape or disc, rather the linear fashion in which they tend to be listened to. This is opposed to the free-roaming, pan-temporal existence of the digital listener who has the ability to pop up and disappear at various places around the festival site at will. This allows her to witness every act at the festival in the order she chooses, but it also eradicates the more undesirable moments of the festival that nevertheless make up the wider tapestry of the festival experience. Why struggle in the rain with a heavy rucksack when you can skip straight through to the moment Orbital play 'Chime'?

for real; it's that the ideal, most rewarding sequence of events isn't necessarily all the best things, all of the time; there is mood generation & slow-release reward elicited by listening to a whole thing; there is the value of being exposed to something that comes on, decided by an external source (like sequencing) rather than by following your own internal reasoning & matching up with your mood. the festival analogy is excellent; you have an entirely different sort of experience - broader, deeper, with a greater range between good & bad and encountering different things - traipsing around than you would receiving various specific acts are individual spectacles. the latter would obviously be great!, & i love being able to hear the thing i want to hear when i want to hear it. just i probably found a lot of those things when i wasn't in control, wasn't expecting them or didn't know that it was them i was looking for.

If I wanted I could get a dozen albums on tape, cue them up so that each one is at the start of my favourite track, and then play a little DJ set in the sequence of my choosing. Doesn't mean I would.

lol I did this

sometimes you would even copy all of those songs onto another tape, creating what was colloquially known as a "mixtape"

when I said 'mp3 players never stop playing' I think you know what I mean

i genuinely don't! the ipod, prob the most popular mp3 player, stops playing at the end of an album. so no, i actually am not being willfully stupid, i 100 per cent do not know what you mean.

some people listen only in shuffle mode

some people put on another cd when one ends!

others listen to the radio all day...

a child was struck by a car in county louth in 1941

please send what you can

I've got some Hungarian Mangalica paprika sausage - what should I do with it? Stew it with peppers? Fry it with white beans? Soup? Goulash? I'm at a loss.

eat it from one end to the other, then stop

No, you should take small bites from random areas of the sausage until you are full.

i'm sure that's not what the butcher intended

The birth of the sausage is the death of the butcher.

It's a shame people don't share sausages in the same way as they used to.

Technically, my Mangalica sausage is in two parts, like a mini string of sausages. So I could either give one half away, or save half for later, or else endure the fascistic compulsion to consume one half of it first and then get up, put the second half in the frying pan, and then eat that.

No, you should take small bites from random areas of the sausage until you are full.

― jon /via/ chi 2.0, Thursday, 3 November 2011 21:20 (Yesterday) Bookmark

You do realise that you can still eat the sausage from one end to the other if you want, right?

But that would be so normal

tapas