How much physical music (CDs, vinyl, minidiscs, cases ingles, whatever) have you bought so far this year?

Damn you iPad for mangling cassingles, and damn me for not checking.

I've bought 27 new releases on CD this year, and 25 'back catalogue' CDs (which includes the new releases of the MBV catalogue, for instance, plus loads of other old stuff I've just bought)' for a total of 52 thus far. As we're moving in a couple of weeks I suspect I won't buy much more for the rest of the year.

quick check : do i count a 10 cd boxset as one item, or 10 ?

i've bought a ton more this year than ever before (boxsets : simple minds, the byrds, roxy music, neil young, elvis, cabaret voltaire, tom moulton).

no digital purchases, all cd.

Hmmm, good question (damn technicalities!). I'd say one item in terms of voting (as its one purchase) but obviously mention specifics in posts.

a quick check : 105 single cd albums (suspect i have missed some), plus 9 boxsets

Zero

Can't remember how much digital offhand but I wouldn't dream of buying physical music any more

How much physical music have you been sent as a music writer, Lex, out of interest? Or is it all downloads and streams now?

Too much physical. I try to deter that wherever possible but it seems that major labels still believe in concepts like the promo cd single, if not in any form of promo album to reach you before your deadline

I've bought more cds than usual this year, probably close to 40. New and old. Partially because I have been having similar sobering realizations about musicians' incomes to those which Nitsuh's piece so effectively evokes. Partially because they are easier to listen to in my car than other media, despite it having a sort of clunky iPod integration attempt. And I guess partially so they can sit around in my house or car and people can notice them in addition to whatever's currently playing.

At home I use Spotify pretty much 24/7 to listen to a little of anything, everything + I try to buy most of the things that I find myself listening to over and over. Maybe if rather than 6mil people on Spotify there were somehow 600m it could (in a perfect world?) be a legit revenue stream for artists. But I guess it's more likely that would just result in Daniel Ek moving 100 positions up on the millionaires list.

Maybe Youtube digital-tip-jar-button is the only pseudo-viable future for music at this point.

I've bought a handful of used records this year. The last time I bought a CD was 2008.

Should used vinyl be counted in the poll? I've bought a fair amount, mostly priced very low.

Bought a few CDs, mostly as gifts, but occasionally for myself, usually limited to stuff with elaborate packaging. Also some new vinyl like Record Store Day exclusives. Mostly though it's downloads, or increasingly streaming. I'm planning to replace my iPod Touch + cheap dumbphone duo with a iPhone largely so I can stream music in the car, subway, or when walking. Doing so will double my monthly phone bill though.

Let's not count used purchases - as this was inspired by musician's income that seems counter-productive.

Around 60 albums on CD, all new releases or compilations, almost all previewed on Spotify before purchase. On the rare occasions when I've bought an album unheard, it's mostly turned out to be a bad bet. (Six Cups of Rebel, I'm looking at YOU.) I mostly buy from Fopp, only from Amazon when I have to. Some purchases from an independent store in Leeds, some at gigs, including a few singles and EPs. Vinyl: I had a Record Store Day splurge at our local vinyl-only indie store, because it's run as a social enterprise and I wanted to show support. Curiously, I made several blind purchases on vinyl that turned out very well indeed, most notably the Personal Space electronic soul comp.

Sadly there's literally only HMV, an Oxfam specialising in msuic, film, and books, and a solitary independent / second-hand shop catering exclusively for Mojo readers left in Exeter now.

I think I've bought about 15 CDs at 10 12"s from MVE this year. Nothing remotely new either. I'm having a weird year with muisc; even though I work 55-60 hours a week in shops that let me play whatever I want, most of the time I'm spinning the same few podcasts/albums, despite this being a year when I could, if I could be bothered, really indulge in hearing as much new stuff/doing as much cratedigging as possible. And aisde from the stuff I've had to review, I don't think I could name you more than five albums I'd actually want to listen to from this year right now.

so, if its allowed, can we have a very brief thread-detour where you tell me what I should be listening to from this year now that I'm at work. Will listen to whatever the first suggestion is. And reeprt back.

Swans.

To test out if you really can play ANYTHING.

Haha, that's one of the ones I've already played down here - turned out that my boss used to be a big fan of them!

Probably only bought about 10 or so new releases on CD so far. Kind of low really, normally I buy around 30-40 new albums a year but I think I also buy more stuff towards the end of the year when I accept that some things will never be up on Spotify or eMusic or whatever so I just buy it on CD unheard. I have bought a fair wodge of back catalogue and reissues though, plus a shitload of digital too.

New CD and vinyl, 100+.

Hazard of working in a record store.

Somewhere between 40-50 CD albums, all from 2012. Most I listened to on Spotify first unless they were follow-ups to albums I loved or Spotify wasn't an option. I probably buy about 1/4 of the new albums I listen to on Spotify. If I don't like them enough to buy I'll listen only once or twice.

A conservative 7-10, but that includes a spree in which certain items were heavily reduced. The nearest record shop to me is a town away. I went there on Friday to watch Last Shop Standing and the author gave a talk http://lastshopstanding.com/. It was fairly interesting, and I was moved into making a point of shopping from independent outlets in future if I can. I'm starting to believe that the death of the physical format is quite a dangerous thing because it means the death of the record shop. Whilst researching a piece about my local music scene, it became apparent how important record shops were in their day; not just as outlets but communal hubs. Much of the early rave scene was organised through a network of record shops in and around the Home Counties. Two Bad Mice and Omni Trio produced their biggest tracks in the backroom of a now defunct dance specialist in Hitchin. They were also places where kids would go in their lunch hour to spend pocket money, pick up flyers and hear new tunes.

And yeah, now we have the internet and YouTube and stuff, but a thousand kids sat behind a thousand computer screens isn't the same as a chance encounter in a record store. Purchasing music online is very different from in a shop - there's less chance of buying something "on a whim" for a start, but really it's the communal aspect that concerns me more. Instead of going to your mate's from the shop with a record or CD in your bag you can't wait to show them. When people come over to listen to music, suddenly there's no album cover to skin up on and look at. Music listening has become very insular - suddenly everyone's listening to their own thing on their own iPod with its hegemonic list of artists and albums. The sharing aspect, the whole "hey man what's this, can we listen to it?" factor only exists through Spotify playlists. Many are going to argue and say I'm being a luddite about it - I do love digital, I love having my record collection in one contained space - but I also miss flicking through CD racks looking for something interesting to listen to, or marvelling at weird and wonderful things on other people's shelves, or reading an inlay cover, or looking at an awesome album cover, or bonding with someone in a record shop who just bought your favourite album. This is an essential part of being a music fan, for me and many other people, and if we lose that I think a younger generation will grow up wondering why their parents used to put so much value on listening to music.

My problem with buying CDs these days is that I tend to take it home, rip it and then plonk it on a shelf where it gathers dust, taking up space and never getting played. Think I'm going to switch to buying a vinyl record with download included at least once a month.

I haven't bought physical music product since mid-2007. I buy quite a bit of music via amazon mp3 or itunes. not sure how much off the top of my head.

I've had all the arguments and discussions and understand thoroughly all the plus points and so on and so forth and it still absolutely baffles me that people who are big music geeks can have not bought a phsyical music product in YEARS. I just can't ever imagine not doing it.

I've been on a panel with Graham Jones, author of Last Shop Standing. Enormously likeable guy. DL, I can tell that you've fallen under his influence - but he's such a dedicated and passionate advocate of independent record stores, that it's impossible not to!

I almost never buy digital, by the way. Only as a last resort.

Like yesterday I cycled to physio first thing and made a 10-minute detour via HMV so I could pick up the Flying Lotus CD. Today I had Swans and Janelle Monae CDs arrive from Amazon. On Sunday I pre-ordered the Daphni CD.

(the Daphni record is SO good btw)

I buy the odd track digitally (generally b-sides, old singles, one-off tracks I want where I'm not interested in the whole album), or maybe a whole EP if I can't get it on CD - Owen Pallett, Antlers. Moving house might encourage more vinyl-buying as we'll be able to keep it in the same room as the record player, thus it might get used. I occasionally download an album nefariously, but 80% of the time I'll then buy it on CD too.

moving house is what completely killed any desire on my part to own physical music again. my dislike of physical objects grows immensely every time i do it.

I guess moving often would be a complete hassle, but we've been in the current place for 5 years, and anticipate being in the next for 7+.

I haven't even owned a CD player other than my laptop's disc drive in a couple of years. After my whole CD collection got stolen a few years ago, I decided I was done with the format.

If I did buy CDs, I'd really have no use for them other than ripping them to mp3 anyway.

moved house at the weekend and tho my new place is great i am in full agreement with lex, must rip and discard my cds, if only i cd happily do the same thing with books

I've bought at least one item a week on average, mostly CDs but some vinyl, a mixture of new and second hand. The majority of the "new" items will be reissues and compilations. When I have more time I will aim to estimate the total number so I can do the poll.

I do question why I continue buying CDs, as even after I've bought them, I'm still more likely to use Spotify for listening to them. (Through the iPhone app and into a DAC via Bluetooth - sound quality is every bit as good as CD.) CDs don't scrobble, that's their problem. Reasons why I continue: 1) no digital music in the car, 2) residual product fetishism, 3) residual "collector" mentality, 4) offline backup, 5) digital purchases still don't feel fully "owned", 6) adequate recompense to the artist. Of these, 6) is the clincher.

moving house is what completely killed any desire on my part to own physical music again. my dislike of physical objects grows immensely every time i do it.

― lex pretend, Tuesday, 2 October 2012 10:37 (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, it got to the point where I realised I had an entire wall of music in variously sized units that was just taking up room. When it came to moving there was literally no way of housing them comfortably in the new place (and besides my cuntflap housemates of the time had taken to using my CD inlays as speed-wraps. I could KILL!) Many of the CDs were rips or secondhand things so the resell value wouldn't have outweighed the time and cost of selling them online, so I picked the ones that were important to me, phoned friends and told them to take however many they wanted. I rarely feel as though this was a bad idea as at least I know they've gone on to happy homes.

The remainder of my CD collection (which is still fairly big by most people's standards) currently sits behind a sofa in the spare room. Still, I sometimes glance at it and my eye picks out the spine of an album - usually one I'd just forgotten to play in a long time as it's squirrelled away in the depths of my hard drive - and I think to myself "I should give that another spin some time soon". This is testament to the physical format really. I have so much digital music now that my brain is ultimately accustomed to seeing certain folders in certain places and therefore skips and neglects them. So I always just scroll past, say, the Smashing Pumpkins folder, never thinking about whether or not I'd like to play anything from them. I forget that I used to really enjoy tracks off of Mellon Collie and how jarring I found it when they released Adore. Their entire career is reduced to a folder on my hard drive labelled "smashing pumpkins" and so I scroll through.

I'm intrigued, Mike, by your mention of that fact that "CDs don't scrobble"; why is being able to scrobble important to you? (And is scrobble in the OED yet? It should be.)

I've been on a panel with Graham Jones, author of Last Shop Standing. Enormously likeable guy. DL, I can tell that you've fallen under his influence - but he's such a dedicated and passionate advocate of independent record stores, that it's impossible not to!

Yeah he seemed like a really nice bloke. He did a Q&A along with the shop staff which ended up getting kind of heated! Think the bit that affected me most was how at the end he explained that two of the shops in the documentary had had to close down since it was filmed, and that one of the owners was now living with his sister having lost his entire livelihood.

I dread to think, but it's probably close to, if not over 100 records. I'm actually trying to cut down the size of my collection, not expand it so I'm not really sure how it happened. A couple of times I sorted though cheap bins and bought about 20 for a pound or so which has pushed it up and most of those have been gambles which haven't made the cut.

I've probably sold 40-50 old records on Discogs this year too.

iPhone doesn't scrobble either these days. At least mine hasn't for at least a year. I do like Last.FM but it has so many flaws that it doesn't work as well as it should. It would be great to make it that bit less buggy and more communal.

Right, read the thread properly now, I'd say new or reissues, I've bought maybe 30 12" singles and around 5-10 lps. A few of those may have been bootlegs though, or at the very least sketchy licensing so the money may not have ended up in the artists pocket.

Think I've probably bought about 30 albums this year which is less than usual as we moved house and I was trying to cut down a bit.

Of those 30, I estimate at least half still have their cellophane wrappers on as they were albums I'd already downloaded when they leaked.

Why is being able to scrobble important to you?

I like having a record of what I've listened to, and how often. Mmm, stats. I particularly like having rolling "most played tracks over past 3/6/12 months" counts.

I hate stats.

If Scrobble actually worked properly for me it'd be great for EOY lists

I play albums on CD in my CD player and also play them (silently) on Spotify so that they scrobble. Also that way I'm contributing the tiny amount of money on top of whatever they got from my CD purchase.

22 new albums including two boxed sets - nearly all CDs, the only records I've bought new this year have been reissues of older stuff. I prefer buying vinyl but new releases can be too pricey a lot of the time.

It'd be 100+ if we were counting secondhand purchases, I've bought a lot of cheap old stuff on both CD and vinyl.

I've pretty much given up with EOY singles / tracks lists, as who knows what's actually a single anymore, and they'd be a zillion songs long.

As for EOY albums, I keep all new purchases separate from the rest of the collection, as a very visual reminder / guide to what I've bought this year (both new stuff and back catalogue). I filter everything into the stacks on New Years Day; done this for a few years now, and much prefer it to keeping a list anywhere or trying to remember by going through everything. Also gives me a default 'what to listen to niow' pile for when I'm feeling indecisive.

My digital collection gets a new folder every time I buy a bigger hard drive. I'm not sure what the logic to doing this is, other than it categorises it into new/old/very old. This does stop me going back and listening to stuff from a few years ago though, and I've found that the time I take listening to new music now far outweighs older stuff whereas before it would have been split pretty evenly.

I play albums on CD in my CD player and also play them (silently) on Spotify so that they scrobble.

I have been known to do this, yes. Ahem.

In place of a physical listening pile, I have a "favourite 2012 albums" Spotify playlist and a matching spreadsheet, held on Dropbox and permanently open on the laptop. Neither distinguishes between owned and unowned. (Well, OK, there's colour coding on the spreadsheet. Let's not delve too deeply into my mania.) I do miss the visual artwork cues, but it's a more level playing field.

There's one additional bit of insanity which MUST STOP: ripping purchased CDs to iTunes, when they're already on Spotify. An utterly pointless waste of time and disk space.

Isn't Spotify streaming lower quality than CD rip?

Depends how you rip your CDs.

xps I guess you get better quality from a rip unless you have Spotify Premium.

I don't think I'll ever get on board with Spotify.

No, the "extreme" setting on the app equates to 320kpbs. Through a DAC, there's no discernible difference with the CD, let alone the rip.

by a very long distance the least in a couple of decades - about 18 new CDs (inc doubles and triples) and a few music DVDs.

this has been mostly deliberate, because I still have things I bought in the '90s I've not listened to yet (have been gradually cutting down for five years on these grounds) and because I might be putting all my shit in storage for a year or so in 2013, and then finding a new place to live and unpacking it all again.

last night, at a gig, I bought an EP I've been wanting to buy for five years but have never seen a copy of before - that was the first purchase in three months.

Even though I've got rid of a lot of CDs over the past few years, I do like having a physical copy of the things I really like - I'm moving house in a month so there is the space factor but I like having objects if I'm attached to them and they're nice to look at. I bought an OOIOO CD recently which has really great artwork for example, I've also picked up some of those Miles Davis boxed sets used and they're so beautifully made, I don't mind shelling out extra for things like that.

Buying music digitally is great for singles though, I keep a work-in-progress playlist of my favourites for each year. I'd miss so much great new music if I only paid attention to albums.

Zero. CDs and CD boxes are kind of horrible physical objects anyway, especially once you've had them for a while, and they don't display well, and the last few CDs I bought I ended up digitising straight away anyway. Never had a turntable.

