Is the perceived value of music decreasing?

[steve.h]

I'd like to discuss whether or not we're living in a sort of "end-times" for the value of recorded music.

1: Is the home recording revolution helping or hindering?

2: Does the generally low quality of mp3's really have any effect on the majority of listeners?

3: Could the complete lack of face-to-face contact when it comes to downloading mp3's take away from the experience of purchasing an album? Does that effect your experience of listening to the album?

4: Is the album dead?

Feel free to discuss these or any other related topics, I'd like to know what everyone thinks. Personally, I believe the experience has been degraded and the value decreased, but I also believe that with the internet getting as fast as it is, storage getting so incredibly cheap, and with computers getting as fast as they are, bands will eventually start to create more and better multi-media content. The length of a song or music video is almost completely limitless, and the content is almost completely censorship-free (at least in most countries). Why not release some sort of video with each song release, for instance?

 

[razoredge]

Theres alot of music out there now that "labels" would never be able to pick up and promote, even if they wanted to. No one would ever hear the stuff in the days of old let alone a band scrounging up enough money to go to an 8 track analog recording studio for a mediocre final product.

Theres good and bad to all of it but one thing thats not going to change is the world we live in today.

If I want the music, I prefer to have the CD, case and sleeve with credits, thats the kind of stuff I buy and add to my library.

 

[monoxide_child]

I'd like to discuss whether or not we're living in a sort of "end-times" for the value of recorded music.

1: Is the home recording revolution helping or hindering?

2: Does the generally low quality of mp3's really have any effect on the majority of listeners?

3: Could the complete lack of face-to-face contact when it comes to downloading mp3's take away from the experience of purchasing an album? Does that effect your experience of listening to the album?

4: Is the album dead?

Feel free to discuss these or any other related topics, I'd like to know what everyone thinks. Personally, I believe the experience has been degraded and the value decreased, but I also believe that with the internet getting as fast as it is, storage getting so incredibly cheap, and with computers getting as fast as they are, bands will eventually start to create more and better multi-media content. The length of a song or music video is almost completely limitless, and the content is almost completely censorship-free (at least in most countries). Why not release some sort of video with each song release, for instance?

i haven't actually read this thread
but i'd like to put my 2 cents in anyway

1
home recording is actually making some albulm sales increase and others decrease, depending on the quality of ALL the songs on the album
if we can hear the whole albulm without buying it, (like we have a freind that owns it) then we will listen to those songs that don't get on the radio, then we will either buy the albuls ourselves, or not, depending on the quality of those songs that don't ever get radio/MTV play

2
if the CD is going to sound better than the MP3, then we'll end up buying the CD

3
i wouldn't say specifically music per se, but for me, i really enjoy the interaction with the person at the register when i purchase stuff, when i go to the grocerie store, i always go to the same one, and the workersare really friendly and talkative and the females flirt with me, it's why i got into the habbit of always shopping in the same stores (different stores depending on what exactly i'm buying) and always talking to the person at the register, and i never go through those "self-check-out" lines

4
i don't think the albulms quite dead yet, but it's going to happen eventually, i'm thinking that as soon as we can get an MP3 to sound even better than a CD, then CDs will disapear the way that 8-tracks, vinyl records, cassettes disapeared

and i agree with the last paragraph
with the internet you're gonna end up with bands that demand a video for every single fucking song that they make, instead of the 1 or 2 per 15-track album thing that's been going on
and with the internet, i thing albulms will prolly just disapear altogether with bands just posting their songs on websites, they'll prolly end up being music artist-owned websites too, where there's no "management"

 

[monoxide_child]

Theres alot of music out there now that "labels" would never be able to pick up and promote, even if they wanted to. No one would ever hear the stuff in the days of old let alone a band scrounging up enough money to go to an 8 track analog recording studio for a mediocre final product.

Theres good and bad to all of it but one thing thats not going to change is the world we live in today.

If I want the music, I prefer to have the CD, case and sleeve with credits, thats the kind of stuff I buy and add to my library.

yeah, there's a lot of music that a "label" wouldn't be able to touch, like the band in those freecreditreport.com comercials, they've already done 4 seperate songs but a "label" won't get near this band because all their songs are endorsing a product, expect more bands like this in the future
also
each "label" makes a totally different type of music, and each "label" has "producers" who alter the music to fit into what thier "label" is making
so you can expect an explosion of artists craving artistic freedom and putting their music online without any "producers" or "management" telling them what can and can't be in their songs

yes you specifically want the CD with the case and credits (as do i) but the whole fucking point of this thread is that there are people who would disagree
you've got music that will never be on CDs, and there will be people that wanna listen to this specific music because they want to hear whatr the musician made, instead of what the record label made

 

