Sick of the mp3 thing

totally agree here. the fastest way for me is to buy a song on amazon and its always just mp3. i mean i wanna buy the full song how the artists imagined his product,
not a processedtodeath imitation of that. i wont pay money for that. i love flacs, but i havent found many other artists despite peter gabriel and his label
offering flacs... sure, it wont make a difference to 95% of the costumers, but i invite you guys to the beautiful world of mp3 artefacts:
insert voxengo msed on one of your favorite songs in mp3, and listen only to the side signals. nice how everything sounds like the matrix falling apart...

i dont need the new ladyboy gaga in flac... i dont need the fucked eyepiss autotune massacre in flac.

but id love to listen to my favorite metal bands guitar sound without artefacts.
movies are being released on blueray, EVERYONE buys that shit. everyone jumps on the train of "sharp, crystal clear image". while tvs got bigger and better over years,
the standard stereo system you get is like 9.99$ ...

the question is : how can we show the customers that its worth upgrading your audio environment, just like they do with all the visual media?
 
you stop referring to them as fucking customers, thats how

if you wanna engage a persons attention, treat them like a human being rather than nothing more than a glorified wallet holder. make music that fucks with their emotions, makes them feel, makes them think, makes them fucking question.
maybe then they will become passionate enough about music to invest in decent speakers, buy their shit on CD or vinyl, play the whole damn thing rather than skipping to another artist after 30 seconds.

you wanna engage people? stop being shit, stop making shit, and stop perpetuating the cycle of shit being made and bought.
this includes the engineers. stop buying fucking nickelback records just to hear how the drums sound in cd quality. who cares how nickelback was produced. serve the aesthetic of whatever band you are recording, and serve it fucking well.

look at steve albini, i mean the guy's a twat, don't get me wrong, but i damn well respect the fact that he doesnt NEED "influences" as far as his production goes. he mics shit up and then captures the sounds of good musicians playing well.
yeah, that doesn't make much bank, but if you're in this line of work for money you're a fucking pig and have no right to own a set of mics.

all of us on here complain about how shit music is now, but we're all so fucking unwilling to change anything that we do, or the way we work, or who we work with to stop this from happening. you want to be idealists but you're too fucking scared to follow through.

funny stuff guys, funny stuff. thanks for embodying "the big cosmic joke" so damn well \\\\\m//////
 
the question is : how can we show the customers that its worth upgrading your audio environment, just like they do with all the visual media?
You can't. Why? Because everybody can see the difference BluRay makes but you need a trained set of ears to hear the difference between an MP3 and an uncompressed format. This often takes years to develop and nobody actually gives a shit. I know it's sad but that's just the way it is. Even (non AE) industry professionals see it (and for the most part even hear it) that way so I don't see how that's gonna change in the near future.

Gareth has a point too. The last year had something like four records that actually mattered to me. Actually I can remember two from the top of my head right now but I recon it's gotta be more.
But guess what: I love the latest Deftones record but I still haven't bought it because it's something like 18 fucking Euros. Knowing how the system works and how much the artist gets from CD sales I'm not willing to pay that much. I have no intention of funding record companies that will eventually take away uncompressed formats from all of us (See the availability of CDs in NZ! Someone postet about that a few weeks ago.) by buying overpriced CDs.
That being said I still buy CDs but only once the prizes drop and I'm looking forward to seeing an uncompressed digital format that can guarantee longtime-compatability being released.
 
It's a bit rich coming from the guy who self-admittedly gave up on this industry, Gareth.

Some of us live in the real world, and have real obligations. Part of those is the need to feed ourselves, whilst somehow managing to balance artistic integrity with the day job. I'm afraid we don't all have the leisure to get shitfaced all the time and chill out to whatever the day's fancy may be.

The true irony is that the word 'customer' really is a misnomer in this case, because the vast majority of people don't buy their music. If you're looking for someone to blame for the decline in music quality, look at them. Its their entitlement and apathetic morals that are driving talented artists away from the industry.

What reason would anybody have to expect music to actually get better from this point? All the labels are pushing is further homogenization to try and strain the last few dollars left from the industry. Meanwhile the indie artists are trying to piece together records on shoe-string budgets. The rest are bedroom warrioring it up with no hope of ever making a decent living from the craft.
 
calling bullshit at needing trained ears. you just have to actually USE them, which 90% of people have simply forgotten how to do. it's the difference between having music on in the background and getting swallowed up by an album.

yeah, you can be listening to some music, but are you fuckin' LISTENING to it?

and eh, 18 euros, it's expensive, but you've got it easy. you listen to deftones, could go and buy that in the fucking supermarket. so much of the music ive bought is LONG out of print, and of course i have to still get brand new copies. my copy of portal - outre on vinyl set me back £40. whether the artist sees any of the money or not should not be a concern to you either. why do you feel some sort of obligation to care about the financial situation of a person THAT IS NOT YOU? i dont care whether portal ever see a penny of my money or not, because im sure they'd rather know im getting a really deep appreciation from their music.