I still have trouble thinking of CDs as "physical music" rather than just another way of storing electronic data. Outside of vinyl, music just isn't a physical artefact.

about twenty CD's, most recently Dwight Yoakam's latest. I don't ever rip the whole CD to my iPod though: at most six or so tracks.

xpost Yeah, CDs seem like a really obscure format now - a halfway house that suits little purpose. Like you say, no longer a pleasing physical artefact nor a satisfactory digital format. I'm surprised you (as a dancist) never had a turntable Matt. Do you DJ at all? I tend to find that, for dance music, I get frustrated with listening to individual single tracks (too many long intros and outros) and end up mixing them together using Acid Pro for a more cohesive listen.

Haven't bought any physical music this year but have probably spent about $1k on digital releases.

Rockist!

xpost.

Zero

Feeling kind of ashamed

Haha, rockist?

Making your singles-based genre into 'cohesive' album-like units!

or dj sets as they're known by us hardcore rock fans

Most of the digital purchases I've made this year = impossible to find in shops and/or on CD

i guess expecting a dance fan to own vinyl decks is like expecting a rock fan to own guitars...

Kind of a no brainier

40-60, mostly vinyl, mostly catalogue. Fewer CDs than I used to because I tend to preview albums on Spotify and download the best tracks. If an album's consistently good I'll still buy the CD or vinyl though. Because, in terms of music-buying generations, I am old.

20-40 - a good chunk of that was two raids on the classical section of Academy Records. I am kind of into CDs right now because listening to them on the boombox in the kitchen or in the room I use as my office is a real pleasure to me

I'd have DJ sets as analogous to gigs rather than albums...

father of three with no spare cash! probably only bought cds/7"s of friends' bands this year, so 2-6 maybe?

I'd have DJ sets as analogous to gigs rather than albums...

― comedy is unnatural and abhorrent (Scik Mouthy), Tuesday, 2 October 2012 12:29 (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Nah, because dance fans listen to a lot more DJ mixes than rock fans listen to recordings of live gigs. The majority of dance singles are pretty much designed to be mixed together - I don't have the time or patience to listen to a 2 minute intro beat with gaps between the tracks when I'm listening to house music for example. Plus a lot of people I know who used to play out now spend their time DJing in their bedrooms just for the pleasure of enjoying music.

no idea but i'd guesstimate about 250 12" singles, 100 albums, 50 7" singles and 0 cds.

52 12"s
2 10"s
3 cds

All new vinyl should come with a digital download as standard these days. It's ridiculous to think that many don't.

about half of that new and half used from discogs

it's not always possible. i run a label and sometimes the artist wants to do digital themselves or if it's a reissue the digital rights belong to someone else. xp

I bought close to 300 CD's this year; including a couple of very rare and expensive ones. That medium is still on its way out - with no turning point yet in sight -, causing that even some of the most mundane titles are out-of-print and changing hands for inane prices. I felt that if I ever wanted to bring my want-list back to zero (for the time being), I'd better do it now than latter.

I embrace downloads. I see the appeal of not having to hunt for a physical copy of an item; you can download anything you like for a mere 8.99 anywhere you find yourself with internet access. But as long as an artist offers me the option of buying a physical product, I gladly oblige. For me an album is (still) a package deal: it should come with artwork and liner notes that are given just as much thought by the artist as the actual sounds itself. And even if I don't play CD's as often as I used to, I still rather have them as my backup than an extra hard drive or files in the cloud.

Although I was born and raised with vinyl, that medium just never appealed to me much.

20-40

10-15 LPs a few singles, some cassettes, cd-rs and a floppy disk.

LPs get listened to and looked after. CDs go in the kitchen and usually get given away if someone likes the band. Dunno what to do with the floppy disk.

What on earth did you buy on a floppy disk?

mixes aren't analogous to gigs

telescopes "backing band" self released thing

http://vimeo.com/42470242

ha that's the first time i've heard it, bit of a les rallizes denudes feel, nice

Hot fad of 2013: releasing your new single exclusively on floppy disk

I'm releasing my next song on a player-piano roll. Digitize THIS!

I'm gonna release a single on a parchment scroll.

I did some counting a couple of weeks back and I've bought 50 records in the last twelve months, I think most of that this calendar year, but then it's probably 75% second hand. I'm another one who's come to feel that CD is a fairly pointless format (maybe it'll have more of a point when its held in low enough regard that it all becomes incredibly cheap), though the really bad aspect of that is that I'm not yet of the mindset that digital music is something ~real~ enough to spend money on. I see a lot of live music but can no longer pretend to myself that that makes up for all of my thieving.

xp: that's Beck's model these days.

(maybe it'll have more of a point when its held in low enough regard that it all becomes incredibly cheap)

I'm always slightly baffled that shops (HMV) / labels etc seem to have responded to a decline of interest in CDs by pricing back catalogue stuff at £16+ a lot of the time. Who on earth is going to buy that? Seems absolutely stupid beyond belief.

iPhone doesn't scrobble either these days. At least mine hasn't for at least a year. I do like Last.FM but it has so many flaws that it doesn't work as well as it should. It would be great to make it that bit less buggy and more communal.

I'm more inclined to blame Apple for this than Last.FM tbh.

CD's already seem to be incredibly cheap, at least I can't get more than a couple of quid on Ebay for stuff that used to be fairly sought after. It's rare that anything goes for more than that. Although to be fair, once something does go over £2 it usually ends up going for £10-20. There doesn't seem to be much inbetween.

yeah, in 2008 I was shifting over 2/3 of my stuff for at least 99c, with rare or odd things going for $30-50. Now out of every 60 things I list, maybe nine will go for 99c (even eg unreleased promo-only double albums) and one or two will get a frenzied bidding war up to $6-9.

feel like there's still a fairly massive middle ground of ppl blithely buying CDs but because they don't sit on the internet and talk about it, their existence tends to get forgotten

feel like there's still a fairly massive middle ground of ppl blithely buying CDs but because they don't sit on the internet and talk about it, their existence tends to get forgotten

qft

People responding here, and on twitter, are much more likely to be web-savvy enough to be Spotify users etc.

One, via a kickstarter thing for a friend. And I actually asked them not to send me the CD, since it was on Spotify, but they did it anyway. Everything else has been Spotify this year.

Good god a lot, like 200+

I buy loads of $.01 - $10 used rap CDs off amazon wherein the artist doesnt get any money, does that count?

Kinda with Whiney, I'm well over a hundred but that's thanks to endless Amoeba clearance trawls in the dollar bin.

I lost interest when my entire collection of metal CDs were stolen back in 2000 or something (all bought with two thirds of my high school money) but last night I was thinking of getting the swans, scott walker, GY!BE and the mark fell disc so, it's going to be four by the end of 2012.

buying digital feels silly, like paying for air. won't do it anymore.

I'm pretty sure the answer is zero. Everything has been digital -- emusic, Amazon, iTunes. I actually just unpacked all my CDs after a recent move, and they were the last thing I got around to unpacking because apart from keeping a few in the car I never listen to them. I don't even have a CD player in the house, just speakers that hook up to my laptop or iphone. Funny how quickly that change happened, without me really planning or intending it.

I washed the dishes last night and listened to the CD reissue/remaster of a free Big KRIT mixtape on my discman which I purchased with money

I've bought no CDs, LPs, or other physical releases this year

last CD i bought was my friend's band's album at their show about a year ago

Probably around 120-130 physical pieces of music for me, with roughly 85% vinyl vs. 15% CDs. I go record shopping at least once a week, and I consider my trips to the used LP stores in the area as part of the hobby; it's the "effort" that gets "rewarded" when I plop down in front of my stereo. (I don't actually think of it in those explicit/rigid terms, but when I've dabbled in downloading it's felt as if something is missing from the whole experience.) If I buy a new release on vinyl and it doesn't come with a download, I do justify it to myself to download it for free if I really want it on my iPod.

"collecting" digital music is boring as fuck

it is isn't it.

It doesn't really compute for me... I didn't see the stipulation upthread about no used music before I posted, so that brings me down quite a bit--cuts my total down to more like 30 or so.

If we're not counting used music I can prolly figure this out when I get home if this is still a thread

are you out of town until the 10th?

"Collecting" anything for the sake of it is boring as all hell imo; buying music, listening to it, and loving it, is fantastic though. And for me the nicest, most satisfying way of doing it is via CD. Sod being a data entry temp for my own hobby.

If we're not talking used or digital purchases...dunno, five, maybe? Ten?

"Collecting" anything for the sake of it is boring as all hell imo; buying music, listening to it, and loving it, is fantastic though. And for me the nicest, most satisfying way of doing it is via CD.

This!

xxpost to nick - i think that's what Whiney is saying. Collecting digital music can sometimes feel a bit like adding to an endless database - one more line on the list of folders. There's nothing to show for it. No "Yay, check out this awesome record I just got hold of". If you go round a friend's house you bring an ipod or iphone with you and there's this sort of "can I play you this new thing I downloaded?" and there's this grudging "Yeah go ahead, plug her in" thing, and then you sit there listening to the opening bars of the first track with no visual or tangible reference to whatever's emitting from the speakers, just you and your mate waiting for the payback; your friend probably hoping it'll end soon so she can put her player back where it belongs etc...

On the other hand: If you've got a big digital library, it's a lot of fun to put together playlists for parties. GF and I are doing this for our hauswarming this weekend, and we're starting by each putting together about 3 hrs worth, which we'll then mesh and sequence. Would obviously be possible with physical media, but a lot more work.

If yr friend wasn't interested in the music she wouldn't have been had it come in a box with a little booklet either.

are you out of town until the 10th?
--how's life

What the fuck? I mean home from work

And he meant "it'll only stop being a thread when the poll closes" I suspect. Which it wont, but voting will have stopped. It'll *always* be a thread. (Insert philosophical caveats about the perpetuity of data here.)

Zero this year. Fewer than 10 over the last five years.

If yr friend wasn't interested in the music she wouldn't have been had it come in a box with a little booklet either.

― Matt DC, Tuesday, 2 October 2012 15:07 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

See I don't really agree with this, y'know? With an iPod you're provided with no context, no background, no temporal or tangible reference point or incite into what you're about to hear. It will very much depend on the kind of music you're listening to, but I think a physical format can add a certain amount of value on a psychological level. It's like going grocery shopping and everything's in identical vacuum-sealed packets with "ROCKET SALAD", "RUMP STEAK", "JELLY BABIES" printed on the front. We know that it's food, but we can't tell whether it will appeal at all once it's out of that packet. There's no intrigue or impetus to eat beyond "I like steak. I will buy it for sustenance".

iPhone users complaining about lack of last.fm scrobbling: I recommend telling the computer app to ignore your phone, then install CloudScrob. Not real-time, but you just pop open the app occasionally and it scrobbles direct from your phone.

What the fuck? I mean home from work

― wood grain, chestnut / cody, CHESNUTT (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, October 2, 2012 2:09 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

then it will still be a thread.

I do miss the experience of buying a new album, especially a new release that you've never heard, and ripping off the shrink wrap, opening the gatefold, flipping through the booklet, admiring the artwork, having the lyrics at hand, etc.

huffing the ink

I've been doing that with the Mute box set that was released sometime in the last couple years. Rewarding.

I love huffing at the ink. Remember Pre-Millennium Tension by Tricky being particularly pongy.

I mostly remember it from cassettes, which to be honest was probably mostly the smell of the trapped plastic. The first time I noticed a great smell from a CD was Blackalicious' Nia.

pretty sure a fair portion of my CD/book/magazine-buying habits have to do with tactile experiences that aren't necessarily related to the medium

Elucidate, please?

xpost: My iPhone always scrobbles fine from the Spotify app. Have never needed to use iTunes for iPhone playback.

I sometimes get suckered into buying the physical version of things for additional video content etc and guess how often I actually end up watching the bonus DVDs?

Trying to remember the last time I watched one, not entirely sure that I ever even have

I nearly bought The Drift on vinyl the other day, mostly because I've been a bit obsessed with it lately, but also because listening to it as a digital file feels like trying to trap a demon in a matchbox. I wanted to stare at that dark soupy cover for hours, pull out the black hole from within and hear it as analogue. But then came to my senses and realised playing this outloud within earshot of anyone who isn't expecting it would be trolling on a fundamental level.

With an iPod you're provided with no context, no background, no temporal or tangible reference point or incite into what you're about to hear

love vinyl but its not a bad thing to hear w no context

no interest in cds, dvds, packaging, booklets or any of that

I mean, the artistic medium. Presumably records are for audio, magazines are for words, etc

hard part for me is remembering what exactly happened this year. It's definitely the year I bought a used copy of the beasties' 2CD on a stoop, but is this the year I bought a used record of Paul Revere & The Raiders' Something/Happening while killing time before a wedding in New Orleans? and what about that night i was drunk by a dollar bin, was that 2011?

Gonna go with 2-6.

I can only agree to some extent with the whole "who cares, it's the music that counts" attitude, indeed I used to be a lot more supportive of this train of thought, but I'm really starting to feel exhausted by it. I'm really starting to feel like a big part of my enjoyment of music is influenced by factors other than the simple clinical appreciation of sound.

31 cds (plus a bunch of cover mounted cds from magazines)
1 10" ep
9 digital downloads (eps, lps, single tracks, whatever)
8 7" singles (1 kickstarter reward, 1 7 release subscription)

down a lot from last year. have been buying dvds...

i found my list from 1997 the other day and i was buying 3 or 4 a week.

i bought the bob mould album on cd b/c he is old and i figure digital sales are confusing and frightening for him

I've probably bought about 10-20 records this year. A pitiful amount compared to 7 or 8 years ago when I was buying that every week. The only real excuse I have is that I work in indie music and that aside from food, rent and a new pair of shoes that's the only cash I've had spare in 2012. Fun times.

i bought the bob mould album on cd b/c he is old and i figure digital sales are confusing and frightening for him

Brilliant.

did I ever tell my story on here about (the proverbial) friend of a friend being at an ATP and using Grindr to see if there was anyone at the festival that wanted to hook up, and when they came over it was Bob Mould

so I reckon he knows the value of a digital sale iygm

CouldYouBeThe1

I don't think I've bought any music on physical media this year. I've bought a fair amount of digital downloads through Amazon though, and I have an eMusic subscription.

Mencap that's f'in' awesome, I hope it's true.

I hope your friend wasn't Grant

*awkward*

hahahahahaha

how is appreciation of sound "simple" or "clinical" kmt

Zero CDs since 2004. About 20-30 new vinyl albums a year. About 20 digital purchases-- mostly hard to find classical stuff. About 50 used vinyl purchases a year.

It's like going grocery shopping and everything's in identical vacuum-sealed packets with "ROCKET SALAD", "RUMP STEAK", "JELLY BABIES" printed on the front. We know that it's food, but we can't tell whether it will appeal at all once it's out of that packet. There's no intrigue or impetus to eat beyond "I like steak. I will buy it for sustenance".

food has nutritional values printed on the packet (scientific facts) plus people have tasted the exact food before. there are clear expectations of how food tastes, it's nothing like music in this regard.

the labels of food are actually more informative than the labels on records, which weakens this already dire analogy.

i'm only really commenting because comparing modern music formats to supermarket food (or generally any music/food analogies which seek to criticise an inevitably vague and unspecified modern decline) are so often the dumbest and cheapest faux-opinions around.

but a+ for not bringing mcdonalds into it, you are dropping science.

it was a bit sad when, realising more and more people wouldn't buy CDs, labels just started getting the work experience kids to do the cover art/design to save a few more bob

two records arrived through the post today and when I opened there was a random copy of daft punk's da funk thrown in there too

Awesome!

Is Grindr named after the Priest song? "Grinderrrrr / Lookiiing for meaaaaat"... Always wondered that.

"Food has nutritional values printed on the packet (scientific facts) plus people have tasted the exact food before. there are clear expectations of how food tastes, it's nothing like music in this regard."

This is not at all true. "This steak right here" doesn't equal "all steak"... That's like saying "ah, ya heard one Detroit techno record you heard em all"...

10-20, but I'm poor and would buy more if I could.

Would say all vinyl, no CDs, but I've quite possibly bought one or two CDs or cassettes from bands at shows.

