Do computers make the experience of music better? or worse?

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MrBrau1

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I love my Itunes library. It’s the best radio station on the planet.
8,600 songs waiting for me every day. All in one place. All ready
at the click of a button.

And I love the internet as well. Finding a hotly anticipated release
that leaked 2 months early is a great thing. Fresh. Fast. Easy.
It’s all there on my Mac or in my Ipod.

It’s a world away from how I used to listen to music. I remember
buying cassettes. Cassettes blew. They warped in the sun, and a shitty
tape deck could destroy your only copy. Fast forward was a bitch
and put your only copy of an album at risk.

So, in general, you listened to albums all the way through. Over, and over
and over (anyone else remember when “auto-reverse” seemed high tech?)

Hell, making a mix tape was a real-time experience. You really had to plan out
what was going on the tape. Nothing was worse than having the finale of side A
cut off cause you ran out of tape. It took planning. For real geeks, it took a paper
and pencil as well. Calculating how you could get as much music as possible on
those 90 minute Maxell cassettes.

Cds made the whole function better. You could scan to tracks with no risk of
destroying the CD. You still had to pick out a CD to play, and actually put it in
the player, and making mix tapes was the same chore (but CD’s gave you the
exact time of each track, something cassettes couldn’t do.)

All these little chores have been erased with the computer. Thousands of songs
at your fingertips. Make a mix CD without listening to 1 song on it. Like track
3 and 8 off a record? Only put track 3 & 8 on your computer. Download the new
Tom Petty CD 2 months before release. Breeze through it with some quick mouse
clicks, and form an opinion w/o even really listening to it. Poor kids today.
They’ll never discover that gem of an album track, cause the technology let’s
them avoid it.

I used to have a giant cassette case in my car. 30 tapes or so. Maybe 350 songs.
And I listened to those 350 or so songs over, and over, and over. Now I go to
My car with my Ipod and carry 3600. That’s insane. There’s only so much time
in a day.

I dunno. It's snowing, I’m drinking beer and rambling.

(look at that margin go further and further to the right):ohmy:
 
Definitely better. It has made it so much easier to achieve new music and manage your music collection :drool:
 
I remember when making a mix for someone was a real gift because it took so much time to get all the songs together and time it right.

People do miss out because they download one song at a time from itunes and may only hear the top releases of a certain band.

I remember trying to record off the radio, now that took skill, mess up on your timing and you have a stupid dj talking in the middle of your mix.

It's certainly easier to hear more variety with the internet though I doubt most people get as into a single artist as they did when they were stuck with that one tape in their car.

Yes i love my itunes I've been ripping old cd's all day :heart:
 
Yeah. I remember recording off the radio. :mad:

That used to suck.

But you really had to want it. You were invested.
You'd listen to dj banter and shitty songs to get that new tune you were looking for.

Now you press a button.
 
Making playlists has become my new "mix tape" phase :yes: I spend a lot of time (probably way too much time, in fact) creating the perfect mixes for all moods and periods of my day/week, etc. And I feel just a geeky as I used to feel creating those perfect 90 minute Maxell tape listening experiences :D

I think the internet has been good, though. For me personally, as a fairly poor kid, I didn't have a lot of money to buy whole albums. Remember how much CDs cost? That was my allowance for a month!

And let's talk about the VARIETY! :) I've been able to access so much music online that I would never have been able to access in a store. Let's not mention the dismal music buying scene in the US... :madspit: Most of the music I listen to comes out of the UK and is not available in the US... I would be stuck without the internet.

And let's not forget either that the internet has provided us just such forums as these to discuss new music :)

So yeah, there are still people who will only get one song here and there and not bother with whole albums... but then there are those of us who will! And who will be able to experience a wider variety of albums, too!

:)


P.S. mmmm.... beer.
 
redkat said:
People do miss out because they download one song at a time from itunes and may only hear the top releases of a certain band.

[...]

It's certainly easier to hear more variety with the internet though I doubt most people get as into a single artist as they did when they were stuck with that one tape in their car.

Maybe I just have a different attitude and mentality to most people, but I certainly find that to be untrue, at least for me. Before I had the Internet, I barely got into any bands - I had a few CDs, but due to how expensive they are (Australian CDs can be quite dear, especially when compared with some US prices), I rarely bought anything and if I liked a band, the only time I got to listen to them was when a hit was played on the radio.

