I think there's some general merit to the argument, but I'm sticking to my old theory rather than pointing the finger at new technology.



I think there is a generation of people who look down on albums or complete works rather than songs. Take a look at the success for single song downloads. What is one of the most common answers given?

"I can spend a few bucks on the good songs and not have to get stuck with a bunch of filler and a full price cd."

Compact discs are too long. They hold too many songs, and they get crammed to the tits with every song that fits.

It's all these extra songs that dilute the music pool. I just listened to Willie Nelson's Phases And Stages on vinyl a few days ago. It's one of my favorite albums, period. It clocks in about 35 minutes, and manages to tell both the man and the woman's story over a broken marriage. You can't get pizza delivered that fast.

There aren't half-hour albums anywhere anymore. It's all the extra crap that gets thrown in that's diluting the experience. People don't feel like they get their money's worth when buying full albums. If they are already walking to the counter that jaded, it's real damn hard to get a fully emotional attachment to a musical work.

I am on Colinswood, and I browse Usenet from time to time. I don't download nearly as much as I used to and mostly stick to things that I'm pretty damn sure I will like. There are still an indie douche bloc of downloaders who are too busy trying to find the Pitchfork Hott Movers Artist of next week. These are simply Innovators. They are primarily interested in getting there first. Our Obner group here has a few Innovators, but we are mostly Early Adopters and Early Majority listeners.

Most music buyers (or customers in any market, really) are Early & Late Majority consumers. That's the curve. These people are the ones who make the market for music, players and portability survive. And right now it seems pretty obvious most of them feel burned by the record industry. The Early & Late Majority Customers have had their displeasure with the record industry somewhat assuaged through increased accessibility and portability.

If they won't give us what we want, at least we can find it and take it where we want.

...or a biproduct of tons of money

i agree with the long album problem.

1970's double albums are shorter than most single CD's that are out now.

i think 25-35 minutes is perfect also

Lately I've turned off a couple albums before they were finished, just because I don't have the patience to sit and listen to a 72 minute album. But I'm also a big pop music fan so I like things short and sweet.


I download music on a regular basis. From the time I wake up in the morning to the time I go to bed, my SoulSeek is open and running on the computer. But I only download a few songs here and there as samples. I very rarely download full albums. I use the three songs to decide whether or not I'll like an album. If I do, I add it to my shopping list.

But I don't listen to my mp3's nearly as much as my cd's. And I take my cd's with me everywhere I go.

I asked for an iPod for Christmas but didn't get it. I was so happy that I didn't. I realised at the last minute that I really didn't need one if I have a discman. And that I'd much rather have that money spent on a stack of cd's than a $200 mp3 player that will be outdated by next Christmas, anyway.

exactly.

the people that say "oh, you listen to too much music, so you can't soak it all in" are fooling themselves.

i listen to music all day every day, and have access to far more than i have ever imagined. new discoveries are part of the joy of music.

Nonsense - it's just shifted music listening away from albums and back to singles again.

I download music all the time, the majority of my collection is downloaded. You try affording many $30 CDs as a student. And i still buy quite a few even so.

''

This is my opinion as well. I've gotten so much damn music in the last while, from the above quoted folk that I'm overwhelmed and personally couldn't be happier. There's nothing like the getting new music that you haven't heard yet. This board affords that luxury.

But don't you think that having so much available to choose from makes people less likely to give something a passing chance?
I have a lot of CDs I had to war up to and now love because I gave them a chance to grow on me and make their qualities apparent over time. Not that we don't still have growers, but if something doesn't catch your ear right away, having so much more to easily sample from makes it easy to disregard something without a second thought.
Don't get me wrong. D/ling and sharing in the end improves the chances of finding more stuff you like. But it's easy to get a really short attention span and turn listening to music into channel surfing.

I see both sides to this, BUT I can say that when I buy something and hate it, I hate it A LOT More than if I had just d/l/d it.

And the great thing about all the ysi's and stuff 'round these parts is, you don't need to go out buy an album someone is pumping. Cos if I looked at what people around here qualified as classic, and went out and bought shit like Pink Flag, Funhouse or whatever, I would be MAD. But, I got shot a copy of that National album, and it kept coming up enough on iTunes for me to enjoy it.

And, in response to folks like Billy G, you can dod both. If you know who has similar taste as you, and you know what you like, and who the experts in those genres are, you can get some FINE music. Mcaputo and Rads have given me some of the most JAIL music ever, that without access to the internets, I would probably still be over listening to Exile and NYDolls s/t.