Can't remember exactly how many CDs I've bought this year, but it's probably about a dozen or so - three Duke Ellington titles, the new Dwight Yoakam, the new Baroness, a few used things...I still get a lot of physical promos, though.

Following up on my most recent post, it's that sort of reductionism that I think Dog Latin is trying to explain doesn't work for him. It's a markedly different experience to buy a piece of vinyl and listen to it than to DL an mp3--sonically, procedurally, economically, sacrifice-ly, what have you. My local grass-fed steak cooked medium-rare on my grill is markedly different from even the very same cut from the very same cow made somewhere else. If bad analogies are harmful to music discourse, reductionism is far worse; at least analogies are trying to work through and perpetuate discourse, whereas reductionism just seeks to shut down the opposition.

If ronan and lex were locked in a room together for 24hrs, would it create such an enormous feedback loop of pedantry that the world would implode in on itself? It's a good thing you guys don't get on because I actually fear this could happen.

Without wanting to perpetuate the food packaging analogy too much more, for fear of people will wilfully miss the point yet again- being able to see the food, or at least a picture of a serving suggestion of the food, can and will influence what you choose to buy and cook. If everything came in identical, plain packages with no pictures it would make stacking the shelves easier, but the act of choosing what to have for dinner would be boiled down to a purely functional act. We'd be faced with rows and rows of packets identifiable only by a label to tell us what's in there. Some may find this a good thing. They would find the functionality of this system appealing because all they want to do is go out and get a steak. But others might prefer to browse around, to see what their tastebuds want for tea that night. If this is the case it would become very difficult to get creative or excited about it. There's more to the appreciation of food, music, art in general than the end product itself - there's a whole miasma of factors and influences that inform my personal appreciation of these.

A digital library is great, it's functional and handy to have, but it also sucks a lot of the fun out of discovering and sharing that music. Other than the physical sound coming out of the speakers, there's no 'in' to a piece of music. We're served a blank slate with no other information about what we're hearing, nothing about the artist and why they chose to make that music. as such it becomes homogenised - it may as well be musical wallpaper to the casual listener.

I've seen this in action time and again. If i have people over and plug my mp3 player into the stereo, they tend to jus chat over it. It's often as though the music isn't playing at all. Get a record out, and people suddenly start taking interest. They wanna see the cover, they anticipate the music before the needle drops, and they talk about, rather than over, the record as it plays.

I have no idea why this happens but it always always does time and again. The only explanation I have (other than the whole 'vinyl sounds better than mp3' thing, is that they are somehow more aware that the music playing is a complete artefact as opposed to some abstract and ghostly digital file automatically queued in by a computer-based shuffle. I really don't know but it probably relates on a deeper psychological level than I'm prepared to ponder.

I like dog latin's post.

I'm in the 100+ range by this point, surely.

i bought a john fahey record for $30 the other day, it's beautiful

i bought the bob mould album on cd b/c he is old and i figure digital sales are confusing and frightening for him
Brilliant.

― comedy is unnatural and abhorrent (Scik Mouthy), Tuesday, October 2, 2012 10:05 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

bob's hip now he DJs and everything

also if it makes money he knows about it

i bought a kenny clarke box set a couple weeks ago. not quite sure how much physical media i've purchased...maybe 7-10 items?

guessed 2-6, mostly used records, i'm not buying cds at all anymore. but also i was pretty broke most of the year so i wasn't buying much in the way of fun stuff at all until the past few months.

A digital library is great, it's functional and handy to have, but it also sucks a lot of the fun out of discovering and sharing that music. Other than the physical sound coming out of the speakers, there's no 'in' to a piece of music. We're served a blank slate with no other information about what we're hearing, nothing about the artist and why they chose to make that music. as such it becomes homogenised - it may as well be musical wallpaper to the casual listener.

Well, to an extent, other than the fact I've bought digital releases from artists who have well-cultivated blogs, tumblr accounts, individual pieces of art for each audio file, or any number of other "ins." If anything, the ability for me to learn about an artist, whether it be before or after hearing their actual music, is much more diversified than it's ever been. Interviews, zines, liner notes really not the same.

"Food has nutritional values printed on the packet (scientific facts) plus people have tasted the exact food before. there are clear expectations of how food tastes, it's nothing like music in this regard."

This is not at all true. "This steak right here" doesn't equal "all steak"... That's like saying "ah, ya heard one Detroit techno record you heard em all"...

i never said this=all, i said there are clear expectations. and remember we're talking about steak that comes in a packet.

Good post, dog latin.

I don't care about "I only do digital", go crazy, I love digital. Just as long as you've got speakers connected to that computer. And you don't play Youtube rips when you DJ. Other than that it doesn't bother me.

That said, I really enjoyed the online presence and presentation of a couple artists enough to order their albums, and the albums were pretty much devoid of additional content -- stark cover image, tracklisting on the back of a paper sleeve, single-color CD. Kind of a blank palette for me to connect what I do know with the music.

Just as long as you've got speakers connected to that computer

I hardly ever listen to my digital files on a computer! It's always streamed to my home stereo or off my iPhone.

Without wanting to perpetuate the food packaging analogy too much more, for fear of people will wilfully miss the point yet again- being able to see the food, or at least a picture of a serving suggestion of the food, can and will influence what you choose to buy and cook. If everything came in identical, plain packages with no pictures it would make stacking the shelves easier, but the act of choosing what to have for dinner would be boiled down to a purely functional act. We'd be faced with rows and rows of packets identifiable only by a label to tell us what's in there. Some may find this a good thing. They would find the functionality of this system appealing because all they want to do is go out and get a steak. But others might prefer to browse around, to see what their tastebuds want for tea that night. If this is the case it would become very difficult to get creative or excited about it. There's more to the appreciation of food, music, art in general than the end product itself - there's a whole miasma of factors and influences that inform my personal appreciation of these.

so you wouldn't know what food you'd tasted already tasted like if it you couldn't see it?

this analogy doesn't hold up at all, the music that comes without a packet could potentially sound like nothing you'd ever heard, any expectation you had could be wrong.

There's more to the appreciation of food, music, art in general than the end product itself

the format music is presented in has no bearing on the truth or untruth of this statement. not least because the packet IS an end product.

The idea of being tethered to a computer was one of the main complaints against digital files to begin with, and now people can't think of listening to hardly any music without a computer present.

xp That's cool. I just have nightmares in the wake of that EMP exit poll. It's the Youtube DJs I can't stand... the sound of somebody turning up a Youtube rip of Destiny's Child in an effort to start a party is the most unpleasant sound under the sun

o see the food, or at least a picture of a serving suggestion of the food

how is this analogous to the art on an album? it's not a picture of the music

presumably people never understood music until the days when you could physically buy it, all hail the last 100 years, the best of all possible worlds.

I haven't bought a CD in ~2-3 years, but I buy songs/albums on iTunes. One an hour ago (Lindi Ortega)! I chose 2-6 because we have bought a few pieces of vinyl to go with new player.

fwiw I think the browsing/tactile/visual sense of listening to music in a group, like dog latin is referencing, is only partly about the music and mostly about the shared experience needing props. About half the time I listen to digital music in my living room, I'm browsing through albums on the television screen and the cover displays while it's playing, giving that "in"

i listen to spotify, god, i don't know....30-40 hours a week at least...at work mostly

i does bum me out that lots of people haven't heard really nice pressings on a nice record player...i know skot tries to tell people, but it is amazing! it really is. i genuinely hear new stuff i've never heard on the track on a regular basis...i noticed some subtle, light percussion tracks on court & spark by joni mitchell the other day, like never heard that before...

i think, by now, lots of people grow up never having heard a really good stereo and just assume it's not that different

20-40 CDs (close to 40, maybe a couple more.) That's about 40% of my total music purchases last year. The rest (including three vinyl records and three box sets) all purchased used at garage sales or through ebay/Amazon.

Never purchased any digital downloads, dagnabbit.

I agree that it's a horrible tragedy. Sadly, a lot of music venues have shitty sound, or people only go to see huge bands, so they hardly ever go to a nice smaller venue with great sound to realize how bad their home experience is.

I was in a music venue a couple weeks ago during a festival and, while the band wasn't what I'm into at all, I realized it sounded _great_. I also noticed the soundboard was way oversized for the room and there was nice sound baffling on the ceiling, and figured out the venue was used for recording sometimes.

CD buyers, do you think you'll still be buying them ten years from now? Vinyl longevity issues are different but I would not be surprised if CD production is just, say, a tenth of what it is now in 2022, if that.

I fear that the digital music collection is becoming too personalised, too internal. Part of what got me into music was the way it can be shared and bonded over. And I don't mean sharing over a p2p network or on Facebook. Our music collections are now hidden away on our computers and iPods rather than displayed in living rooms and bedrooms. Flicking through folders on someone else's pc feels a bit like going through their drawers. No longer can we have that 'oh my god, you like Jonathan and the Modern Lovers too?!' moment because how do you know? And if one is granted access to scroll and pick music from the enormous mass of folders of someone else's digital collection, the answer to this is most likely to be 'yeah I downloaded all his albums a while back but I never listened to em'.

This is my problem with Spotify, and yeah yeah it's inevitAble that this is the future of music listening, but imagine a guy from the seventies travelling to the future and being shown this incredible glowing plasma ball. 'Behold! This orb will play any album in the world, whatever music your greatest wish desires, you can hear it right now, simply by thinking about it'. You just know that seventies guy is going to pick London Calling or whatever...

Spotify turns the act of sharing music something that you do over the net, not face to face. I'm no gamer but I was recently disappointed when I realised that the majority of multiplayer games HAVE to be played over the net, and that very few rely on two controllers which you can use in the same living room. That's bizarre to me, as someone who used to sit for hours with his friends and brothers and sisters playing each other at mario kart and streetfighter ii.

I understand I sound like a Luddite here, but these developments, while being useful, are putting up walls in the way people share their tastes. Nowadays the word 'social' is all too often succeeded by 'media' - a boiling down of like lists and Spotify recommendations.

The crush tape is practically a dead format. Those handwritten, lovingly selected compilations can't be reproduced with digital. A 7GB USB stick filled with 3 days' worth of music isn't exactly the most romantic token of affection. But hey, so it goes, this is progress.

We're served a blank slate with no other information about what we're hearing, nothing about the artist and why they chose to make that music. as such it becomes homogenised - it may as well be musical wallpaper to the casual listener.

this too, is rubbish. it's the internet, do you really think people aren't reading about things as they listen, or before? there's more "context" than there ever has been, we could do with less.

also what is "musical wallpaper", please define.

presumably this is why white label releases are known for their safety first approach, because the casual listener just devours music that comes with no info?

No longer can we have that 'oh my god, you like Jonathan and the Modern Lovers too?!' moment because how do you know?

frictionless sharing. google it.

it's the exact reverse, the info and trimmings are more often for the layman. if you doubt that then just have a look at how the industry bolstered itself once things started to go tits up, every "big" album coming with an extra dvd and some other gimmick.

look at the biggest selling cds of the last 20 years and the biggest selling digital music and tell me which is more bland, to you personally.

Sorry this is many xposts now. mh - I agree that there's loads of information on the web, more information than ever before, about the music one is likely to be hearing, but I don't see this as a replacement for, say, an album cover because really you have to have a vested interest in the musi in the first place to go and read an artist interview, and most people don't at first.

Ronan before you could physically buy music, you had to go out and listen to it being played by musicians, hence you were placed in a perfect context.

so recorded music itself is a problem too?

frictionless sharing. google it.

dude some of us are on work computers

thing is, I'm old enough to remember when vinyl LPs came with just the facts, ma'am, on their sleeves; if it was a greatest hits/best of you got a picture of the artist, a track listing and that was it. Anything else you had to conjure up in your mind or go find out about elsewhere. Consequently there was a bit of mystique; you didn't know about the artists, you just heard the music and came to your own conclusions. Now with deluxe reissues there's no space for the listener to breathe; every little pore is spelt out and there's no means by which a new or casual listener could find their own way to the music.

All records are "musical wallpaper" really, regardless of format. They get half-listened to and then put on the shelf to stare at. The solution is for a record you could only listen to once (meaning you'd HAVE to concentrate and listen to it) but the technology for that hasn't been developed yet.

So my heart sympathises with Dog Latin but my head agrees with Ronan.

I can see thirty three CDs that I've bought this year, around my room.

It's a bit of an odd one in that this year is the first I've really been able to afford to buy CDs since quitting music journalism (for the most part) and my new "proper job" (as my gran would have called it) kicking in.

so recorded music itself is a problem too?

I'm not gonna get into it but actually yes!

not even nostalgia is as good as it used to be

well if you're at work i doubt a friend is in your living room going through your modern lovers vinyl.

which leads me to the obvious point that the idea people are somehow discussing music (or anything else) less is just utter fucking mentalism.

if anything people's musical taste is waved around far too much. how often would somebody realistically be going through your records in your living room?

the main way friends get into records that we end up discussing is by... LISTENING TO THEM, not looking through my collection.

xpost fwiw i have started buying vinyl again recently, but it's because of sound quality and the inability to get certain things digitally. i find a lot of dog latin's points on this thread are part of some odd but common need to be either/or when it comes to formats, but there's some incredible assumptions about other people and how they consume music.

i don't do digital when it comes to books and i can't honestly say i've ever had a friend pick up a book in my living room. but i have talked about books with friends on numerous occasions.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8455/8047923011_10c9aaa846_c.jpg

I'm not gonna get into it but actually yes!

you should get into it, it'd be a better discussion!

hahah looking forward to seeing how this develops!

CDs in that pic too far away to identify, Nick.

I can make out a few of them but only a few. First Modern Lovers album, eh?

Nowadays the word 'social' is all too often succeeded by 'media' - a boiling down of like lists and Spotify recommendations.

this sentence actually reads like something from the daily mail, genuinely.

or that simpsons with the kids news show that had "bart's people" in it

http://sickmouthy.com/2012/10/02/on-buying-physical-music/

Link to large photo for ID purposes - http://www.flickr.com/photos/njsouthall/8047923011/in/photostream/lightbox/

dude some of us are on work computers

belated lol at this btw... penny dropping.

because really you have to have a vested interest in the musi in the first place to go and read an artist interview

dog latin, are you kidding me? I know I was really into reading as a kid, but even with music readily available for streaming it's amazingly easy to read /about/ music and read the words of artists. Even if people don't buy magazines, they read sites like pitchfork or resident advisor or whatever else your taste leads to and participate in communities where people talk about music. Do you think people buy magazines or go to websites and only read articles about the artists they've already heard? I'm not talking about fandom, I'm talking about engagement with music.

like I go to pitchfork and go "welp, haven't heard of any of these artists" and close the page

lol

I mean, I may do that anyway, but that's not how I learned about all kinds of music over the years.

The thing about CDs is they seem like such a shitty half-measure at this point. They were useful when because of technological limitations they were the best means available to distribute digital music files, but that hasn't been the case for years now.

At any rate, probably about half or more of the music I listen to now isn't available on any physical format, whether it's rap/r&b mixtapes or random dance tracks downloaded from soundcloud or whatever.

Tbh, Soundcloud is presently the most exciting music distribution model as far as I'm concerned.

there also is a culture associated with digital music and the way it's distributed and consumed. obviously.

the idea that it somehow automatically becomes machine-like or a fascimile is basically akin to saying dance music cannot have the emotion of the beatles or some shit. it doesn't actually make any sense except it sounds easy on the ear because of preconceptions.

^^^yes!

btw I've never owned a Beatles album, kind of think of them as audio wallpaper

the problem with audio wallpaper is you can't actually paper your walls with it. when a friend comes around, sure they can hear it, but they can't reach out and touch it like the wallpaper of old.

the taste of youth is in the gutter, they don't know how to listen to real music

btw I've never owned a Beatles album, kind of think of them as audio wallpaper

― ɥɯ ︵ (°□°) (mh), Tuesday, October 2, 2012 3:00 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

would you say you hear the beatles more or less often than you eat pizza?