Now that I have the Internet, if I hear one song I like, I can instantly look up the album it's from, or if I read about a band, I can instantly look up their 'classic' album. If I like that album, I can look up the band's entire discography. Suddenly, I'm right into a band and know their entire catalogue, when I would've otherwise just known four or five hit songs and been lucky to hear them a couple of times a week on the radio.

Before the Internet, I enjoyed music and loved a bit of it. With the Internet, music is an essential part of my life.
 
It's good for all the reasons listed above.

The only two draw backs I see is sometimes it's overwhelming. There is so much at your fingertips that unless you're rich, you just can't own all that you would like to.

The second, and the biggest problem I see is that I have a feeling that the true art of making an album will dissappear. There are those albums you need to listen to all the way through, the artwork, everything it's as if it's really just one entity.

I fear the future will have artist that don't even sell any type of hardcopy of the music it will all be sold over internet. It will just be about songs. They may not even come out with 10 or 12 at a time it will be just a few here and few there. It will be about songs and not collections of songs or albums.
 
I think there are pros and cons to both. Though CDs came out in my generation, I'm still old enough to remember cassettes very vividly. Nine or ten years ago, CDs were expensive, CD burners certainly weren't cheap (were they even around back then at the widespread level they are today?) and my family's only computer had a hard drive of something ridiculous like 2 GB. Speaking of the computer, it's hard to believe that was considered high-end! Using it for music was pointless, so cassette was the only way to go. I still remember the frustration of having the tape get fucked up while it was in the player (and getting shouted at for it, if it was one of my father's cassettes.) It took forever to wind it all back in again! And then there was the issue you mentioned of finding the song you wanted to listen to. You either listened to it the whole way through, or you spent ages fiddling with the fast forward/rewind buttons.

That said, cassettes were a bit more fun than CDs and digital music. I'll never forget how proud I was when I made my first proper mix tape! There was a real art to it. I always used my calculator to figure out which songs would fit, and cursed the cassette sleeves that didn't include the song lengths on them. For the latter, I had to time the songs myself.


I kind of miss cassette tapes in that respect. And I think it's a bit sad that most people growing up now will never have experienced them (I suppose some of you could say that about my generation and vinyl records.) But then again, nothing compares to letting your iTunes play on shuffle. :drool: You'd never be able to do that with a cassette!
 
Man, I don't miss cassettes at all. They sucked. Being able to access all your music from a big database is all win.
 
I just remembered something else annoying about cassettes. Walkmans! They were so bulky. If you told me ten years ago that there would be a portable music player that could hold thousands upon thousands of songs in it and still be a mere fraction of the size of a Walkman, I wouldn't have believed you.
 
GibsonGirl said:
I always used my calculator to figure out which songs would fit, and cursed the cassette sleeves that didn't include the song lengths on them. For the latter, I had to time the songs myself.


HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAH :lmao:

NERD!
 
MrBrau1 said:
...They warped in the sun, and a shitty
tape deck could destroy your only copy. Fast forward was a bitch
and put your only copy of an album at risk.



"Warped in the Sun"...sounds like a great Radiohead song title!


We've come a very long way in 5 years, or less, with the way music is distributed. It seems like yesterday I was mailing out those Maxell tapes you mentioned, in exchange for U2 and Pearl Jam bootlegs. (many traders wanted nothing but the best, i.e. Maxell, in return!) Technology has changed all of that, in a hurry. For the most part, I think it's truly incredible. It's let me instantly explore other bands, and the ability to research them is unprecedented. Add to this, the vast array of live material through file-sharing, and it's downright mind-blowing.

A very small part of me wonders about the death of the album--the idea of listening to something straight through to grab a theme or concept that the band is trying to articulate. I wonder if the music industry has refined its focus to singles to such an extent now that a band like Pink Floyd would have trouble getting off the ground initially, even if they were geniuses. Bands like The Arcade fire overrule this point however, as well as the fact that if it wasn't for file-sharing and the internet, I would have barely scratched the surface of Pink Floyd.

So, most definitely, music that doesn't melt in the sun is the bestest. :happy:

It also results in less destruction. Years ago, after I said something very saucy, my mother whipped my copy of Duran Duran's Arena at me as I was walking out of my bedroom, breaking my cherished music to pieces. Future generations are now spared the same plight. ;)



MrBrau1 said:


I need another one.

Being snowed in is an automatic "Beer Day."


I think you are on to something here. I usually hate beer, but after helping a friend shovel his driveway, he forced one on me...and it tasted damn good. Must be barometric blizzard pressure on the brain.
 