[hexwind]

you guys should consider yourselves lucky for finding stores that sell your fav music stuff.
I live in Tunisia, and people here don't buy original cds, they prefer listening to them on the radio, or downloading them. besides, you can't find any store that sells original products. I remember when i was about 7 or 6, i was a M.Jackson fan, and i used to own orignal stuff coz they were available, now you can't find them anymore. Personally , i would like to listen to my fav music on vinyls or original cds, dvd or whatever !! but i can't . Plus the new tools of streaming music, like Myspace, help us check out whether it's a good music or not.
And becoz of those MTV and radio music which don't need a lot from the listeners, the music values are decreasing ! most people don't differ between good written music and commercial shallow music. Music nowadays isn't written for music's sake, in most genres i think, they just seek for money, fame and so on. It's too bad for such a GREAT art.
One of the wonders of the world is going down
It's going down I know
It's one of the blunders of the world that no-one cares
No-one cares enough
Porcupine Tree

 

[monoxide_child]

most people don't differ between good written music and commercial shallow music.

this is because in most american music, the "back beat" is brought to the "foreground" where the rythym becomes addictive and most americans really don't hear the words, they don't pay attention to what the song's about and sometimes the song is just a single phrase repeated over and over again, and the black rappers use phrases that don't make sense, words/phrases white people don't understand, pupousefully mispronounce words to get a rhyme, and both rap and heavy metal often have the words blurred and completely drowned out by synthesizing macines in the studio

take for example the Cristina Agulera song "gennie in a bottle"
if you read the words on www.lyrics.com you'll instantly notice that this song is all about eating pussy, but when you're hearing it on the radio, or watching it on VH1, you're actually listening to the instruments instead of the words, so you don't notice that it's all about oral untill after you'vwe already heard the damn song a whole hundred times

 

[Hammersmashface]

4: Is the album dead?

I interpret this question as whether or not a majority of bands (notice Im not saying musicians) are distributing material that is really just a promotion of a couple songs rather than an album as a cohesive, flowing mindset of music. The era of the downloaded single or the platinum album based on 1 radio hit have been here for a while but I believe that there are many artists striving to maintain the sanctity of distributing an album with the intention of it being a listenable experience as a whole. word.

 

[steve.h]

Thanks for the great replies thus-far guys!

Follow-up question: there's so much media out there about what bands "need to do" in this "new world" of music distribution and such. My question is:

Do the Fans even know what they want?

With so many options out there (CD's, Vinyl, DVD's, Mp3's, lossless audio files, iTunes, amazon, emusic, subscription services, music videos, live concerts, etc. etc.), and so many ways for artists to have a presence online (website, myspace, facebook, last.fm, bebo, twitter, youtube, ilike, and the thousands of music forums out there), is it smarter for an artist to try to be everywhere for everyone, or is it possible that people will get sick and tired of hearing what the hell their favorite guitar player is eating for lunch, and might yearn for some air of mystery again?

 

[razoredge]

I'd say the upside is more visibility for bands, a way to reach the right audience.

But whos buying ?

The downside is there is not a penny in it, its still the labor of passion music always was. Theres way to many bands with no personal idenity (sound alike) they become no more than a little footnote of interest.

Music has always been a crap shot of big dreams, success, stardom, wild woman and fast cars. So many that have even written successful and great music, still die poor in obscurity, its always been that way. "Dont quit your day job" as they say.

 

[hexwind]

Well.. most people don't. There different are kind of people who listen to music, most of the metalheads (or some fans of other genres like Jazz or classical) focus on the music, they try to figure out who the riff is played, techniques, they even care about the production, they feel the vibe, how lyrics fit in with the music in a particular part of a song and so on. Some others don't, metal for them is just a rebellion's attitude against all the authorities or whatever. Some other people, don't even care what the lyrics are all about,just like what Monoxide_Child said, if it has a good rhythm that makes you "Shake that ass baby", good video clip, played whenever you turn on the radio , that's okay for them,and this is why it's hard to listen to a pop/hip hop/Rap/R&B song that came out 4 years back for example, coz listeners lose interests of the song becoz it's played 654641645465 times in the radio !! Those people consider those "sounds" as soundtracks for certain activities, whether daily ones like driving a car or whatever, or parties, they consider it a good soundtrack to fuck to. and i think the latter category is the one who don't know what they want, just take music as it is, seems like for them the quantity of the music they Get is more important that its quality. coz that music doesn't need a lot from the listener, coz this type of listeners don't Go to the music, it's surrounding them so they are controlled by the media and those who make such music.I think metal isn't suffering from such thing as other popular genres do in one way or another. That's my opinion based on what I see from people, whether living around me (in Tunisia) or from the net.

 

[monoxide_child]

I interpret this question as whether or not a majority of bands (notice Im not saying musicians) are distributing material that is really just a promotion of a couple songs rather than an album as a cohesive, flowing mindset of music. The era of the downloaded single or the platinum album based on 1 radio hit have been here for a while but I believe that there are many artists striving to maintain the sanctity of distributing an album with the intention of it being a listenable experience as a whole. word.

this is nice in theory
but you've got so many musicians that have their work exclusively online because "corperate" record "execs" don't work this way
they just make a song that they know will be a radio hit, have that song hit the radio and MTV/VH1 BEFORE the albulm hits store shelves so that they can make a huge amount of money from the albulm sales that occur on the very first day the albulm is in stores, if the other songs are crap they don't really care cuz they don't care about how many copies total that an albulm sells over time, they just make it sell a huge ass number of copies the first day and then move on to the next albulm

 

[monoxide_child]

Thanks for the great replies thus-far guys!