Nick you're conflating "buying CDs" (or vinyl, or physical music in any form) with "rewarding the artists for their work". I've spent as much, probably more, on digital downloads this year than I would have spent on CDs back in the day. I very much doubt I'm alone in this. CDs are so dirt cheap these days, and the manufacturing and distribution costs are still relatively high, so the margin on digital downloads is actually higher. Whether that goes to the artists, that's a different issue. For artists with a much lower profile than Grizzly Bear, it means the barrier to getting their music actually on sale is much lower.

Really though you can't stop people from taking the path of least resistance, and streaming services like Spotify and whatever Apple launches will probably lead to a big decline in illegal downloads after a while.

Maybe the way forward is for major labels to pay artists a living wage like everyone else who works for them, paid for through a retooled revenue model, rather than unrecoupable advances based on projected sales that may never materialise.

I love cds for their newfound state of useless dejection. Their sheer unsexiness and obsolete functionality is very appealing at a time when the resurgence of vinyl and cassettes bespeak a fetishization of older, physical media. Cds aren't quite tactile and aren't quite digital, they're small, and there's not much nostalgic about them. I love them for their abjection.

In the last 16 months I've bought maybe like 170-190 cds.

used? they are cheaper than mp3s weirdly

If I am conflating buying physical product with rewarding the artist I think that's fair enough - revenue models for download services vary massively, and somewhere like emusic can't be paying the artists as much as iTunes. It's great that you've spent as much or more on downloads as you'd have spent on CDs, and I'd much rather people buy a download than stream via Spotify, even premium, and that download systems mean more people can get their music out there than via physical methods. But it's not for me, and I've seen artists state that their preferred mode of sale of their work is via physical formats. That's what I prefer, and to me it seems fairest.

"Ultimately my concern isn’t that Grizzly Bear can’t afford to buy houses or pay for health insurance. It’s that they ... and everyone else whose music I love, won’t be able to afford to make ends meet so much that they’ll give up, and stop making music, and go and get day jobs. That would be a tragedy."

lots of people work part-time or even full-time day jobs and still manage to make great music. it's not an either/or proposition.

don't say things like that, you'll summon the spirit of Albini

The last time I bought a casa ingles was in 2001. it still holds up today.

i always wished someone would make a coffee table book about the day jobs of indie rock stars, or maybe even a directory. like say you wanted a punk rock dentist, and oh, there's Jerry Only, D.D.S just 15 mi from you.

i have bought over 100 records this year, easily.
probably 75% used.

My thoughts...all music I buy is purchased in the form of cds. There are personal reasons and - er - logistical reasons, I suppose. Personally I have always felt more connected to the music if I actually own it. I have always felt this way - even in the 80s when I started buying records, if it was something someone had taped for me I wasn't interested. If it wasn't something I owned, it wasn't mine. That mindset has stuck with me - people could rip cds for me or I could download music (as I have, through libraries etc) but I don't think of that as mine. I still prefer the artefact, the disc, the sleeve etc. Maybe it's just the era I grew up in. As for the logistical element, well I only have access to the net through my phone, so Spotify or itunes or whatever aren't an option. We don't have the net in our home, I have limited access and my wife has a wifi hotspot if she needs it. I no longer work so have no net access in a workplace (which is where I used to do all my ILMing). We have downloaded a few songs from itunes for our six yr old son but even he prefers to put a cd in his Early Learning Centre cd player. I did the poll this morning but got it wrong, I think I've bought more than 60 cds this year, but not a lot has been new releases. My gradual re-entry to ILM (and slow unsure use of Twitter) has given me some ideas of what I want to get next (Swans and Grizzly Bear sound right up my street) so I'm sure it'll be up to 100 by years end. But I love the physical format, and even if I could download, I wouldn't.

Totally agree with the ownership thing, Rob. I hate being made mixes, copies of things, etc. always wanted the real thing.

I used to feel that way until I realized that value in physical things was just turning me into a hoarder

I'm very good at getting rid of stuff I don't use, thankfully. Emma stops me purging half the record collection.

to be fair, she probably wouldn't appreciate if you got rid of her half

I average between 2 and 3 CDs per week. A lot of that is me catching up on old classics, though, so I'm not really helping many Grizzly Bears.

or grizzlebees, as they may be called

I hate being made mixes, copies of things, etc. always wanted the real thing.

But "the real thing" is just packaging really. And mixes are an amazing way to discover new stuff. There are so many ways of discovering music you miss out on if all you do is buy CD albums, so much great music that you never get to hear.

I buy 10-20 CDs a year, and probably about 60 digital albums a year. Once I have a space that seems suitable I plan on getting a record player and starting all over, well only with my favorites.

But mixes and copies of albums lack that "authenticity" amirite

thought experiment: Imagine that your local record store, or your favorite mail order record store, is an extremely good counterfeiter and you've been buying intricate bootleg copies all along. Do you lose anything by learning this?

copies and mixes are mere xeroxes compared to the authenticity you get from thumbing through (never touching or picking up, those are barbaric terms) thumbing through faded but still breathing leaves of vinyl and cd

I mean "physical music" just doesn't exist, it's not a thing. People just think it is because they happened to have lived at the one brief point in human history when it was necessary to store it physically.

yup

I mean "physical music" just doesn't exist, it's not a thing. People just think it is because they happened to have lived at the one brief point in human history when it was necessary to store it physically.

no, the commercial album of the 20th century is the high point of humanity's relationship with sound. never has we been at the cusp of such a great decline.

see it's even affecting how we write.

the "i buy physical music to help keep favourite artists' bank accounts healthy" argument is very odd when across almost every genre artists agree that they mostly make a living from live performances rather than record sales in any format

sometimes i feel like i'm in one of those pictures of a person watching themselves watch themselves watch television on a television and we're just having the same thread 10 million times for years and years and years

when did these feelings begin? and is the picture a jpg or a hard copy?

Some thoughts, not necessarily coherent:

1) I remember when "Home taping is killing music" was a big issue ... but feel sure that home taping actually prompted me to buy more music than I would have done otherwise ... but it does seem like there is a culture of expecting music to be free, at the moment. That Grizzly Bear comment about comparing the price of a CD to a starter seemed pertinent.

2) It's not just how you buy music but where you buy music. I have a £2 rule where I'll buy a CD in my local independent store if it's within a couple of quid of Amazon ... but there are times when I'll buy from where ever is cheapest.

3) I enjoy trawling my CD shelves when drunk in a way that I don't flicking through my computer files.

4) I wonder how much Keiran Hebden made from Pink (download only, more or less) compared to if he'd put out a physical product?

5) I've bought the odd CD - that train announcement on Trunk, say - knowing I'd only play it once but thinking an hour's entertainment for a fiver is sometimes fine.

I kind of understand that last point -- when compared against other forms of entertainment, music is a bargain. If an album really grows on me or has amazing packaging/liner notes/etc then I'm more willing to seek it out, but it seems like a waste to manufacture, ship, and stock a cardboard sleeve and disc if I'm not that invested in it to begin with. There have been albums that have grown on me and I've actually bought twice, as a download and as a physical release.

Somewhere up-thread someone mentioned cherry picking the best tracks from albums and downloading those but this doesn't seem to take into account that the tracks that sound best after one play, five plays, ten plays, twenty plays etc are different and it is often worth pursuing with tracks that initially sound a bit dodge.

Buying music has been like a drug habit for me since I was a kid, pay day and getting some more new tunes has been the thing for years. I've had a couple years where I didn't go out and get more nearly as much, but it's never stopped. That said, I haven't had the urge to follow what's 'new' much for quite a few years. I tend to get into a certain sound, genre or artist for a while then move to something else. I kind of tend to focus on a few things at a time with intensity in my personal listening. If there is new music tied to it, cool, if not, that is fine.

I'm definitely at 100+ for this year, as I have gotten into a few things I never really listened to with great depth, but I buy quite a bit used.

I might be into the whole mix and trading thing if I knew more people around here that were deep into music. I got friends that really like music, but they usually kind of just like one thing and I might like that one thing, but it's the only think they like and that might not be the main thing i'm checking out at this moment.

used? they are cheaper than mp3s weirdly
― Philip Nunez, Wednesday, 3 October 2012 06:29 (3 hours ago)

In Australia new CDs in our biggest chain cost about the same as low-sound-quality DRM files from iTunes

the "i buy physical music to help keep favourite artists' bank accounts healthy" argument is very odd when across almost every genre artists agree that they mostly make a living from live performances rather than record sales in any format
― lex pretend, Wednesday, 3 October 2012 08:16 (1 hour ago)

They have to make more of a living from live performance bcz ppl stopped buying records; buying records helps them better recoup advances and actually make money from recording. Touring artist show prices have basically tripled here over the last 8 years as the recording industry has contracted, which then leaves much less discretionary purchasing power for records etc etc.

um whoever itt is arguing that u don't need to purchase music to support artists because they just make music off live shows, if you like the artist you should also pay them for their recorded music i think that is pretty clear-cut whether or not it's a physical release. you can and should also pay for the show, but these two do not preclude each other

someone spent money & time making it => you should pay for it

As for EOY albums, I keep all new purchases separate from the rest of the collection, as a very visual reminder / guide to what I've bought this year (both new stuff and back catalogue). I filter everything into the stacks on New Years Day; done this for a few years now, and much prefer it to keeping a list anywhere or trying to remember by going through everything. Also gives me a default 'what to listen to niow' pile for when I'm feeling indecisive.

― comedy is unnatural and abhorrent (Scik Mouthy), Tuesday, October 2, 2012 3:31 AM (14 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ha, that's been my routine for the past 5 years or so as well.

My general routine is to make a playlist of every album I'm interested enough in to check out (I personally use Rhapsody), and out of that list - roughly 400 or so albums a year - I end up buying about 60-80 of my favorite albums on CD.

Have bought:

100+ vinyl LPs (almost all $1 or less; none more than $2 I don't think)
3 CDs (all $1)
0 digital anything

BUT I still get a ton of physical promos of new music (mostly CD, occasionally vinyl), which I prefer to digital. Get sent even more downloads, probably, which I completely ignore unless I have an actual assignment and no other way to hear something. And I have a free Rhapsody account since I'm their metal editor -- actually free "fantasy" Rhapsody account, which means I can stream lots of additional music that subscribers can't -- which fills most of the other holes for new stuff (and I'll listen to something there rather than downloading it, if possible.)

"Get sent even more downloads or streams," I guess I mean. Given the choice, would rather stream than download.

Are a lot of those purchased on a whim, Chuck? Or are those albums ones you've been meaning to buy once you've found them for ~ a dollar?

They are ALL purchased on a whim. I guess. At least in the sense that I never go to a store (or garage sale, or record convention) looking for anything in particular. But a lot of them are ones I've wondered about over the decades, if that makes sense. Though sometimes I don't realize I've wondered about them until I see them. And at least a few are by artists I've never even heard of before, but the LP just looks interesting.

About 95% legitimate purchases, and 0% physical. I'm 380 miles distant from my conventional A/V equipment due to a familial disorders.

I'm all about physical music, but I've been trying to listen to all the classic albums the past two years and the library has allowed me to do that for free...so not too many physical purchases this year. Probably only about 10-12...yikes.

I will say though, I've been getting into cassettes this year. Bought my first hi-fi and I'm looking to get a Walkman Pro.

Not counting a boatload of used crap scored on Amazon and used sections:

18 records, 10 CDs, 5 cassettes, and a 7"

i just found this thread and see that i was the inspiration for it.

anyways, right after all this i went out and bought 8 album. 5 are 2012 releases and the other three are from 2011.

now going back to read this thread.

btw, i own around 4,000 CD's and a bunch of vinyl but haven't bought any vinyl in over five years now.

have never purchased a digital download, i want the CD if i'm putting out the money.

Pretty sure this is zero for me. I'd kind of like to start buying vinyl again (cheap/used stuff), but I don't have a stereo system at the moment.

But "the real thing" is just packaging really. And mixes are an amazing way to discover new stuff. There are so many ways of discovering music you miss out on if all you do is buy CD albums, so much great music that you never get to hear.

Oh doubtless, but a: I love design and packaging, and b: I have more than enough avenues for discovering new music already, so I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything by not getting mixes. I know this might seem stuck-in-the-mud and illogical, but we're talking about music, art: logic isn't a priority, and I'm hardly a Luddite - I have digital music players and an iTunes library, I rip all my CDs and use them for portability on my iPhone, but at home I like to sit down and put an album on, stand up and browse through the collection rather than sit at a computer and look through a database.

Ronan, you're being pretty unpleasant on this thread. People have different opinions to you and different values to you, that doesn't give you a right to mock and tease them.

Lex, yes artists might make more money through touring, but that's because CDs are selling less, not a reason to not buy them. I also live 180 miles from London and 80 from Bristol: I can't go to gigs to see the artists I like all that often: it's extremely expensive and it takes a lot of time. So I like to buy an album instead.

There is this thing where mixes usually feature more than one artist..

I mean, for people with less than enough avenues

I am aware of that. I have experienced them. I am not saying that they are useless, just that I don't feel I need them.

I mean, for people with less than enough avenues

― blank, Wednesday, October 3, 2012 12:12 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fewer avenues, fuckn grammar cops

Bit late to the discussion but personally I’ve bought 83 albums this year.

26 new releases on vinyl
1 new release on CD
29 catalogue albums on vinyl (though this includes a good half dozen LP’s I overlooked from 2011, the rest are mostly reissues)
19 second hand records
8 catalogue CD’s

To be honest my music buying habits have remained relatively stable over the past decade. Getting into buying vinyl 5 or 6 years ago has resulted in me probably spending more and buying a lot of stuff I already had on CD. Retrospectively I resent that a little but it was a bit of an uncontrollable compulsion at the time. Now I’m a lot more discerning about re-buying albums and tend to do as much research as I can into the source/sound quality before shelling out.

The last couple of years has seen me embracing digital music more than I ever anticipated. I now download anything I buy on vinyl in FLAC. I’m subscribed to Spotify premium which I use a lot as well; mostly on my iPhone although I use it through my Sonos system as well. As a result of that I’m now more likely to listen to an album before I buy it, especially if it’s a band I haven’t really heard before, although I still have that strange ‘hold off ‘till I get a physical copy’ attitude towards releases I’m really looking forward to. Despite embracing digital/computer based music listening I still haven’t paid for a single song or album I’ve downloaded. I tend to justify downloading on the basis that I usually have paid for a physical copy on vinyl already or am going to buy one imminently. I also download a lot of bootlegs and live recordings.

I can’t ever see myself not buying music regularly for many of the positive reasons already discussed although on top of that I buy because it’s one of the ways I identify myself, such a key part of my personality/who I am/all that bullshit.

Ronan, you're being pretty unpleasant on this thread. People have different opinions to you and different values to you, that doesn't give you a right to mock and tease them.

stick to the facts

Lex, yes artists might make more money through touring, but that's because CDs are selling less

No it isn't, it's because MUSIC is selling less, you're conflating the issues again. CDs aren't going to return to their 90s sales levels, you might not be able to buy them at all by the time you're in your fifites, mourning them is missing the point. Whether the artists are being fairly remunerated for digital sales, streaming, etc is the core concern. There's nothing inherently worthy or better for the artist in buying a physical object.

Oh doubtless, but a: I love design and packaging, and b: I have more than enough avenues for discovering new music already, so I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything by not getting mixes. I know this might seem stuck-in-the-mud and illogical, but we're talking about music, art: logic isn't a priority, and I'm hardly a Luddite

Serious question, do you listen to non-album based music, or make much of an effort to seek it out? Would you, for example, have heard the material on Four Tet's Pink had it not been released in a handy album-shaped format? I'm saying this because you seem to genuinely enjoy electronic music and yet at least 80% of the best stuff doesn't appear in this format, maybe isn't even written about or talked about, but it does appear on mixes, that's how individual tracks get sold.

Personally I still have a hi-fi separates, big speakers and stuff, I still listen to at least half my music in my living room. It's just it streams directly from my laptop to the stereo. Before that I plugged in my iPod. At some point the need for plastic boxes with usually badly designed little booklets in them just evaporated.