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Giant databases are great.

But cassettes and vinyl forced the "album" on you. It was too much of a pain to skip around, so you digested the whole thing.

If you wanted to hear "Pride", you had to listen to "Sort of Homecoming" first.

Nowadays, most people would just download "Pride", never exposing themselves to the great song that came before it.

And it didn't matter if you were a huge music geek, or just a casual fan. The technology helped shape your listening experience.

For that aspect, computers fail.
 
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I wasn't around 'back in the day' so I don't really know and quite frankly I don't really care. All I know is that if I didn't have the Internet I probably won't be as obsessed with music as I am now. Maybe with paintings or something.
 
i know exactly what you're getting at, brau.
there's something to be said for nostalgia. in the end, though nostalgia doesn't mean shit.
however, you make a great point about how the earlier music formats literally FORCED you to listen a certain way. remember all those drives for holidays with mom and dad, when the only music we could agree upon was the joshua tree. we'd leave the tape in on auto reverse, literally listen to the album repeatedly. the whole thing, not just the first 3 songs. by the end of that, the entire car was singing along to 'one tree hill'. you really got to know the album inside and out thanks to that. no way that happens today. jsut skip the song, and you're on to one of a gazillion other options.
i've wound up downloading and acquiring way more music at this point than i'll ever get to. but i don't think that's a bad thing. i miss going to the record store for an anticipated release. but i tried to relive it this summer when billy corgan had his record. needless to say, it wasn't as i remember it (the experience). mainly cos the music sucked big time.
but i do like how the computer has made so much available. and i think it's great that i can quickly and easily make a mix for whatever occasion. my best cd mixes take a good amount of planning, and are as worn as my best tape mixes ever were.

anyway, i guess my point is that i miss the old formats, i miss having beautiful artwork - a physical product. but i still think that overall, this is better...
 
Wow, I can relate to every word, MrB!

I remember how totally excited I was when I got a tape deck with a fade button so that if a song didn't quite fit on a tape I could fade it out so it didn't cut off abruptly. I thought I was hot shit.

When I was a kid I sat by the radio for hours waiting for that one song. Often I called the radio station to request it.
 
Oh yes. The advantages are obvious: Volume and access.

I was atease earlier today. Someone was asking about the new Supergrass record, whether it was good or not.

The responder got 2 or 3 postive reactions. And 4 or 5 negative. Then stated he'd just downloaded the record, and based on the negative response, he wasn't going to listen to it.

Complete Idiot. But it got me thinking...

This is another area where computers fails. Downloading is great, I love it. But when you buy a record, you're invested in it. Your $10 is gone. You're going to give that record a good chance to make an impression on you. And you're going to have a real opinion about it.

When you steal a record, it's much easier to give it a 1/2 hearted listen, then dismiss it and move onto your next illegal download. Lots of people around with empty opinions about albums and bands they've listened to snippets of.

"Back In The Day" you actually had to buy music. Or make a cassette copy from your brother.:wink:
 
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joyfulgirl said:
Wow, I can relate to every word, MrB!

I remember how totally excited I was when I got a tape deck with a fade button so that if a song didn't quite fit on a tape I could fade it out so it didn't cut off abruptly. I thought I was hot shit.

When I was a kid I sat by the radio for hours waiting for that one song. Often I called the radio station to request it.

The FADE! I forgot about that. My dad had a nice deck with fade. We thought it was the kings shit!
 
MrBrau1 said:
This is another area where computers fails. Downloading is great, I love it. But when you buy a record, you're invested in it. Your $10 is gone. You're going to give that record a good chance to make an impression on you. And you're going to have a real opinion about it.

When you steal a record, it's much easier to give it a 1/2 hearted listen, then dismiss it and move onto your next illegal download.

When you have a download limit, you're still investing in it. :wink:

I'd rather lose a bit of cash than spend a week on agonisingly slow Internet speeds just because I downloaded a couple of crap albums and blew my download limit. It doesn't feel quite so bad when it's because of good albums.
 
I'm old enough to have experienced lps, cassettes, cds and now digital.