Follow-up question: there's so much media out there about what bands "need to do" in this "new world" of music distribution and such. My question is:

Do the Fans even know what they want?

With so many options out there (CD's, Vinyl, DVD's, Mp3's, lossless audio files, iTunes, amazon, emusic, subscription services, music videos, live concerts, etc. etc.), and so many ways for artists to have a presence online (website, myspace, facebook, last.fm, bebo, twitter, youtube, ilike, and the thousands of music forums out there), is it smarter for an artist to try to be everywhere for everyone, or is it possible that people will get sick and tired of hearing what the hell their favorite guitar player is eating for lunch, and might yearn for some air of mystery again?

the problem here is that MTV, originally, and then VH1 and the internet totally altered the way an albulm sells
in the days before MTV, only a very very small amount of people would buy an albulm the very first day, or even close to the first day, that the albulm first hits the store shelves
back in the days of Elvis what would happen is that a very tiny amount of people would buy an albulm the very first day, or close to the first day, that the albulm is on shelves, then the albulm would make 99% of it's sales through "word of mouth". Elvis became a legend while some of the other people that were doing music at the time actually became homeless and starved to death, and the reason is because every individual song on an Elvis albulm was enjoyable, instead of having one or two radio hits and the rest of the albulm being crap
what MTV did was play the video for "the cool song" creating a situation where an albulm with 14 of 15 songs on it could sell a ridiculously huge ass number of copies even though only 1 or 2 were even enjoyable with the rest of the whole fucking albulm being total crap
the fans eventually got pissed creating "compilation" CDs like this
http://nowthatsmusic.com/?utm_sourc...ext&utm_content=music&utm_campaign=guptamedia
and now i think with new musicians getting fed up with "the industry" and having their music exclusively online like
this guy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_Zonday
i think crappy music's gonna disapear, but it will take awhile

 

[hexwind]

sorry guys.. did ALLL of you made the very same typo more than twice at least??

 

[monoxide_child]

or is it possible that people will get sick and tired of hearing what the hell their favorite guitar player is eating for lunch, and might yearn for some air of mystery again?

i know exactly what you're talking about here
i don't care about when the teenage musicians "become legal"
i don't give a shit about lindsey or cybil's daughter being lesbians
i don't care about amy whinehouse being a crackwhore
i'd rather listen to Rihanna's music than listen to every fucking news show going on and on about how Chris Brown beat her

 

[hexwind]

^ Yeah , shows like The Insider are waste of money, time and so stupid !! the very same news for weeks.

 

[anatarsisphagist]

Nobody really talked about this one, but I personally don't think the album is dying completely. Singles stand alone, especially now since they can be downloaded, but on albums like that it has always been that way. Albums that are great all the way through and have the songs build off of each other like Symphony X's Paradise Lost are better enjoyed whole. Also, popular artists need a way to sell their shit songs because if they only made singles they would only have like 20 songs or something in a career and that wouldn't work.

 

[IBringYouAIDS]

From a metal perspective, downloading MP3s is good for the band as it gets them more exposure they wouldn't normally get without the internet. If people like it they'll generally buy it, some download and never buy but they wouldn't buy it anyway because they're leeches; they download anything.

Is the album dead? Pop music is singles-based so it's mostly irrelevant. Metal uses the album format almost entirely, we may 'lose' some bands but chances are they suck because no-one cares enough about them to support them. It's win-win for metal fans.

 

[hexwind]

some download and never buy but they wouldn't buy it anyway because they're leeches; they download anything.

I'm one of em. I don't own ANY metal album (apart from The Roundhouse Tapes latest DvD of Opeth but it was a present from a friend), coz there are no stores for sales, dunno who's responsible for that, labels? that's really shitty for fans who can't support the good music and they can see shit music on stores that people buy.

 

[Domk]

I download my music just because i CANT afford buying cd's.

Í think that disc is dying cause people just like 2-3 songs from discs.

Let's take the example of lil wayne, ever heard something else than lollipop, my life and pop bottles?

For lady Gaga pokerface, love games and just dance.

The disc is dying because people just know that by creating a couple hit's they will be famous. They dont care if 12 of the 15 songs sucks because they get people to come at shows and they make their money this way.

Pop killed the music.

My 2 cents

 

[Liverslapper]

Music to me seems like it is slowley losing it's meaning...


Listen to that rap, the emo crap.


I treasure and value the old days where music has a meaning...now it just seems like the mainstream music is out to make that buck. (I'm directing this towards the rap shit that is destroying everything)


Shitty thing is, that is's making more money then anything else. You can find any rapper in a new movie, a named shoe or pair of pants, or drink.

I don't see a jimmy page energy drink?



meh...im done ranting, music slowley diminishing..