Also, as a side point on the Grizzly Bear thing, how much money are they making compared to, say, mid-80s REM?

artists also make less money because people have far more choice in terms of what music they buy, unlimited choice. it seems likely now you have more artists making less money.

Anyone know about this BBC Playlister thing??
http://www.factmag.com/2012/10/03/meet-playlister-the-bbcs-forthcoming-equivalent-to-spotify/

Maybe that should be a whole new thread

That's definitely a thread in its own right. I'm assuming it'll be old Peel and Maida Vale sessions and so forth, rather than going head-to-head with Spotify.

No it isn't, it's because MUSIC is selling less, you're conflating the issues again.

Yeah, I should've put 'music' there, not CDs; in terms of fiscal remuneration, I don't care what format people buy stuff on, just that they buy it so that musicians can get paid and keep on making music - CD just happens to be my preferred medium for various reasons and interchanging the terms isn't helping.

Serious question, do you listen to non-album based music, or make much of an effort to seek it out? Would you, for example, have heard the material on Four Tet's Pink had it not been released in a handy album-shaped format? I'm saying this because you seem to genuinely enjoy electronic music and yet at least 80% of the best stuff doesn't appear in this format, maybe isn't even written about or talked about, but it does appear on mixes, that's how individual tracks get sold.

Yes, but not masses, and not much of an effort; for a start I like albums qua albums as a convenient unit via which to consume music, as boring and staid as that may be (hence such an effort to get Pink, though I had about half the material already downloaded), and secondly I simply don't have the time I had a few years ago to chase individual tracks or take in everything that people get excited about; dayjob is more demanding and other hobbies are taking up my time.

why is an album more convenient than a mix?

1) I remember when "Home taping is killing music" was a big issue ...

I remember reading this on my dad's album sleeves and trying really hard not to tap my feet because somehow that would ruin the music.

I don't listen to enough mixes. Part of the problem is that I rarely have time to listen to a whole one all the way through as much of my listening is done in short bursts. If the mix is cut up into individual tracks I tend to shy away from putting it on my iPhone because a lot of the time, if I'm just rushing to work, I'll stick the whole library on shuffle and I hate mixed tracks just bursting in mid-sync with the last few notes of the last track fading out. Lame I know. If it's one long mix I'm actually more likely to listen to it, but again I don't feel as though I often have the time to listen to the whole thing in one sitting, and coming back to a mix halfway through feels kind of wrong to me, like stopping a film halfway through. This is highly irrational, I know.

Another annoying thing is I've never worked out how to get a mix or compilation to appear on my iPhone library without it scattering all over the place. I tried to get Immer onto my phone the other day, but it's arranged everything so that rather than being grouped under Michael Mayer, it's all the individual artists in alphabetical order. Fucked if I'm going to sort that mess out.

why is an album more convenient than a mix?

I didn't say it was, I just said that I liked albums. Mixes are mad convenient, but it's not really a culture that I've ever got that involved with so it's not a format / medium I've got used to. Maybe I should change this approach, and perhaps I will, but I'm pretty happy with the avenues for music discovery that I'm using at the moment, in terms of them giving me enough stuff that I like listening to. If that changes, ill find explore new avenues.

I've bought maybe 15 CDs this year, a similar number of digital releases (mostly 12"s and singles) and I think 0 vinyl. Definitely less than pre-Spotify (I peaked around 50 CDs a few years ago when I finally got a real job). These days I mostly buy physical albums that aren't on Spotify and aren't available noticeably cheaper as Boomkat/Amazon mp3s. If there's an album I really love I'll buy it even if it is on Spotify (recently: Julia Holter and Josephine Foster), both to "thank" the artists and for after the apocalypse when there's no Internet and just a communal CD player that tells dirty jokes and washes the dishes.

Another annoying thing is I've never worked out how to get a mix or compilation to appear on my iPhone library without it scattering all over the place. I tried to get Immer onto my phone the other day, but it's arranged everything so that rather than being grouped under Michael Mayer, it's all the individual artists in alphabetical order. Fucked if I'm going to sort that mess out.

best way is to make a playlist and add in the tracks in order.

have to say the vast bulk of my new music listening is mixes. then i listen to older things (about 50 per cent of my listening) and albums via spotify.

i listen to mixes a lot while running but also at work i find they are a good way to shut out the office. albums and jazz and stuff like that i generally listen to in the evenings at home.

Mixes tend to be commute music for me, as they're usually the right length and largely instrumental so therefore good for blocking out other people's conversations while I'm reading.

best way is to make a playlist and add in the tracks in order.

or select all the tracks from the album and mark them as a compilation.

my listening is delineated between spotify (generally older things, some exceptions) and mp3s on my ipod (mostly newer stuff with some exceptions) xpost

My commute is only about 10 minutes these days and in the car with my wife, so we just listen to news radio; if I walk it's about 30 minutes and I'll listen to msuic, but 30 minutes is an odd length so I generally play a playlist of recent faviourite individual tracks, or else part of a new album I've just got.

Office is shared space so we either listen to 6music or else I'll make big, socially-acceptable playlists. I don't listen to music when I'm cycling as these days I'm on roads 99% of the time rather than cyclepaths, and I've stopped running cos I play football much more these days.

Home listening is largely governed by shared taste with Emma; luckily we do share a lot of our tastes but not everything - that probably cuts down on really overt electronic / pure dance music to some extent, actually. I'm petrified of going out dancing given my dodgy knees, despite recent positive physiotherapy.

I wish I had a job that allowed me to listen to music, I never have though.

best way is to make a playlist and add in the tracks in order.

I guess so. It's pretty tedious though, especially if you don't know what order the tracks are supposed to appear. I dunno, I never understood iTunes as a system - the whole idea of adding music to an iTunes library confounds me - why would I want to do this as opposed to adding tracks manually to my iPhone (drag'n'drop)? Why does it insist on copying existing files to another part of your hard drive? This seems incredibly wasteful.

Portable listening always seemed more logical with my Creative Zen player - you just plugged it in, dragged files over and most of the time they appeared in the right order. And if they weren't, you could edit it easily. With iPhone, if artist or album information is missing or incorrect it completely bollixes everything up. One of the main problems is that if I beatmap anything in Acid Pro, it does something to the file information on the MP3. So if I import that track to iPhone, despite all the ID3 tag info being in place, it will appear unlisted on the iPhone meaning that the best tracks off of albums get left out of the artist/album playlist.

To make matters worse there seems to be a problem with the Apple software so that even if I try to edit track information from iTunes, it doesn't update on the phone any more.

That faff is the biggest thing that puts me off digital music, and I don't actually mind iTunes as a system that much (not having used anything else extensively probbaly contributes to that).

Portable listening always seemed more logical with my Creative Zen player - you just plugged it in, dragged files over and most of the time they appeared in the right order. And if they weren't, you could edit it easily. With iPhone, if artist or album information is missing or incorrect it completely bollixes everything up. One of the main problems is that if I beatmap anything in Acid Pro, it does something to the file information on the MP3. So if I import that track to iPhone, despite all the ID3 tag info being in place, it will appear unlisted on the iPhone meaning that the best tracks off of albums get left out of the artist/album playlist.

even nostalgia for the previous mp3 player.

Can't think. I still look through cd sales etc and look through reviews a lot. Could easily buy a lot more stuff I'm aware of if I had the wherewithall. Have normally had longish lists of things I want to get hold of.
Don't have unlimited physical space though or unlimited funds.
Oh to be a millionaire with the ability to split oneself into several multitasking selves.
There's still a massive list of music I want to hear before too long. Also that I would like to become somewhat familiar with.
I guess you need to learn what can be ignored without fearing you've missed the greatest thing you could possibly ever hear.
& god, there's more music being made all the time. How do people cope?

for a while it was nice buying e.g. DJ Kicks mixes and being able to rip them as one single file to then listen to - because you couldn't get it in that format otherwise. now any commercial mix should really be available both track-by-track and as a single file.

Portable listening always seemed more logical with my Creative Zen player - you just plugged it in, dragged files over and most of the time they appeared in the right order. And if they weren't, you could edit it easily. With iPhone, if artist or album information is missing or incorrect it completely bollixes everything up. One of the main problems is that if I beatmap anything in Acid Pro, it does something to the file information on the MP3. So if I import that track to iPhone, despite all the ID3 tag info being in place, it will appear unlisted on the iPhone meaning that the best tracks off of albums get left out of the artist/album playlist.

even nostalgia for the previous mp3 player.

― Know how Roo feel (LocalGarda), Wednesday, 3 October 2012 12:32 (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This stock snarkiness is starting to get as tiresome as the whole "first world problems" thing people do.

I guess you need to learn what can be ignored without fearing you've missed the greatest thing you could possibly ever hear.

This, as sadly pragmatic as it seems, is pretty key for me lately. I can't, and don't want, to keep up with everything: I've tried it before and it made me miserable and left piss-all time for anything else.

100+ new and second hand vinyl

There is something to be said for things like the "slow listening" movement some people attempt to do, but this feels incredibly straitjacketed and rule-imposed and therefore not fun. I like to be able to hear a lot of different music, but catching up with it all is impossible and like Mouthy says, it can lead to misery. What I'm more concerned about is perfectly good albums which I might assign to the "listen later" pile and never get round to reassessing because of the constant influx of new things. That said, if something grabs my attention it's likely I will give it a good innings. Listening to lots of music and having a sprawling collection is a real wheat-chaff affair. Whereas when I used to buy physical releases on a smaller scale, I'd take more time over them than if I download a whole bwun of albums, put them on shuffle and pick out maybe one or two that I particularly like.

In short, there's not enough time in the day and really I need to find a way to crowbar more listening into my waking hours.

saying someone is being nostalgic is not snarkiness.

It comes across as such when you're continually picking on the person in question, dude. nagl.

if anything i said is untrue or inaccurate then please respond in kind.

i'm not being facetious, i actually think dog latin feels nostalgic about his previous mp3 player.

seriously, tho, being nostalgic for two controllers with a game system with no online multiplayer system?

2-6 albums, but mostly obscure stuff that i either had to import from abroad or out of print stuff not available for purchase (or download) anywhere online

seriously, tho, being nostalgic for two controllers with a game system with no online multiplayer system?

plus it's not actually true that most games only have online multiplayer.

Gaming experiences (communal or not) probably lead to music chat and discoveries more now by virtue of the games often featuring songs (e.g. GTA, FIFA). This is another means of revenue for artists that's exploded post-web too.

ime people in games tend to chat more about how you are a fag and they fucking shot you, fag

sitting in friends bedrooms 20+ years ago playing alex kidd on the master system i'm sure we also touched on such subjects.

i think the digitisation of music and music consumption has led to far MORE opportunities for communal, IRL musical experiences tbh. even just in terms of connecting with people who share your taste - dog latin's strawgeneration of teenagers shut in their bedrooms staring at their screens reminds me more of growing up in a pre-digital age, shut in my bedroom listening to björk because everyone i knew IRL thought she was weird. since i got online, discovering and sharing music has been facilitated in an inherently social way.

I realised years ago that there's no way to hear everything I might ever like, let alone give all of it multiple listens and a fair chance to sink in, it doesn't worry me so much anymore. I find Spotify a great tool for listening to things I'm curious about and yeah, a lot of things I might only listen to once but I still manage to find plenty that I come back to - dog latin is right about the wheat/chaff ratio but I'd estimate maybe 1 in 15 things I hear I end up buying in some format. I really don't yearn for the days where I'd buy three or four albums a week on spec from the mid-price racks - I definitely heard some great stuff that way but I'm sure I would've found most of it by now anyway and I must've spent hundreds of pounds on fairly mediocre CDs.

i'm always seeing well-liked youtube comments from ppl namechecking http://gta.wikia.com/Fresh_FM, http://gta.wikia.com/Radio_Los_Santos, http://gta.wikia.com/Playback_FM etc. xp to nash

there are contemporary stations as wel of course, but those youtubes get a lot of comments anyway

feel like a lot of ppl are counting used records for the OP btw, despite
Let's not count used purchases - as this was inspired by musician's income that seems counter-productive.

― comedy is unnatural and abhorrent (Scik Mouthy), Tuesday, 2 October 2012

i can honestly say spotify had a life-changing effect on the music i listen to.

It's been a good year for me - I've bought close to 100 CDs, including 8 or so box sets and 10 2CD sets of 50s rockabilly.

I'm in the old-guy-with-thousands-of-CDs club. I have one room whose walls are covered with racks and it's a joy to just look at the collage of spines. I, too, have one small rack set aside for this calendar year's purchases (Billy Bragg also does this and calls it his 'nursery' rack) and also file them into the main racks on New Years day. On that day, I also take the opportunity to week things out and put them in the sell bag.

I've never liked vinyl (though I understand the sonic benefits) and I rip everything as it comes in. I keep the past 12 months of new acquisitions on my phone so I can easily focus on new stuff while mixing in old favorites or research & development listening (usually via Spotify).

I love having the liner notes as they're often useful for reference purposes when trying to figure out track version, musicians, years, etc. I admit I don't need this information often but when I do, I'm really glad I have it. I'm considering ditching all my jewel cases and putting things in a giant CanAm cabinet but we'll see.

I buy digital downloads when no CD is available (cf the new Savages release) but it's quite aggravating when AmazonUK sells something but I can't buy it in America! Shut up and take my money, damnit! If you don't give me an easy purchase option, I'll go find it somewhere else. I almost always buy domestic CDs from my local store (Newbury Comics) and try hard to order imports directly from the artist or label. Amazon fills in the rest - most used CDs are available stupidly cheap via their market.

My challenge is my thinking is still stuck in my bachelor days, when I would have unlimited listening time, time to hear music at work, went out to one or two gigs a week and generally focused on music to a ridiculous extent. Now, with 3 kids and a wife, the schedule is packed, I can't sit in front of the computer and listen to Spotify and I have to squeeze in listening while doing any number of things like making breakfast, building Lego's or when the Mrs watches crap TV. I find myself resentful that I haven't gotten around to checking something out or the new Malka Spigel album is still in the shrinkwrap after a week. On the plus side, the modern world means that great music I miss when it comes out will always be there waiting for me.

It's gratifying readying this thread, it makes me feel slightly less crazy.

I forgot to mention that ripping my own CDs means I'm in charge of the quality of my digital library. I've heard glitches in downloads and streaming services. Similarly, my digital copy is definitive for me as I'll fix things that might have been messed up on the CD itself (drop-outs, wrong version, etc).

sorry for the tangent:

dog latin, you have to mark mixes as a compilation (select all the files, click on the "Options" tab on the track info editor, and select "Part of a compilation"). It also helps if you put an album artist in -- if you put Michael Mayer in there, then the album will show up under his name.

ime people in games tend to chat more about how you are a fag and they fucking shot you, fag

― Know how Roo feel (LocalGarda), Wednesday, October 3, 2012 8:12 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hahaha, I don't know why any rational human would subject themselves to live chat on a shooter with strangers, shit makes youtube comments look like that party owen wilson goes to in midnight in paris

so true, i only did when i first got an xbox. people used to just shout racial abuse terms over and over and over.

it could be sort of funny to join in (the game, not the racism) and say completely crazy shit if you had a friend with you. eg put on the weirdest irish accent of all time and have the room round on you.

i think the digitisation of music and music consumption has led to far MORE opportunities for communal, IRL musical experiences tbh. even just in terms of connecting with people who share your taste - dog latin's strawgeneration of teenagers shut in their bedrooms staring at their screens reminds me more of growing up in a pre-digital age, shut in my bedroom listening to björk because everyone i knew IRL thought she was weird. since i got online, discovering and sharing music has been facilitated in an inherently social way.

