Are you neglecting your album art/inserts since the arrival of MP3 players?

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MooMoo!

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Ive just been going on a lossless spree, re-ripping my U2 cds. And I noticed that the booklets pre-HTDAAB are all well fingered and dented. I remember most of the pages and stuff, and it only just dawned on me how much I looked at the insert and box in general before I had a computer or MP3 player. Which was a lot evidently, as it was one of my only sources of U2 pics.

Do you think you pay less attention to the physical package these days?
 
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I absolutely refuse to listen to NLOTH on my iPod, now that I've started driving to school (yay for teenage wasteland) and listening to it on my car's speakers... the mp3s sounded great, and the CD sounds better. I'm afraid to listen to anything else on those speakers, because I'd realize what I'm missing and end up ditching the damn iPod altogether, except when it's plugged into the car.

I need to get some audiophile headphones eventually. Any suggestions?
 
Ive just been going on a lossless spree, re-ripping my U2 cds. And I noticed that the booklets pre-HTDAAB are all well fingered and dented. I remember most of the pages and stuff, and it only just dawned on me how much I looked at the insert and box in general before I had a computer or MP3 player. Which was a lot evidently, as it was one of my only sources of U2 pics.

Do you think you pay less attention to the physical package these days?


I definitely do, which is one reason why I regretfully bought the NLOTH digi-pack instead of the boxset. I still prefer buying the physical cd over buying a full album off iTunes, but once I rip, I rarely touch the cds unless I wanna put one in my truck's cd player.

I can't go a day without my iPod, but I do miss the old days of browsing through my cds.
 
I probably should have named this thread differently, I intended it to be more about the actual album art/artwork than music formats.

Can a mod rename it to what I titled the first post?
 
I probably should have named this thread differently, I intended it to be more about the actual album art/artwork than music formats.

Can a mod rename it to what I titled the first post?

Sorry, that's probably my fault.
 
I still definitely enjoy the packaging and artwork, but I kind of have so many of my booklets memorized that I don't look as much as I used to.
 
I still love looking at the artwork and reading the lyrics from the booklet in all of my cd's. I just love the smell of the booklet as well. I don't think I will ever stop buying cd's. Downloading an album off itunes just doesn't have that same magic as buying a cd in the store and rushing to your car to play it while going over the album booklet in minute detail
 
Speaking as someone involved in design.. I think U2 always makes a good point of carrying out their "album theme" graphically and visually. For those of us who are into it, U2 usually gives us some really good visuals to enjoy - so yes, I always dig into the packaging.

One of my favorite, FAVORITE things in life used to be tearing open the cellophane cover on a new album and getting into the visual experience. It was art. It was a feeling. It was a statement. And sometimes, a handy tool for... well, if don't know the advantages of a gatefold album cover, then never mind.. That said, it's not a rule for me anymore.

However, I guess in general I do neglect the visual side of music packaging these days. In the age of digital music, the "album cover" has become extinct, unsurprisingly. That's OK, I'm not stuck in the past... but U2 occupies such a significant part of my musical history, that I want the tangible, printed work to go along with my music. I LOVE the coffee table book "U2 Show," as well as Anton Corbijn's book U2 by U2. Up til Joshua Tree, I have everything on vinyl - now framed in those neato little album frames for my office walls. I hope it's not a completely dead art (look what Björk has done with video vlips and corresponding content), but alas, I think it's (mostly) already gone.
 
Nope. I listen to cd's still and always will as long as their available. I like to keep 3 or 4 albums in my car. I listen to albums not songs. When something is in my car that's what I want to listen to. It might sound weird but I don't like having my entire music collection at the click of a button. I'm not saying this applies to any of you but I know for fact I appreciate the music I listen to more than my friends appreciate their music. I find having a loaded mp3 player has a tendency to make people take the music for granted.

I believe cd's also had that impact on alot of people. The ease of which people are able to switch songs does make people take songs and albums for granted. No word of a lie I had a buddy who back in the day bought Appetite for Destruction on disc. he had it for ever, was alwasy playing in his car. One day I was sitting in his car while he was paying for the gas. I switched it to Rocket Queen(song #12) on AFD. He got back in the car and said, and I quote: "What the fuck is this?" I looked at him like he was on crack. "It's Rocket Queen" I said. He had no idea what Rocket Queen was cause he had never listened past song #9, Sweet Child O' Mine. It was too damn easy for him to hear SCOM and then immediatley switch back to, according to him, "song #1" , Welcome to the Jungle and start all over. I found that ridiculous but I soon realized he wasn't the only person who treated cd's like this. Before downloading people would buy cd's and ignore the album cause cd's allowed them to flip through the hits they've heard on radio instantly. If cd's had this type of impact it's only natural that mp3 players have had an even bigger impact in this regard. Sad really.
 