what im saying with all of this is, people need to be given a reason to get passionate about music, passionate enough to the point where they feel so utterly compelled to shout about it, to shout about their unbridled love for the beauty that greets their ears. that's why my post above got so ranty, and that's why this one is going the same way. i see so many people going on about music being their life, yet i see and feel no passion from them, where's the buzz? the euphoria? the joy of CREATION??
that sort of energy is deeply infectious, be it to do with your love for music or your love for the fact you EXIST in the first place.

be more goddamn passionate, make more music worth geting passionate about, and the rest shall follow.

i mean look at apocalypse now or some sort of film like that, you really think coppola et al would have gone to all that trouble to make that goddamn film if they werent REALLY PASSIONATE about it? passion BEYOND such petty things as financial gain, passion because he and his crew were making something truly beautiful.
for a forum full of musicians, i dont feel a whole lot of that passion for such creation, and that saddens me a lot.
 
hahahaha

i quit the industry because i was helping to perpetuate the cycle that you yourself are always fucking bitching about. you want change, but you wont do anything to get it, so fuck you, i will indulge your reply no more.

all this fucking pessimism and cynicism and apathy and no joy from a bunch of musicians and artists. disgusting.
 
you stop referring to them as fucking customers, thats how

so lets call em listeners. in the end they will have to pay for a higher quality (technically speaking, not artistically), so that makes them customers in the end. if they dont pay, they are only listeners, yes, but as art and culture gets no support from our governements (to keep people from thinking)we as artists have to make a living of what we do somehow,
otherwise we cant survive, period. so in the end if there were no customers for art there would be no art either (at least over here...)

i think there is not less great music out there, its quiet the opposite.
BUT there is more trash around than ever, covering the great music.o_O
 
I think that mp3/lossless downloads of albums are WAY overpriced. If we don't get any printed booklet and a cd, why should we be paying as much as 10usd? That's why I will never pay for downloaded stuff. And that's why I love buying cds. Nothing beats the feeling of tearing apart that plastic wrap new cds come sealed with
 
I have hope that as bandwidth and drive space become cheaper and cheaper we will see higher quality digital releases becoming more mainstream. I haven't experienced the OP complaint (no CD or high res release) but I totally believe that things are headed that direction. After all, this greatly limits the initial investment since there are no CD's to press/store/ship.
 
The more artists the make bandcamp accounts, the quicker it shall spread. \o/
 
Gareth, you can't force someone to use their ears. Circumstances are a given, there is no way changing that. People listen to music in the background and don't actually take time off to listen to music and nothing else. It's just the way things are. Musicians (or AEs fwiw) being more passonate isn't going to change that either.

Btw in what way did you "quit the industry"?
 
Personally, my take on it is that the lack of ritual and the ease helps to focus on the music. I'm not focusing on the fact that I have a lovely bit of vinyl, and I'm not feeling elite because I bought a collectors edition or anything.

I have the music. I love the music.

That's all I really give a fuck about.

Saying that, I rip all my stuff lossless - hard drive space is so cheap now, there really isn't any need for anything less than lossless.
 
You guys are too passionate about your opinions. Chill out, guys :)

Well, everyone here as some valid points, but no matter what, you can't forget that:

1) most people don't give a shit about recording quality. Even musicians.
2) there are people that actually LIKE low quality stuff. I know some people that do. There's even a market for this kind of stuff.

That being said, if YOU don't like what you're buying/downloading, just don't buy it. Go to a supermarket or whatever, order from amazon, cdbaby, or whatever, and get your music from there. I agree with Ermin that 320kbps mp3 still is far inferior to lossless stuff when listened on good systems, so if that bothers you, just got out and buy a damn CD - I see no problem with that. Just keep in mind that maybe 10% of the customers listen to music on optimal systems, so for the rest, this lack of quality doesn't matter.

What I DON'T agree is that artists are going away from the industry because blah blah blah piracy blah blah blah last few dollars left blah blah blah. This is just an excuse to rape the customers asses with more expensive crap shit. Heck, the movies industry deal with as much piracy and still get huge dollars and big productions. Piracy is another deal and something the industry has to learn how to deal. The movies industry is offering me better stuff each time - better image, better movies, better productions, why the music industry can't?

Back to the OT, to make it short: if you don't agree with the quality of something, just don't buy it.
 
I agree with the "vote with your dollar" attitude Jangoux, but Ermin's original complaint was about wanting to buy a soundtrack and there only being a lofi option available. It's hard to do much in that situation besides writing the label/publisher/artist.