― lex pretend, Wednesday, 3 October 2012 14:20 (46 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

:-) this is an interesting counter-example. my experiences of discovering new music pre-web 2.0, pre-music geek phase, were almost entirely based on face-to-face and word-of-mouth recommendation, save for the odd magazine review - YMMV of course. A huge part of the way I and my friends got turned on to new sounds was by going round each other's houses and listening to each other's CDs, swapping tapes, lending albums, trips to the record shop after school etc. My feelings today are that I don't actually know what kind of music most of my friends are even listening to. I know they do - they all have iPods and Spotify etc, but other than in the case of a select few friends this aspect of their lives remains under the radar, confined to their hard drives and web personae. I'm more in tune with the music tastes of people online than IRL. And yeah, I could go and look up my friends' Like lists on FB, their Spotify and Last.FM playlists etc, but this feels like a terribly remote and joyless way of going about things.

I maintain that while Spotify, YouTube, Facebook, online articles and blogs (which are analogous to print media) are all great gateways into discovering new music, they represent a very different approach to browsing in record shops, borrowing CDs off friends, the visual draw of a particularly appealing album cover etc...

For people (like we Ilxors) who already make a point of reading music blogs and sites, it makes very little personal difference how we come to discover new music - the roadmap is already laid out for us; we know the methods and how to approach them and these have proved extremely useful as they open up myriad opportunities for online sharing and discussion. I'm speaking as someone who grew up in a small town but for whom running an online community for electronic musicians was a lifeline in the early 2000s when very few people I knew IRL shared my enthusiasm.

So it's easy for us to say "The information is out there - it's all over the web", which is true. But the web isn't like real life - it isn't as prone to happy accidents or chance encounters. Overhearing something amazing over a record shop tannoy or an impulse buy based on a particularly striking album cover, or a particular stand-out track on a mixtape made for you by a friend isn't the same thing as checking something out on Spotify because you read a review about it on TinyMixTapes.

We discuss music day-in day-out on this board and I can safely say it's my main source of new music recommendations. Elsewhere online I'm marketed to through PR mailers and irritating ads on Spotify, Youtube and Facebook which I will NEVER check out unless by some phenomenal fluke of force. I probably know about three-four people IRL who read Pitchfork and other music sites on any regular basis. I hear older generations decrying the current music scene as being "just Simon Cowell and X Factor" because that's pretty much the only music they ever encounter on TV and on supermarket shelves (the only place you can buy a physical format within several miles of my home is in the Top 20 rack in Sainsbury's).

So what's my point here? I guess I'm just slightly concerned that the shift from physical formats and face-to-face recommendation towards digital consumption and online sharing appeals to only a certain type of music fan. They have to be reasonably internet savvy for a start, have the patience to get online and start trawling through YouTube videos or review sites, maybe start reading blogs and messageboards etc. They have to be comfortable with the idea of downloading music, either from iTunes or a P2P network. They have to be cool with the idea that the music they consume is THEIR music, the emphasis on "i" in "iTunes" - only to leave their digital collection in the form of packets sent over the net.

In essence, the digital format is in danger of eluding the casual, more passive music listeners out there. When you think about the number of records and CDs that have been sold purely on the basis of impulse, that's a huge part of the music market. I wonder, were I the same age now as I was when I first starting getting into music, if the same passions could be instilled in me given that a lot of the IRL social pathways are slowly being moved to online, which by nature requires an active yet solitary approach to music seeking.

dog latin, you have to mark mixes as a compilation (select all the files, click on the "Options" tab on the track info editor, and select "Part of a compilation"). It also helps if you put an album artist in -- if you put Michael Mayer in there, then the album will show up under his name.

Cheers. I think I tried that and it didn't work. I'm assuming it's an error on Apple's part though.

the fact that your friends apparently never talk about music IRL is not the basis for a theory.

ILM and twitter have pretty neatly replaced my Pearl Jam loving friends.

personally there are many of my friends with whom I discuss music all the time, and it's true for almost all of my close friends. the fact that we can see what we're all listening to via Spotify shared on Facebook (or thisismyjam, or just by sending each other stuff at work by email, happens all the time.) guarantees a there'll always be some buzz about whatever the thing people are into at a given moment is.

there really is nothing inherent to the current climate that stops discussion, nothing whatsoever. it's a totally crazy theory apparently extrapolated from the behaviour of one person's peers.

i can think of groups of friends of mine who don't really discuss music, but it's because they aren't as interested in it as the ones that do, generally, or just sort of "know what they like" and there's no shared interests.

again, it's totally untied to format or technology, and the persistent arguments to the contrary presume far too much about how other people listen to music.

I wonder, were I the same age now as I was when I first starting getting into music, if the same passions could be instilled in me given that a lot of the IRL social pathways are slowly being moved to online, which by nature requires an active yet solitary approach to music seeking.

See, I've had the complete opposite reaction. I learned about some music from friends in high school, but once I started spending (way too much) time on the internet I ended up making some friends who would trade music with me. It was slow as hell, but we'd upload an album or two to a shared ftp site the friend had and go back and forth trading music picks. With things like the spotify social feature, last.fm, and people sharing music I've picked up on as many things as I ever did from friends previously.

For some reason I keep picturing dog latin's friends listening to records as some sort of movie scene where a character says "You have to really check out this record!", holds it up, puts it on the turntable, and the movie goes into some sort of reflective character montage.

Sorry dog latin, you might live in a Nick Hornby novel.

the fact that your friends apparently never talk about music IRL is not the basis for a theory.

― Know how Roo feel (LocalGarda), Wednesday, 3 October 2012 16:32 (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I could argue that it does, as today's music media make it harder for such discussions to arise. As I said upthread, the last time I can recall my casual-music-fan friends getting into a passionate conversation about music was when a vinyl record was put on, and I have reason to believe this was largely down to the medium, its tangibility and the overall accessibility of this format. But then I'm 32 years old on Friday, so I'm open to being proved that this conception among me and my friends is simply down to age. That said, there are a lot of people in this world who are older and less digital-savvy than me, so the complete annihilation of the shop-purchasable physical format would greatly affect them.

haha xpost

I could argue that it does, as today's music media make it harder for such discussions to arise.

point is can't prove the former simply cos your friends don't talk about music.

stories are nice.

I was going to say, people generally buy less music or get stuck in their tastes as they age! I don't think this is indicative of anything other than your friends not being as interested in new music at this point in their lives.

The complete annihilation of the shop-purchasable physical format won't happen until those people are dead or have changed their buying habits.

Most people in their mid-20s and below have essentially grown up with the web and/or mobile phones and their buying habits are completely different even if they're only casual listeners/ "Digital-savvy" is something only old people say.

iirc the stats for your average "casual listener" were always 1 - 2 albums bought per year! It's almost always been youth supporting album purchases, with the exception of certain releases that every old person bought as their album of the year -- see the ridiculous sales of things like the Eagles Greatest Hits collection

I've always been a bit of a loner when it comes to new music seeking due to a stirring combo of geographical isolation and only childness, and that hasn't changed over time, but at least now I can find SOME people to talk about new stuff with. For a long time I had no one except for my irl friends when they would humor me for an exchange or two, but not much more. Kinda sad it took so long, but at least in the internet age I can sort of talk about music with human people.

As for purchases this year, I have no idea -- I never keep track of when I buy things and I'm not about to do research but I'd say I scratch the itch for new/new-to-me music on at least a weekly basis? Buying records at a store or at a show is part of the entertainment value. OTM whoever said "this is one of the things I do for fun".

xpost exactly, i already made the point that if you look at the recently released best-sellers of the last 20 years, for physical formats, it's not exactly a ringing endorsement of physical music-buyers as some bastion of muted critics we need to bring back into the fold.

itunes facilitates casual impulse buying more than any past format ever

itunes facilitates casual impulse buying more than any past format ever

and beatport/phonica/juno etc.

and it's not "buying" but what could be more casual than spotify? a search engine for millions of albums.

again, stack it up and the truth is actually the reverse of what you're arguing, doglatin, that it's too easy to casually pick up music, that there's more discussion than it's possible to assimilate.

if anything

if only there was a place on the internet where people discussed music

a proposed law - if you don't talk about music IRL you prob don't talk about it online

if you do talk about music (or wish you did) IRL you probably do talk about it online

See, I've had the complete opposite reaction. I learned about some music from friends in high school, but once I started spending (way too much) time on the internet I ended up making some friends who would trade music with me. It was slow as hell, but we'd upload an album or two to a shared ftp site the friend had and go back and forth trading music picks. With things like the spotify social feature, last.fm, and people sharing music I've picked up on as many things as I ever did from friends previously.

ILM and twitter have pretty neatly replaced my Pearl Jam loving friends.

― comedy is unnatural and abhorrent (Scik Mouthy), Wednesday, 3 October 2012 16:38 (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is all very well - I have had similar experiences, but I still think it's kind of sad that all this has to happen over the web. I get your points, but it's kind of indicative of how far we've come when I'm gettin ribbed for saying "the other day we sat around and listened to a record" as though I represent some sort of anachronistic spluttering colonel or fictional Hollywood character from the 1960s, while everyone else says "I don't know what the fuss is about, my internet friends are much more fun and enlightening than my IRL friends, what's the problem?".

Y'all might disagree with me, but music for me isn't just about sound coming from a speaker or the loves and lives of the artists producing it. I love discussing music and talking about it online, but I also believe that there's more to music than this. It's the same reason I enjoy a pint of beer but find the majority of town hall beer festivals in the UK miss the point - here we have a big room with 1000 beers to try out, but no other form of entertainment - not even chairs to sit down in in many cases. So rather than using beer as a social lubricant, something to be supped in conversation or whilst dancing to music or watching a show of some sort, it is to be quaffed in a sort of standing hubbub. The ulterior joy of beer has been placed front-and-centre with all other stimulus removed. When people discuss music online, they are doing one thing. They are individually sitting at their computers talking about music, and I'm not convinced this should be the only way to go about things, or even the preferred way.

The complete annihilation of the shop-purchasable physical format won't happen until those people are dead or have changed their buying habits.

Record shops close down every day. In Last Shop Standing there was a statistic that said something like five years ago 2,800 independent record shops existed in the UK and this number has dwindled to 800. The HMV chain is in constant jeopardy and if it closes down, there'll be very little impetus for the music industry to continue producing physical formats in any major way.

Biggest digital-music-head I know is 43 and always emailing us about whatever foul-mouthed metal album he's got off emusic.

This is all very well - I have had similar experiences, but I still think it's kind of sad that all this has to happen over the web. I get your points, but it's kind of indicative of how far we've come when I'm gettin ribbed for saying "the other day we sat around and listened to a record" as though I represent some sort of anachronistic spluttering colonel or fictional Hollywood character from the 1960s, while everyone else says "I don't know what the fuss is about, my internet friends are much more fun and enlightening than my IRL friends, what's the problem?".

you're getting ribbed for extrapolating a theory which denigrates wide swathes modern culture from a highly specific personal and anecdotal instance.

nobody is disagreeing with fact that there were nice things about physical music's era.

i'm not even going to unpick the beer thing because it's heaping yet more insane confusion into this thread.

When people discuss music online, they are doing one thing. They are individually sitting at their computers talking about music

I like to think there are many many more people doing this now than were going into record shops on a regular basis 20 years ago.

Like others here I do doubt that online discussion reduces IRL discussion and indeed is more likely to facilitate it further.

So rather than using beer as a social lubricant, something to be supped in conversation or whilst dancing to music or watching a show of some sort, it is to be quaffed in a sort of standing hubbub

oh go on i'll bite, earlier in the thread you complained about "musical wallpaper", now you complain that people on the net are "only doing one thing" when they listen to music.

please just stop hurling illogical tumbleweed into the cosmos, you're actually hurting fairies.

Also surely the #1 method of music discovery... actually hearing it around. Pubs, clubs, shops, radio, anywhere. Things like Shazam are popular for a reason.

Like Anal Corpse Annihilation or whatever. Said the most moving song he'd ever heard was that piano cover of One Big Family by Embrace from the KFC add today. He's lovely but slightly crackers.

dog latin, I think you missed the part earlier where I said I've sat with friends and streamed an album to my stereo and talked about it with friends. With the cover art showing on my television, sometimes. No computers involved.

the idea that online music discussion somehow is done at the expense of offline music discussion, has no basis or theory behind it whatsoever. none, at least none yet offered here.

they don't even happen at the same times. is ilm full of uk posters on a saturday night or something? it's the most crazy "the net is stopping us from spending real time together" kneejerk shit you can get.

Had a great time fooling some very stoned guy into briefly thinking that I was RiFF RAFF whilst playing COD the other week.

I think we're trying to tell you to get new friends

is ilm full of uk posters on a saturday night or something?

actually don't answer that. let's discuss other sites.

Xpost I think I'm telling you Guys to maybe make some friends outside of your twitter feeds.

Well, that is a little harsh, but I think that what I mean is that your friends are possibly not in a part of their lives where they're discussing music, or they're discussing boring music and your picks aren't it?

xpost (sorry just rising to the snark)

I think the next time you're over, you should put an actual record on that's newer and see if they discuss it? We need a double-blind experiment, here.

Does it even need to be pointed out that you don't need to be "sitting at a computer" in order to consume or browse music over the internet in 2012? And millions of people aren't?

dl, without wanting to Ronan you, it seems like your mourning your teenage / early 20s lifestyle. You get older, people have less time, more responsibilities, you don't just hang out at mates houses in your 30s and skin up - I've literally not done that in 11 years, since finishing university. I barely ever see my friends from uni or per uni because we live in different places and have different interests. For ages I got all my music interaction online, and it's great, but yes, it leaves a whole.

But then we started this! http://devonrecordclub.wordpress.com/ with some like-minded buddies, and it's fucking wicked. I love it. I can't wait for the next meeting. Emma mocked us initially - "why don't you just go to your mates house and listen to music, whys it got to be a club with rules and a blog?" but two of us have kids, we live miles apart and need to drive, etc etc, so making it a "club" or wtf gives us a bit of a kick up the arse and impetus.

Xposts i'm on my phone now And this discussion is getting quite confusing, especially since ronan's choosing to ignore a whole bunch of things i've explained in numerous ways already and which I can't be fucked to go over again, but here goes.

I have plenty of friends who I know listen to good music and are very passionate about it. My key point is that I feel music appreciation is becoming an increasingly marginalised, personalised, insular pastime as a massive part of it now hinges on having to be at a computer or plugged into an ipod which usually takes place alone. Without physical formats to display and swap and get interested in, and without music outlets in which to browse and possibly bond in, many passionate music fans end up having better discussions with online strangers than they would their close friends. Music taste is now shown through one's online profile, reduced to a homogenous list of names and usually not that indicative of the user's true tastes anyway. So yeah, disagree with me if you like, but I can only state from my experiences. Again, ymmv.

I feel music appreciation is becoming an increasingly marginalised, personalised, insular pastime

for YOU maybe but if this is meant as a ~social observation~ you aren't backing it up at all

a massive part of it now hinges on having to be at a computer or plugged into an ipod which usually takes place alone

a) it doesn't because music in public spaces still exists b) computers and ipods aren't really solitary devices as anyone who's plugged an ipod into a system at a house party can testify c) the way in which digital listening facilitates sharing, on platforms where casual and obsessive music fans rub up against each other no less, makes music listening LESS marginalised and solitary

Without physical formats to display and swap and get interested in

like casual fans ever did this

many passionate music fans end up having better discussions with online strangers than they would their close friends

you can't talk to your close friends online? i feel sorry 4 u

oh god i can't even be bothered any more

No neither can I until you bother to read the rest I the thread

Loads of thirty and forty somethings talk about formative musical experiences listening to records or John Peel in their bedrooms. It's not like solitary listening is a new thing.

^^^

I bet loads of 60-somethings talk about playing Beatles singles on their own in their bedroom, too.

Thanks for your incite on this one. I never knew that.

I mean c'mon where did I say people never used to listen to music on their own?

Neither am I really saying that people don't listen to music together any more, which is what a lot of people ITT seem to think I am saying.

i dunno how you would accumulate numbers on this, but i suspect that being able to get any kind of music whenever you want has increased the kind of communal audience for any number of prickly and unpopular genres that was supposedly being facilitated by physical media trading, though i will get on board the idea that being able to filter for just the music you want contributes to a kind of unhealthy balkanization.