CDs are my favourite format. I guess all those years of listening to albums on the earlier formats has trained me to really like that method of listening to music. For me nothing beats physically getting a disc, kicking back, and listening to it straight through. I very rarely put my music of shuffle as I like to hear it the order the artist intended (I do skip some songs though :uhoh: ). Some albums the song order doesn't seem to matter at all, but on some the order makes the album. I don't think I ever made a mix tape...I rarely make mix cds, but they are a whole lot easier when I do. :yes:

I have iTunes on my pc, but don't have an iPod (or other mp3 player) and don't expect to get one for some time. I work at home, so I have easy access to all my cds anyway. I do have some music on my iTunes (359 songs, about a day's worth), but it's mostly rarities and bands I am checking out. Also I have some songs I've always liked, but didn't like the band enough to buy a whole album. In previous years I would have just done without, so being able to just get one or two songs is nice. So it's nice once in a while, but the bulk of my listening is still done "the old fashioned way" -- albums (now mostly cds although I still have a fair number of cassettes) listened to from start to finish.

I do love the internet for giving me easy access to music I would never have heard or been able to acquire otherwise. I've gotten into bands no one I know in my "real" life has ever heard of, and I'm able to easily order music from anywhere in the world and not have to depend on some snot nosed, pimply-faced music store clerk to do it for me. I love being able to find out about music I would never hear if not for the people I meet online.

An extra bonus has been that I have been able to converse online with several musicians I admire. Some of the conversations have been simple one off deals, but others have been more extensive (one contact has even worked into a business relationship :) ). For someone like me, who is just about terminally shy in person, the internet has opened many doors.
 
if i hear a new artist that mildly interests me, i can now go and listen to, at the very least, parts of the album before i actually go and buy the entire thing. that has been the greatest benefit of the internet for me.

god knows how much money i wasted on shit ass CDs or tapes because I loved the one song that was on the radio. alas, i can avoid that now.

it also allows me to discover new artists... the killers for example... just because i like the one song i heard on the radio but never heard the DJ say the name of the band... pump the name of the song into iTunes, find the band, listen to the rest of the album, bada bing bada boom, download the album.

i think the people who download only "pride" would be the same people who just skip over the rest of the songs anyway. :shrug: there's a difference between people who "like" music and those who appreciate music.
 
The web has introduced me to soooooo many great bands. Without it, I don't think I'd be as much as an audiophile as I now am. :drool:
 
MrBrau1 said:
Hell, making a mix tape was a real-time experience. You really had to plan out what was going on the tape. Nothing was worse than having the finale of side A cut off cause you ran out of tape. It took planning. For real geeks, it took a paper and pencil as well. Calculating how you could get as much music as possible on
those 90 minute Maxell cassettes.

Ah...memories. :heart:
 
My high-speed Internet connection and my $10 a month subscription to Rhapsody has enriched my life tremendously and exposed me to so much new music.

I think those who truly love music will still listen to albums in their entirety, despite the digital revolution.
 
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Computers are great for music, but they fail just as any media type can. You can knock your PC case while the hard drive is being accessed and lose 8,000 songs in an instant.

Still, I love having everything at my disposal in iTunes.

Being able to look up and download any form of popular music is great and I can't imagine living without Bittorrent, heheh. The catch is, though, that there is a quality issue.

I try to rip CDs now at VBR MP3 using the Alt preset standard (latest LAME codec). I'll get my rock, rap, pop etc off the internet, but for classical music I still go out and buy the recordings.

The dynamic range of classical music just gets destroyed when some random German guy ripping a CD for BT decides that you can fit the range of an orchestra into a 160 kb/s bitrate MP3 :huh:
 
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Okay, I guess computers can encourage a less thorough and more disposable appreciation of music, but for those of us already set in our ways: all win.

I think computers still encourage the album format (iTunes sorts everything by album, both in the local library and the online store, plus all the seedy torrents and such you come across are usually full albums; you simply have tons of flexible mix options on top of all that, if you choose to take them).

I also like having an actual, physical album to have and to hold 'til death do us part, but I still buy tons of CDs and rip them to my computer to get the best of both worlds (fluff and flexibility).
 
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i've always been ridiculously resistant to technology. metallica was sueing napster, i still thought tapes were the greatest thing. but right now, my ipod is my best friend and i don't know how i dealt with taping stuff off the radio. well, i do, because it was really my only option at the time, but it would drive me up the wall now. i still prefer to buy actual cds or vinyl (i do buy shit on vinyl occasionally for listening purposes, rather than just collectors' purposes) than mp3s. i've yet to purchase anything off itunes. but i've got my entire music collection ripped and recorded to my computer, and the end result is that i listen to a lot more music now than i ever did in high school.


i am majorly guilty of making charts with detailed calculations on what songs are exactly how long and where they'll fit onto a mix tape.
 
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