I still love looking at the artwork and reading the lyrics from the booklet in all of my cd's. I just love the smell of the booklet as well. I don't think I will ever stop buying cd's. Downloading an album off itunes just doesn't have that same magic as buying a cd in the store and rushing to your car to play it while going over the album booklet in minute detail

this :love:

maybe its my age (bonofied :D 80's chick here) but I just adore the whole ritual of actually physically opening a cd (if I had my way it would actually still be albums, but :shrug:), that whiff of plasticy smell, smooth, shiny cool cover, pretty booklets whose pages make a lightly hissing sound as you peel them back for the first time . . . the absolute glory of putting said cd into a player and revelling in the whole words, music, images thing :heart::heart::heart:

so the short answer to the original question is

no I don't neglect my cd inserts

:wave:

and interestingly my little people, who are just discovering their own worlds of music like the cds and booklets better too :)
 
^ well, maybe you would . . . I have a friend who has ordered every box set available but doesn't actually open them :huh: not sure if they are actually all still in plastic or not though but they are pristine (in comparison to mine :lol: which get thumbed and drooled over on a regular basis:whistle:). . . downloads all the bells and whistles from itunes and listens via ipod . . .
 
Is your friend saving them to sell them later or so?:scratch:
I open it the moment I get home, then carefully put it away later. And when I'm in the mood I get it again and look at the booklet again, check the liner notes, that kinda thing.. I'm very careful with stuff though, all U2 cds/dvds/whatevers I have are in pristine condition except for the UABRS vinyl, but that's how I got it. I'm a huge chaotic, but with this stuff and electronics I'm a neatfreak!
 
For me, I spend a lot less time with the liners from U2's new records, but not from records, in general. I didn't have an player (or even a new enough computer to house s) until 2005, and I never spent any time with the liners from either All That You Can't Leave Behind or How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb...because I thought that they sucked! Good liners still captivate, regardless of the dominant listening format.
 
As I listened to the album for the first time I was going through all the pages with lyrics, reading them. And sometimes I just need to take the album package into my hands and I'm relishing browsing through the booklet, looking at the photos and artwork. So Im not neglecting the artwork and CD package. On the contrary, I think I've been giving more attention to it since I've had mp3 player.
 
Is your friend saving them to sell them later or so?:scratch:
I open it the moment I get home, then carefully put it away later. And when I'm in the mood I get it again and look at the booklet again, check the liner notes, that kinda thing.. I'm very careful with stuff though, all U2 cds/dvds/whatevers I have are in pristine condition except for the UABRS vinyl, but that's how I got it. I'm a huge chaotic, but with this stuff and electronics I'm a neatfreak!

I don't think so, but hells bells it is a pretty fine collection so who knows - could be their kids college fund after all! . . . I used to be a bit like that with magazines when I was younger and more flush with cash (ie didn't have 3 kids sucking the money fund dry :lol: ) . . . If the boys were in say, rolling stone, I would buy two copies, take out the relevant u2 bits for my scrap book and keep the other magazine all fresh and pretty . . .:nerd: . . . (and I will fess up that my new boxset has been looked at but is still in a zip lock until my kids stop wanting to pick it up and look at it :whistle: )
 
I dunno if it counts, but I always make sure to source high-quality, good resolution artwork for my music :)
 
No neglection whatsoever; I buy everything still on CD unless I only want a song or two. I see no point in paying the same price for a file when I can actually own a tangible product for the same price.

Nothing is ripped in lossless since I only have a 16GB iPhone, everything is ripped in 128kbps so I can carry as much as I can, although a good 500 (non-U2) songs are still missing since I ran out of space a long time ago.
 
Definitely yes. I buy most of my music online (mp3s), which means that I tend to just listen to the album and ignore the lyrics/artwork/booklet that usually comes in digital format with it. Occasionally, I'll look at it once, but mostly out of curiousity more than anything.
 
Ah, the days of Vinyl.

Buying music was so much more than just listening to a few songs are you rip it to a shitty format.

Removing the cellophane, looking at the artwork reading the lyrics and the booklet, not skipping songs because they may not grab you in the first 3 seconds...........listening to music should be done properly on an actual sound system, not as part of a general multi-tasking exercise in how quickly you can dismiss it and marginalize it to it's lowest bitrate.

The Vinyl NLOTH is a beautiful package ("that's what she said") , lyrics large enough for us old guys to read, better sound quality, it's much more of a work of ART when it's on vinyl, rather than just another disposable commodity.

Even those of us in the high-tech industry do understand that sometimes more convenient and smaller isn't always better. Having said that, please go buy stuff......it'll keep up many of us employed longer.....
 
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