You do seem to be insinuating that there was some kind of pre-web golden time when listening to music, discovering music, was a predominantly communal thing. Maybe we're just inferring that and communication lines are crossed, but people are (mostly in a very civil style) countering your examples with other examples which disprove yours, and, as I said, this makes it seem as if you're mourning your own past rather than a shared history.

xpost.

That's cool mouthy, I'm not discount ing the fact that age plays a big part in this. (love your Devon record club btw - great idea). I'm not here to bemoan anything though, nor am I here to rose spec my twenties. I still see the majority of my mates from back then anyway, tis the way of small town life I guess. I know they listen to lots of music, but yeah it just feels like I have less of a handle on what they're listening to unless I look at their last.fm playlists. It's not as easy to swap music face to face as it used to be, and that could be part of the prob. If someone plays a track and I like it, I can't just ask to borrow the cd. And with no physical album to pore over, I'll generally forget to go seek it online when I get home. I find iPods to be practical, but I don't believe they're that good in a social setting and I don't have a big music streaming tv to stare at either (hate the idea of staring at a screen while listening to music too, especially in a social context).

But anyway, i'm on my phone right now so I'm gonna leave this discussion for now.

When someone plays a track I like, I sometimes just pull out my phone and buy it on the spot

Must admit I've never thought to buy music on my phone. Dumb question but can you transfer it back to your computer after that?

Yup. With iTunes it'll automatically download it, if you want it to.

Aye, I've done that with stuff on the radio, stuff people have mentioned irl or on here, a song from the Olympic opening ceremony. I may be a CD fan but I'm not a freak.

I wouldn't trust iTunes with anything tbh. Does it download in mp3 or rubbish m4a?

haha

m4a, which is actually a significantly better codec than mp3 and sold without any drm whatsoever?

well, it's a container, I mean aac encoding

Does that play on non-Apple devices though?

M4a is no good for me as it's incompatible with the version of acid pro I use to make mixes, and that's a really important factor for me.

Sure. It's actually the default format for PS3 and a bunch of other platforms. afaik after the drm removal a few years ago, the iTunes store files should play on about anything.

AAC is actually the industry standard replacement for mp3, which is pretty long in the tooth.

You'd think Sony would have had aac support in Acid Pro for years, what with their own hardware using it as the standard for a long time

I think mine's an old version. Actually maybe since I upgraded to acid 7 I may not have tried m4a on it yet

!!!!

ACID Pro 7 software offers increased format support, allowing for more options with media and hardware devices including the PSP®, iPod®, and iPhone®. ACID Pro 7 software also includes the Dolby Digital AC-3 Studio plug-in to export mixes in surround format.

!!!!

this discussion is getting quite confusing, especially since ronan's choosing to ignore a whole bunch of things i've explained in numerous ways already and which I can't be fucked to go over again, but here goes.

if I am then prove it by making one cogent reply that isn't whining because people point out the gaping holes in your swiss cheese theory.

I have plenty of friends who I know listen to good music and are very passionate about it. My key point is that I feel music appreciation is becoming an increasingly marginalised, personalised, insular pastime as a massive part of it now hinges on having to be at a computer or plugged into an ipod which usually takes place alone.

how does an ipod differ from a walkman in this regard? how does a computer differ from a stereo?

Without physical formats to display and swap and get interested in, and without music outlets in which to browse and possibly bond in, many passionate music fans end up having better discussions with online strangers than they would their close friends.

yes, this is your theory, but you have yet to even make one point to prove it or even suggest why the internet would damage people's ability to talk to their friends about music.

Music taste is now shown through one's online profile, reduced to a homogenous list of names and usually not that indicative of the user's true tastes anyway. So yeah, disagree with me if you like, but I can only state from my experiences

why a "homogenous" list? what's "homogenous" about it? please give me some factual answers as to why an online profile contains "homogenous" information as opposed to say, a given individual's opinions or thoughts being likely to be "homogenous".

also how is music taste shown only through online profiles? i can't talk to people about music IRL anymore?

people have already responded to you to say they do discuss music IRL all the time.

this is all total fucking bunkum and you're the one not reading or engaging with responses.

also no more whining about "snark" like some beleaguered child - if you want to throw down some mega theory placing yourself as the visionary that sees the homogeneity in the tastes of the masses then take your medicine.

Don't mean to put words in his mouth but I think he means simply that the titles, artists, etc, are rendered in a homogenous font/format. Hard to argue with that.

sharing on social media includes the art and frequently the record too, and the album and 5 more albums if it's via spotify, it's hardly just lists of the names of artists unless you're on friendster in 2001 or something.

a face to face conversation has more potential for homogenous listing of the names of artists, minus the art, and minus the music.

Depends if they’ve got the record(s) in question to hand but overall, skimming through the above debate, I’d say Ronan is OTM. And yes I’m biased; without the internet I might never have been inspired to start a blog or write about music in any way, and given the way I was ten years ago it’s no understatement to say that music as experienced and felt through the internet probably saved my life. I wrote CoM, I got married again and got my old life back (only better, learning from previous mistakes etc.) – and none of this would have happened with just my physical “collection” of music at home and my general fucked-up widower state. It’s a medium, just as records etc. before them were a medium, and like any medium it’s as social as the individual listener wishes it to be.

My preferences, answering the original question, are thusly:

CDs: still my main way of getting and listening to music for very simple reasons; I am middle-aged and like the old-fashioned notion of record as tangible artefact and also like having lots of them (spines, etc.) but I’m under no illusion that that’s just the way I like it. Also probably the least fiddly non-online way of finding and playing music.

Vinyl: only really get vinyl if I can’t find the record in any other format, e.g. particularly elusive Then Play Long entries. I don’t have a “fetish” for vinyl as such but neither am I blindly going to knock it (considering the stupid crazy amount of the stuff I actually have); I acknowledge that something like Far Side Virtual is a concept which really could only have worked as a vinyl record.

Online: basically YouTube, MySpace and suchlike. Don’t “rip” CDs and for whatever reason Spotify doesn’t talk to Internet Explorer so I can’t get at it. Yes, iTunes, but I wish actual physical singles hadn’t gone the way of the Sinclair C5 (i.e. now only fetishable “limited edition” 7-inches for £9.99). I like the jumpy nature of random play iTunes though.

new stuff never but on occasion if i'm near a mve with time to spare i'll set myself a little £10 challenge and dig in the r&b/ragga vinyl sale bins just for nostalgia's sake, and that'll be largely for 90s stuff searching for alternate mixes and suchlike that hasnt been digitised somewhere or stuff pertaining to mini projects. probably only 4 or 5 this year

i mean i have a great big discogs wantlist too but when push comes to buy i can never be bothered

someone should really do a second hand shop insisting on selling only stuff pre 2000 cos there is such a vast useless wasteland of 00-05 clogging up the world it's dispiriting

It’s a medium, just as records etc. before them were a medium, and like any medium it’s as social as the individual listener wishes it to be.

yes! this in a nutshell.

hahah I love the wider notion of the years 2000-5 as a "vast useless wasteland" for music!

Less MVEs to be near these days; the Camden one's gone and I don't reckon the Notting Hill Soul & Dance one is long for this world either.

Far Side Virtual is a concept which really could only have worked as a vinyl record.

Why's that? I've only ever heard it on mp3

actually i did buy a few new hardcore/punk lps as a gift for the missus recently and it was a pretty cool throwback experience... very niche obviously but limited pressings, reasonably priced, worthwhile attention to detail as a desirable object. real ingrained sense in that community that mp3s are meaningless and the physical artefact is still a thing, it's nice

tbh if all my fave little things were pressed on £2.50 7"s like dancehall used to be i might still spend a fair wedge

hahah I love the wider notion of the years 2000-5 as a "vast useless wasteland" for music!

Less MVEs to be near these days; the Camden one's gone and I don't reckon the Notting Hill Soul & Dance one is long for this world either.

― Here he is with the classic "Poème Électronique." Good track (Marcello Carlin), Thursday, 4 October 2012 11:07 (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

heh obviously i meant within my narrow little avenue of stuff

perhaps there is a wider point in that that was the era of greatest physical/digital concurrence and thus most disposable stuff but the generalism goes without saying

doglatin xpost:

Hard to sum it up briefly but it's to do with the packaging and the record's general half-backward glancing. I just think it works beautifully as an artefact; on CD it would probably look all cramped and forced. I too listened to it on mp3 prior to buying it and I think the packaging and presentation enhance the record. No scientific idea why that would be the case, though. I wonder if anyone's ever done a study on listening to music and how packaging and presentation affect people's reactions to it (a bit like a recent study where people apparently found travelling by boat or train more of a "journey" than flying; see this article for instance).

> hahah I love the wider notion of the years 2000-5 as a "vast useless wasteland" for music!

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

don't get Far Side Virtual-as-vinyl-experience even slightly tbh. it has an ipad on the cover!

that said I get the impression Ferraro is p invested in what formats he does and doesn't present his releases on. but anyway

Subtle blend of past and future media innit.

Hard to sum it up briefly but it's to do with the packaging and the record's general half-backward glancing. I just think it works beautifully as an artefact; on CD it would probably look all cramped and forced. I too listened to it on mp3 prior to buying it and I think the packaging and presentation enhance the record. No scientific idea why that would be the case, though. I wonder if anyone's ever done a study on listening to music and how packaging and presentation affect people's reactions to it (a bit like a recent study where people apparently found travelling by boat or train more of a "journey" than flying; see this article for instance).

― Here he is with the classic "Poème Électronique." Good track (Marcello Carlin), Thursday, 4 October 2012 11:20 (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Cool. I'm a big fan of that album as it happens. You've pretty much hit on something I've been trying to express about physical releases here, and yeah I wonder if there is a study (surely there must be?). It's all very well saying "MP3 is a medium same as CD and vinyl" but that's the same thing as saying "boats are a medium same as cars and planes" - there appears to be, for a lot of people a subconscious difference once packaging and presentation comes into play. It happens with food packaging all the time and there have been umpteen trials where people will be given two identical foodstuffs in different packaging to try out and they definitely believe there's a difference. So it's naive to think that appreciation of music isn't affected by the medium on which it's heard.

I think the packaging and presentation enhance the record. No scientific idea why that would be the case, though. I wonder if anyone's ever done a study on listening to music and how packaging and presentation affect people's reactions to it

We talk about this quite a bit at DRC (two of us work in marketing / design, and one of us did a degree in colour chemistry or something), the idea of a record's sleeve influencing your perception of it. I often think of music in quite synaesthetic terms - a record will sound/feel colourful to me, or monochrome, or whatever, in terms of how I think of the music sounding, and I'm sure that sleeve design is a major factor in this. I think that the John Talabot sleeve has detrimentally affected by perception, and enjoyment, of that record; I think of it as being quite dour tonally, but I suspect other people really don't.

This might sound mental to people, and is probably more fuel to say "well if you will insist on physical media etc etc".

actually i did buy a few new hardcore/punk lps as a gift for the missus recently and it was a pretty cool throwback experience... very niche obviously but limited pressings, reasonably priced, worthwhile attention to detail as a desirable object. real ingrained sense in that community that mp3s are meaningless and the physical artefact is still a thing, it's nice

funny you mention that as earlier this morning I stopped myself from buying this EP bcs I didn't feel like I should be spending £9.50 + postage for less than 15 minutes of music when I have vinyl that arrived a few weeks ago I've still not played

I linked to that blog specifically cos it's about a niche punk band w/ a fairly developed aesthetic but also addresses what rtc mentions. you can substitute punk for techno or whatever if you like

t's all very well saying "MP3 is a medium same as CD and vinyl" but that's the same thing as saying "boats are a medium same as cars and planes" - there appears to be, for a lot of people a subconscious difference once packaging and presentation comes into play.

this is a different conversation to the one you've been having. nobody is arguing that there are inherent differences between formats.

nobody is even arguing that there are good things that may eventually be lost due to digital music dominating.

people are arguing with your extremely narrow and unempirical theory about what those things are, and the vaguely expressed argument that somehow nobody discusses music IRL because they are discussing it in FAKEWORLD - THE WORLD OF COMPUTERS WHERE WE ARE ALL ROBOTS.

*nobody is arguing that there aren't inherent differences between formats

that was only a tiny part of the wider point which you decided to focus on, ronan. never mind though..

make a cogent argument or walk away humming the verve to yourself, whatever.

I'd never seen that John Talabot sleeve before. I always heard it as a white/brown/light green flavoured album.

funny you mention that as earlier this morning I stopped myself from buying this EP bcs I didn't feel like I should be spending £9.50 + postage for less than 15 minutes of music when I have vinyl that arrived a few weeks ago I've still not played

I linked to that blog specifically cos it's about a niche punk band w/ a fairly developed aesthetic but also addresses what rtc mentions. you can substitute punk for techno or whatever if you like

― please do not post on reddit as reusal often offends (DJ Mencap), Thursday, 4 October 2012 11:40 (26 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah it's funny, the actual amount of music didnt really strike me as a factor and to some extent i found the brevity pretty enjoyable - very twee objet impulse of course but idk it works for that stuff i think when it's so tied to an overarching community scene

doubtless if i spent longer than a couple days' holiday in that mode i would find it a trudge same as anything

i had to laugh though, i was expecting a traverse thru this byzantine undie netherworld and then everything's freely online, takes 20 minutes a piece to listen to, diligently blogged, physical easily obtained if you're quick enough... absolute piece of piss. try having to dig for some proper music sometime you lazy posers :)

(one of the bits i purchased was the crazy spirit lp so much obliged hat tip to you and flops btw)

I listen to most of my music via digital means but still have the weird collectible object addiction.

recently just got my decks back where i live for first time in 3/4 years. will be buying some vinyl again soon, mainly so i can dj older stuff a bit more easily.

this just showed up this week and is part of the discussion on this poll (Spotify):

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/la-et-ms-mumford-chart-20121003,0,3864347.story

The music industry has been grappling with the following question for much of the last few years: Do streaming services such as Spotify, which allow users to listen to albums for free, cannibalize sales? Leave it to a banjo-wielding English folk-rock band to provide one very loud answer.

"Babel," the sophomore album from Mumford & Sons released on Glassnote Records last week, has had the biggest debut sales week of 2012, selling approximately 600,000 copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan.

That number, revealed Tuesday, bests first-week totals from such A-list pop stars as Justin Bieber and Madonna and did so while being streamed more than 8 million times on Spotify.

Before the release of "Babel," the bestselling debut of 2012 belonged to Bieber's "Believe," which opened with 374,000 copies sold and which has moved a total of 887,000 copies as of last week.

"You're talking about a much different artist," said Dave Bakula, a senior executive for Nielsen. "This is an album-driven artist. They're not going to have one single solitary hit that defines the album. People want everything they can get from this artist, and that's where you get large album sales."

"Babel's" 8 million-plus streams on Spotify are more than three times that of the previous record holder, said Kenneth Parks, Spotify's chief content officer, although Parks refused to reveal the title.

"Our streaming numbers sit alongside a very healthy sales volume," said Parks, whose service boasts more than 15 million worldwide users (Spotify doesn't break out users by territory). "We're living in a new age. There isn't a single model of consumption for recorded music."

Spotify has been criticized for offering lower royalty payments to labels and artists than they'd get from album sales. Other big name artists, such as Mumford & Sons country-mates Coldplay, have opted to withhold new albums from Spotify during the week of release, fearing that the ad-driven free service would hurt sales. Coldplay's most recent album, "Mylo Xyloto," sold 447,000 copies in its first week.

"Spotify is a huge form of exposure, and they're not stealing," said Glassnote Records founder Daniel Glass. "It's retraining people to buy music through streaming services. Could we be getting better compensation? Yes, but I'm not going to hold it back from them. That's old thinking."

Glass credits the band's success, in part, the band's heavy touring schedule. Mumford & Sons, which will headline a sold-out Hollywood Bowl show on Nov. 10, has been playing most, if not all, the songs on "Babel" live for months before its release.

"They were playing some of these songs a year and a half ago," Glass said. "The album became a formality. The fans can take the songs off YouTube, obviously, but they want the produced album."

"So there's still a record business," Glass added. "For now."

