Has Everything Changed?

i don't miss those days, no.

i miss them. not for the actual process but for the fact i had the time to do all that shit back then.

sounds like it was pretty annoying and time consuming just to enjoy good music. Viva progress.

gaz otm.

A buddy of mine's whole argument against downloading is that kids don't appreciate the albums they get anymore. He remembers when he and I would return shopping carts in the rain to get the quarters, and bag groceries for money, just so we could walk to the amll and buy a 'tape.' Back then, you fucking LEARNED to love a record that you maybe didn't like initially. More at stake. Now it's - eh, I don't like this record, I'll delete it from my harddrive.

I see his point - but I love me some piracy, yaknowhutumsayin? The grass is always greener. i like life better now that I can get almost anything without leaving the house or spending more than $15 for a spool of CDRs. But then again, I paid dues, as most of you have. I know what it's like to spend lunch / rent money on music. I know what it's like to wait for months for a record only to have it suck when you finally get it.

who fucking wants to spend a hours or four worth of work to spend money on some "relevant" new find. Take Aphex's "Analord" for perfect example. You WANT this. You have NO idea what it will sound like. He is a king of marketing bull. You THINK it's a lie and that it is going to old tracks that he revamped. You have to SUBMIT to a registry even to get information about what it isn't. Interested YES. Promising cash upfront for something that will verily possibly SUCK...No.

well yeah everything has changed...
i was thinking about this recently,remember being a kid and every so often a saturday morning tv show or computer games magazine or something would have a competition and you could win a shopping spree or 500 pounds of hmv vouchers or whatever?
now you can just get a blank dvd and go to a friends house and return with a shopping spree worth of music,tv episodes,etc...

i have some sympathy for the arguement that people appreciate things less,but i think this is more than made up for by the amount of different things people get exposed to.

Once it still seemed "special" to own certain "rare" albums.

I think real music fans don't care about that stuff. i know i just want the music. if you're buying albums to feel special you're doing it for the wrong reasons.

and there are some great advantages to technology like this. kids who are downloading now will have memories just like everyone else before them.

Uh, I never said I bought albums to feel special, I just said, or at least meant, that it used to be exciting to have something good that seemed a rarity -- now there's really no such thing as a rarity. That's good in plenty of ways, don't get me wrong, in fact I'd say the good outweighs the bad (I can find fucking anything I want). I was only being nostalgic.

Yeah, I do kinda fondly remember actually caring about & anticipating "new" releases. (As opposed to new REISSUES, or previously unreleased old stuff.) But even in the '80s, when I was buying a lot of new records, I was still buying even MORE old hippie-era stuff for pocket change, at rummage sales and the like. So, buying something newly released immediately was rarely an issue.

In response to the original question, it would appear that a lot of ILxors have been experiencing that feeling this week in relation to the Annie album...

(hahah being an indolent/indulgent "music journalist" I got sent my copy four months ago but not a word to anyone...)

"there's really no such thing as a rarity"

My SoulSeek wishlist proves you wrong!

Scarcity is what keeps us going as fairly obsessive people. Whether this be in terms of unavailability down to newness or rareness. The internet has shortened a lot of the boundaries between artist and consumer; you have downloading, message boards like this, which both mean fans desperately want new records often before they've even been completed in the studio.

A new critical perception is emerging surely. Music is no longer just a tangible object which one can browse and physically hunt for. I think the main issues with the emerging methods of legal, and illegal, distribution concern disposability and the value one attaches to music.

I don't think i appreciate music as much as i used to when i had to save up and track it down, i now simply appreciate more of it.

no i dont miss those days either. if u lived in say, warrington until you were 19, then yr hurrying to buy a record the day it was released had no appeal a) because there was only one record shop and b) the record you wanted wouldn't be there on time anyway.

still it's better now they have hmv and virgin.

yeh, i miss them.

i can't justify that at all: technology rocks, and seahorse genius is right: real music fans don't give a fuck how they get hold of stuff; they just want the sounds. only holier-than-thou music snobs get excited about their rare japanese 12" of "holiday 80", for instance; or the fact they got the last 7" of "new paths to helicon" in avalanche. (ahem.)

but ... personally i feel something has died. you don't need to find the record, the physical entity, that *particular copy*. you just click and 0001111000101100111 there you go. this saddens me deeply.

but, like i say, i know i'm wrong.

i do think there is something to what roger said about having to LIVE with your choices of albums that you bought, and that maybe opening your ears to something you weren't ready for at the time, just because you'd keep it around and keep trying it because you'd just spent money on it...