I think that easy access to entertainment in general has made us more shallow as a society, and the disconnect from true cultural touchstones has made us look for 'deep meaning' in movies, music, etc....but that's another half baked idea to explore at another time.

I've paid for music that sucked and I sold it the same day. I've gotten just as excited about a downloaded album as I have albums I've paid for. I usually end up buying albums anyway, either as gifts or I purchase another album by the same artist. Whoever said, "listen to everything and see what sticks to the wall" was right on. I'm sitting here listening to 3WK right now and noting what's good. That's no different to me than downloading music.

I don't doubt that people discover more music that they like through downloading and I don't doubt that downloading saves people spending money on stuff that they wouldn't have purchased if they had sampled first.

That said, I'm gonna call bullshit on anyone who says that they don't end up listening to a lot more stuff that they find that they don't like because their standards for trying something drop when the cost is nothing. When your cd collection gets large enough, it starts to seem silly to let that happen. I have close to 4000 cds. I'd have to listen to 11/day and not listen to any one more than once to listen to them all once each year. When you start to find that you don't have time to listen to stuff you know that you love, instead listening to lots of new stuff recommended by others with a low to medium hit rate you start to question the wisdom of it.

Hell, I'm all for discovering new music. I buy as much or more than most of you and the vast majority of what I buy I've never heard a note of prior to buying it. I'm just saying that dl'ing can be a trap where you overvalue discovering new things and stop spending the time enjoying the music that you already know that you really love. Listening time is finite.

np: Yabby You "Dub It To the Top"

Last night, I downloaded this record by Death Chants, on Time-Lag, because I kind of liked the name. I scanned a few tracks, and deleted the thing without having listened to more than 30 seconds of it. I thought, that was fickle of me ...

Due to the volume of what I hear, my patience for new music is grossly decreased. If it sounds unoriginal in the slightest, it's not likely going to have time to make an impression. Perhaps that poses an unrealistic challenge to artists and labels.

A positive affect of this huge volume is that the scope of my tastes has exploded. Some of the more 'extreme' music I've come to appreciate - I don't necessarily mean just loud, nor really experimental, but just fringe, I guess - I credit to the volume of what I hear, a very positive affect of it.

Music has become absolutely no less emotionally impactful. Only more so because I've come across really incredible sound. I compensate for the carelessness of music downloading by purchasing what I can, and specifically on vinyl. Records ground the listening experience in the home for me, and I derive much intimacy from that.

I use music outside of the home and work to oftentimes drown out the world around me.

Ish sums it up pretty well i think

I have a massive collection, and yes, people always ask me if I actually listen to all of it. I have indeed been bitten a couple of times (last week in fact) by the "oh hell, I forgot I owned this" phenomenom. I don't think however that this has led to my overall apathy towards music, nor my ability to truly enjoy it. The contrary is actually true. I feel that if I didn't have the collection I do, I wouldn't be exposed to so many styles, so many cultural differences. Also, I don't download that much. I've bought more albums year after year than the last. Last year I bought 60+ albums that came out in 2005. I didn't include dl'd albums in my running for top 20, nor do I respect people who dl (and don't pay) and then fawn over the album calling it the next best thing. If its a placeholder sure, but if that is yr sole means?

Sure most of us musicfiends could stand to sell off a ton of records, but I view it as a hobby. A wallet-emptying one. Right now I can semi afford it, one day I won't and then we'll see.

To blame the lathargic music industry on people's collections is, imo, misguided. Its not a one way street like that.

I think album length has been a problem but I've noticed over the last year or so that albums seem to be getting shorter again.

It's increasingly common to see duration times like 35:04 or 32:52 displayed on the CD players LCD screen when an album finishes.

Incidentally when I make mixes I always put 18 tracks on (regardless of running time) rather than filling up the disc to its limit, so that gives a clue as to where I stand on the issue.

the perfect album has only 12 songs ^

yes. yes he did.

Well, evidently I accomplished something this weekend, then.

Regarding album length, (and set length, for that matter,) I totally support keeping things succinct. That Vashti Bunyan album, for instance, would be a better holistic piece if she just dropped that useless humming reprise from the last track. Same applies to Neko Case's "Blacklisted". Then again, the Super Numeri record that I'm so in love with has got to be over 70 minutes, and it's worth every minute. It wouldn't be the same, nor even relevant if it wasn't so sprawling.

I don't think there is a middle ground. Put out strong material and 30 minutes can be as valuable as 70, or vice versa.