People making a shit-ton of money from record industry say record industry is healthy, shocker.

the name of that article is "Spotify exposure pays off for Mumford & Sons' Babel" so the writer is trying to say that Spotify actually helped sales and that may or may not be true.

I think you'd need to do some serious quantitive and qualitative research to prove that Spotify helped make those sales; given that physical album sales were massive concurrently with Spotify streams, I'm not convinced - M&S were already very large, had a big profile built over about 3 years and lots of touring and extensive radio / TV coverage (in the Uk at least); first-week sales for Babel were always going to be large, Spotify or no Spotify. < / social science >

Glass credits the band's success, in part, the band's heavy touring schedule. Mumford & Sons, which will headline a sold-out Hollywood Bowl show on Nov. 10, has been playing most, if not all, the songs on "Babel" live for months before its release.

who wrote this? what beautiful prose.

MOST MEANS NOT ALL

It's almost English (xp).

I had to read it about five times, it disintegrates as you try.

Life is like that, as are most, if not all, things.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

oops i think i bought around 25 records this week

40-60 seems about right for this year so far. almost all of it was bought used. 3 or 4 of those are CD's, the rest are LPs and tapes.

Does a gummy fetus count?

do people buy non-used? seems like a waste of money.

yep, enabling musicians to make a living and pay back the costs of recording is a waste of money. fuck those guys.

I just buy new because people get their germs inside the case, so gross

hah i forgot about buying music straight from bands at shows. those def aren't used.. my mistake

I buy a lotta new stuff that is limited, I'm not likely to ever see it used for less.

i've bought 7 - 10 new albums this year. i've listened to a lot more, and like a few a lot that i've still yet to buy, and might not. i try to always buy new records that i love but sometimes they are inexplicably really expensive here (new ariel pink is like over 30 bucks, hesitant to pay that even though i think it's really dope) and sometimes they are not available. i buy used records all the time, no idea how many, about 1 - 2 per week, so like 50? accidentally voted 7-10 but that's not including used so my real answer is more like 40 - 60, which seems like a lot. i'm pretty poor most of the time so i guess i buy a lot of cheap used records. since starting a regular dj night i've had to buy music way more often cause i keep running out of things to play, or getting bored of my collection, it's a lot of fun. i like the experience of looking at different records, making a stack, picking which one you're going to buy, random picks. the record store i usually goto has a listening station so you can just listen to like 15 disco singles and buy the good ones

i had to laugh though, i was expecting a traverse thru this byzantine undie netherworld and then everything's freely online, takes 20 minutes a piece to listen to, diligently blogged, physical easily obtained if you're quick enough... absolute piece of piss. try having to dig for some proper music sometime you lazy posers :)

― r|t|c, Thursday, 4 October 2012 07:24 (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

(one of the bits i purchased was the crazy spirit lp so much obliged hat tip to you and flops btw)

― r|t|c, Thursday, 4 October 2012 07:25 (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol glad you liked it

Bought around 25 CDs this week, a total of around 30 for the year. I usually only buy records when i'm overseas.

i went with 20-40, the bulk direct from bands at shows or from experimedia.

hoping to catch up on stuff i've loved this year soon, though, so that number should grow.

http://piratespressrecords.com/rancid/

myself and everyone itt who said that owning music in physical form was a worthwhile exercise just want to apologise, we were wrong and are also directly responsible for this

http://piratespressrecords.com/rancid/images/box_slideshow.gif

Jesus that sounds awful, and I'm even a guy who enjoys a handful of Rancid's albums. It sounds terrible to listen to an entire band's discography by flipping over a 7" every fucking song.

lol mencap

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

58 journalists who get freebies or 58 people who only download for free?

I got my quarterly money yesterday and went mental buying 14 records, I think I need to knock myself up a notch.

xp: I think it's people who only listen to performer-approved live recordings on archive.org live music archive.

rip cases ingles :(

58 journalists who get freebies or 58 people who only download for free?

I voted zero. I do pay for digital releases though. I just don't like physical objects. They take up too much space.

on a positive note looks like 2/3's of the people who voted bought stuff

voted 0 /= didn't buy music

i mean bought physical tangible stuff

That's just over 200 votes, which is pretty impressive.

That result is predictably saddening for me. I know that out of all my serious music loving friends there's only 2 of us who routinely buy music anymore.

Hands up if anyone actually bought a pre-recorded Minidisc. Can you even do that nowadays? Who would even do such a thing?

Gescom released an MD-only release, but that was over ten years ago now. I used to love MD when I had one - really good for making mixtapes and really easy to use. Are tapes ever released on a commercial level (as opposed to tiny homemade labels)?

Hands up if anyone actually bought a pre-recorded Minidisc. Can you even do that nowadays? Who would even do such a thing?

they were great in fairness. another victim of so-called "progress".

dj derek still uses 2 minidisc players for his sets ...

I loved minidisc as a recording format but never bought a pre-recorded one. Remember seeing a tiny rack of pre-recorded ones in Northampton HMV or Virgin circa 1999.

i have the Gescom MD (which is no longer MD-only - http://boomkat.com/cds/24705-gescom-minidisc / http://boomkat.com/downloads/42999-gescom-mini-disc ). it's the only pre-recorded one i have.

1928 minidiscs listed on amazon, some bargains, some collectors prices.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=sr_hi_2?rh=n%3A229816%2Cp_n_binding_browse-bin%3A382531011&bbn=229816&ie=UTF8&qid=1349862530

re: gescom, does it actually work? I mean, does it work as a continuous random mix or what?

yeah, minidisc was designed to be gapless and survive jostles by buffering the audio slightly beforehand. you could hear it seeking to read the next track a good 5 seconds or so before the current one ended

as for working artistically, i'm not so sure. some things were seconds long, a couple were a minute or two (88 tracks, 74 minutes) and a range of styles and it's hard to get such disparate things to sounds like a whole.

Encouraging results, humanity is evolving

I was given the new David Byrne and St. Vincent on LP for my birthday this weekend, and also picked up John Maus's last one, which I'd heard before but somehow sounds really good on vinyl.

Hands up if anyone actually bought a pre-recorded Minidisc. Can you even do that nowadays? Who would even do such a thing?

they were great in fairness. another victim of so-called "progress".

― Know how Roo feel (LocalGarda), Wednesday, 10 October 2012 08:56 (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yup. Amongst other albums on Minidisc I bought at the time, I do owns a copy of Kevin Rowland's "My Beauty".

You can now, but only on ebay.

I think there are literally only about three people in the country who own that particular album on that format. And Kevin Rowland isn't one of them.

Neither is Alan Mcgee.

AmG sold most of his 'collection' at auction recently.

A load of Creation albums were on MD (I have a couple of Boo Radley ones too), I believe it to be because of the Sony link.

Argh! forgot to vote. Mm, would have been the 40-60 bracket, I suppose.

Yup. Amongst other albums on Minidisc I bought at the time, I do owns a copy of Kevin Rowland's "My Beauty".

You can now, but only on ebay.

― Mark G, Wednesday, 10 October 2012 13:40 (39 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think there are literally only about three people in the country who own that particular album on that format. And Kevin Rowland isn't one of them.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, 10 October 2012 13:44 (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah WTF, that might actually be worth something now that Dexy's have reformed. Sell it quick before everyone realises the new album is dull as a bruise to the arm.

new album is awesome

Didn't see this to vote.

I guess about 300 used LPs, maybe 20 new ones, and the same amount of singles. A few freebie CDs. No non-physical purchases and a few downloads for work purposes.

Gescom released an MD-only release, but that was over ten years ago now. I used to love MD when I had one - really good for making mixtapes and really easy to use.

Yup, I really loved having my MD recorder to make mixes, especially for parties. Just pop in a new MD when needed. The only commerical album I bought on MD was Rage Against the Machine's Evil Empire, I bought it when I bought my MD player/recorder and it was the only one the store had in its limited selection that was even close to be interesting to me.

Let's quickly resurrect this thread again and ask the same question for this year.

I've bought about 40ish new release CDs, and about 30ish back catalogue CDs. I'll count exactly how many when i get home from work.

lmao i'd forgotten about the argument itt, feel like i'm banging my head against the wall just reading it

again my answer is zero

I wonder if there is a connection between preferring music in physical formats and privilege? I really have no room to store CDs. Unless you're a home owner with plenty of space, it's more a format for people that only intend to have about 20 albums. I do like sleeve art and I kinda miss collecting stuff, but in the end it's just that - stuff / clutter. Only for people with lots of room.

about 30 vinyl records I guess.

I've bought about 30 vinyl records too, as well as maybe half a dozen CDs, but I think this may be the last year I buy any CDs.

CD albums: 54
Vinyl LPs: 10
12" singles: 8
7" singles: 5
Cassettes: 1
All new/recent releases.

As for downloads:
Standalone tracks: 25 (some back catalogue)
Single/EP bundles: 10
Albums: 2

25 new CDs and about 250 albums on vinyl (some new, but mostly charity shop finds)

A more interesting question might be... how much music did you buy at all? Some years I just used Spotify and free DJ mixes and that was enough to give me a blend of old and new. Bought more digital music this year than I have for a long time (3/4 albums, just buying stuff digitally never really a thing for me except high quality mp3s when I was DJing more.)

Half a dozen CD albums
30-odd vinyl albums (mostly secondhand)
10 vinyl singles/EPs (ditto)

I signed up for eMusic for a while so I ended up buying maybe ten mp3 albums from that and I've bought a lot of one-off singles/tracks through there or iTunes.

approx 300 cds.

(including lots of boxsets .. )

of which only 10 or so are 2013 releases.

oh, and a couple of 12"

I mostly only buy downloads if they're by local acts who I want to support, or if I'm burning a CD for an occasion, and am short of a few tracks. I've flirted with vinyl this year - our local independent shop is run as a social enterprise by a homelessness charity, and they do what they do very well indeed - but the format hasn't really re-stuck, and I've been disappointed by the pressing quality on a few occasions. Can't see myself stopping buying CD albums any time soon. We've got good hi-fis; they sound better. And I can play them in the car. As ever, a large majority of my CD purchases were trialled first on Spotify. I'd still be buying CD singles if they were available; as they aren't, I stream them instead.

Let me think: Have I bought any minidisc albums this year?

No.

This year: 1 LP as a gift for a family member, and a Richard Pryor CD/DVD set for myself.

Non-corporeal, I think I only renewed my emusic subscription, which should be 1080 tracks.

quite a few dozen releases in various formats but have really tried to curb it in the last few months cos I'm pissing myself off buying things and then having them sit there barely listened to

now to press submit and inevitably discover that I wrote almost the same post itt last year

the answer is... sort of

hmm

it's down again this year, from about 55 things to 45 things.

a lot fewer magazine-mounted cds this year too, i notice.

and lots more dvds... (b&w japanese films, american tv)

Around 120 CDs and a pair of LPs. I use Spotify to check stuff out, too, and bought around 20-30 digital tracks.

I guess I'm privileged because I have a house and a room full of my music.

Or I'm just old and I just prefer physical copies, liner notes, making my own rips and feeling like I'm making an investment in something vital to me.

I don't have the exact number, it's somewhere between 50 to 75 CDs.

I prefer owning things in a physical format because the Internet can be taken away and hard drives can die; I'm only losing my CD collection if there's a fire.

because it's so bad no burglar would steal it? ;)

A burglar did steal all of my CDs and tapes the summer between high school and college when I was in Germany and my parents' insurance policy replaced 95% of everything; basically anything they could find, they got me a copy of. (It helped that I had a database of all of the music I owned at the time.) So really, I'm not losing anything that isn't out of print even in a fire. (note to self: restart that music collection database)

If my records got stolen, there is no way I would use the insurance money to replace half the same stuff.

The policy didn't give a lump sum, apparently.

Oh. I know nothing about how insurance works.

i bought some vinyl records. let's say...10 records.

I bought 95 CDs (or full-album downloads). Of those, 25 were boxes or sets of more than 2 discs.

is anyone else finding themselves buying more CDs lately? it's often cheaper than buying the download now

Biggest thing I bought this year: Cannibal Corpse's Dead Human Collection: 25 Years of Death Metal. 13 CDs (their entire studio discography to date, plus a new live album), 1 LP (said live album), a calendar, and 12" x 12" prints of all their album covers. You know, for hanging up in your living room.

I like Amazon's "AutoRip" service - buy the CD, get an instant free download.

CD albums: 300+ (about 80% new releases/20% catalog)
Vinyl LPs: 12 (all catalog, used)
12" singles: 0
7" singles: 1
Cassettes: 0

As for downloads:
Standalone tracks: 2 or 3
Single/EP bundles: 4-5 (all new releases)
Albums: 5 or 6 (all new releases)

I like Amazon's "AutoRip" service - buy the CD, get an instant free download.

Sometimes the CD+Download is cheaper than the Download

my discogs account reports that i bought about 110 or so records this year. most of those were used, but maybe 10 or so were new.

is anyone else finding themselves buying more CDs lately? it's often cheaper than buying the download now

Especially given how common budget boxsets are now. I picked up a few of those this year (Slowdive, Fields of the Nephilim, Thin Lizzy), and lots of used CDs. I probably bought about 100 CDs, more than ever before.

At this point I would not care if "physical" music were to just disappear altogether but the idea of the same thing happening to physical books horrifies me. Probably something to do with with physical music formats being a brief historical anomaly that we just happened to coincide with.

Like we installed a power amp and a massive pair of speakers at the end and I ended up playing the same album on both CD and streamed MP3 and the difference was pretty much imperceptible.

the new low priced outboard USB DACs like the Dragonfly and Nuforce are pretty amazing, if you listen to music on headphones a lot you should totally get one

is anyone else finding themselves buying more CDs lately? it's often cheaper than buying the download now

Especially given how common budget boxsets are now. I picked up a few of those this year (Slowdive, Fields of the Nephilim, Thin Lizzy), and lots of used CDs. I probably bought about 100 CDs, more than ever before.

this is me.

bargain bins + lots of budget boxsets (simple minds, roxy music, bread, j&mc, byrds, nephilim, janis joplin, neil young, International DeeJay Gigolos vol 1-5, the doors, scott walker, Philadelphia International Records: The 40th Anniversary Box Set, green day, 10cc !)

was looking for some decent box sets to round off the year. picked up the cheap 5cd bauhaus thing and the berlin period bowie box (zeit) but haven't seen any others that i liked...

How many English did you marry this year

i have bought 10 CDs this year. i mainly listen to new things via Spotify.

just bought a physical copy of K Michelle.

none? i think?

Think I bought a single CD, at a show.

I can't remember if I bought it before or after my earlier posts in this thread, but I just got another one of those "Original Album Collection" 5CD boxes (this is my sixth) from Amazon. This one has Dwight Yoakam's first five albums.

I got one of the Real Gone CD set of 19 Art Blakey records. Pretty much only listened to that for half the year.

I tallied everything up and got these results: I acquired 33 CDs, 31 LPs and got a box of 15 cassettes for free. Quite surprised that the total was as high as 79.

Zero, I'm pretty sure.

no comment

49 new, 21 old CDs.

I bought a used promo copy of a Howling Hex album for $1 the other day, so that makes 1 CD this year, while proving that Drag City was right to stay off of Spotify.

comment:

so so much. so so much more than i want to admit or can excuse. a couple hundred LPs, more than half of them new. 40 or 50 cds. 2 45s and 2 cassette tapes.

a quick guess: ~20 CDs, 2 LPs, £50 worth of downloads and 12 months of Spotify subscription

oh yeah, maybe $50 in downloads and half a year's spotify

Can we conclude anything from this thread? We're a subset of rabid music fans and many respondants said they didn't spend any money aside from streaming services. Has your appetite for music been sated? Do you still have a want-list? Personally, I have an "I might buy it" list but I no longer have a "things to check out" list as digital sources have allowed me to catch up on it. ILM is most often my source of things I look into.

I probably bought 50 or so LPs. Used to buy a lot more before moving to New York, don't generally care for the record shopping here. This was the first year I ever bought used records online, and I did more ordering online for LPs in general than ever.