Music, please, not machinery

Vinyl vs cd and some other thoughts.

Who knows a record shop like Mooncurser Records?

ARTS: Music, please, not machinery
By Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
Financial Times; Jul 13, 2004

Go to a small island at the furthest edge of the Bronx in New York and you will find a second-hand record store that stocks more than 100,000 vinyl records and not a single CD. Called Mooncurser Records, it is a badly lit place, with shelves of LPs receding into gloom at the back of the shop. On the Sunday I visited recently, I was the only browser; it felt somnolent and empty, like a church without worshippers.

The bustling modern world, with its iPods and annoying mobile phone ringtones, seemed very remote. In fact it was as if time had stopped in 1983, when CDs were first sold in the US. A Nick Hornby-ish wave of vinyl nostalgia swept over me at the sight of all those 33s, 45s and 78s, although my enthusiasm drained away when I found they were asking $20 for a second-hand Bryan Adams album.

Mooncurser Records is evidence of how dramatically the way we experience pop music has changed. The transformation is far greater than in any other art form.

If Johannes Gutenberg were to visit a 21st-century bookshop, for instance, he would see that books had not changed that much in 550 years (the threat posed by e-books has proved non-existent). If the Lumière brothers were able to make a ghostly trip to the cinema, they would be astonished by the sound, colour and special effects but would recognise the basic principle of images being projected on a screen.

Imagine Thomas Edison going shopping for music today, however: the inventor of the phonograph would reel from one shock to another. Why have records shrunk to compact discs? How do you download songs from computers? How can thousands of them be stored on a tiny personal stereo? As for a portable telephone that plays the latest Britney Spears single - well, at that stage he would probably need a long lie down.

The danger of grumbling about these new technologies is that you sound like a mildewy old vinyl bore who thinks records are intrinsically superior (which, let's face it, they are). Yet there's a perfectly sound, non-Luddite reason for resenting the attention iPods, ringtones etc are getting: they divert attention from pop's content to its format. Previous generations were defined by music scenes such as punk or acid house; this one is in danger of being defined by a computer file, the MP3.

It does not matter if record companies show as much interest in music as they do in how we listen to it. Last week Bertelsmann announced plans to launch three classes of CDs, cut-price, standard and deluxe. That is fine for successful bands that can afford to put out albums full of enhancements such as videos, but less good news for newcomers who risk being shunted into the cut-price category.

The example of the effect when CDs were launched is cautionary. In the mid-1980s manufactured pop and power ballads plunged pop music into slushy, pompous awfulness. Meanwhile record companies sought to profit by persuading people to rebuy their record collections in the new CD format. New music festered, back catalogues boomed. And is it coincidental that the two genres that have done most towards pop's recuperation since then, hip-hop and dance music, were based around DJs playing vinyl records? Technology transforms the way we consume music, but at what cost?
© Copyright The Financial Times Ltd

 

Excellent article. Thanks for that.

 

feking luddite - why doesn't he throw his shoes into a cd pressing machine and then follow them.
sorry, but that sounded like the witterings of an old man confused by anything more complicated than an abacus.
cheers


julian

 

No I think he's right. There is far too much attention on the medium rather than the message. How much drivel are the record companies producing now. Do you think the Beatles would be allowed to release Sgt Pepper now? Or would they have to go back and do Love me do again?
Top article

 

I think I posted this link somewhere here before, but it's worth reading:

http://www.furious.com/perfect/mp3.html

-- Ian

 

hmmm,
it's analogous to a lot of arguments leveled at the pc market at the end of the st / amiga 'fixed' system days. still the pc has gone on to become better, faster and with more useful software than the st / amiga and it's ilk ever were. sorry but again it strikes me as sour grapes and fear over something not understood. maybe Here would be useful for some people.
cheers


julian

 

Fear of black vinyl? Fear of shiny silver disks? . . . well no.

I think that perhaps inertia to change is masquerading as fear, some people may have invested much time and money and even social status or standing by amassing a goodly stack of vinyl or silver discs. These are possessions that can be both measured, valued and bragging rights assigned, not so easy but still possible with a listing of MP3s held on a disk.

Sometimes size does matter and sometimes it is just a case of “never mind the quality just feel the widthâ€Â.

Auric

 

Music is art, it isn't software. There's a real debate to be had over the way the delivery mechanism changes the way a piece of art is treated (an argument that's been going on since the dawn of the age of mechanical reproduction). Certainly doesn't strike me as fear over something not understood. The MP3 generation have a very different attitude to music than the 7inch single generation, ISTM, music is increasingly viewed as a soundtrack to a visual experience, rather than valued in its own right. There are also issues about how DRM will restrict the ability people have always enjoyed to date to listen to music free from snooping and limitations of use, a pretty retrograde step, and how, if DRM mechanisms get their way, smaller independents record companies will have problems getting their material distributed (already an issue with iTunes in Europe, where Apple's onerous and unfair licensing demands have led to the independent labels currently refusing to allow their music to be provided by iTunes).

There are real issues here.

-- Ian

 

Julian, I'm certainly not an old fogey vinylista / luddite / take your pick - but I would tend to side with Ian on this one. The way the delivery mechanism of music is changing is far from definitely being a good thing, from the point of view of someone who loves music for its own sake.

Michael.

 

Ian,
you thoughts about DRM and the way it will be implemented sure does give cause for thought, witness this snip

from the Record Stores: We're Fine, Thanks thread.

You will have something that looks like you can only play DRM certified software and if it is not DRM then you won't be able to play it at all. That locks up the hardware side of things now Ian if what you suggest comes to pass and some big distributor (itunes?) decides not to stock your favoured bands then you are swell and truly stuffed unless you go down the non DRM route but will the non DRM route still be available?


Just as a matter of intrest I wonder how many titles on sale from Mooncurser Records are in the itunes or other system? As you said that is the problem.

Auric

 

Also I think you can ask yourself this,the file,MP3 your buying,downloading, today or in the future what worth is it?what will it be worth in 30 years?probably nothing,but with vinyl you may have bought a flop single for 50p in the 80s,to be suprised that it's worth over £70 today,will that demand for something precious ever take place again?

 

surely music is whatever the listener wants it to be, art, mood, background or soundtrack it's up to the listener. the delivery medium doesn't effect this. drm is a seperate issue altogether imho. from the days of 'home taping is killing music' to the apple controversy mentioned above copyright control has always been an issue and i suspect it always will be. look at dvd's they were meant to be uncopyable but that has proved not to be the case. sacd is probably the least copyable format at present and that's due to specialist hardware being necessary.
the world moves on - get over it...
btw. if drm is in the bios then it's a motherboard manufacturer deal so i'm sure that certain 'far east' manufacturers will be able to spoof windoze into allowing playback. either that or just have a linux partition in order to play back music.
cheers


julian

 

They'd probably get to record Sgt Pepper - simply because the market would have been proved by the "bigger better faster earlier" prototype that is Revolver. Sorry - Sgt Pepper is OK, but Revolver is FAR better and more technologically advanced in many places.

As for vinyl V CD/digital, I use both. I will NOT go down the MP3 route though as I don't find them particularly musical - and I've heard a few different machines and PCs now and none of the "noise" eminating out of them could be classed as "music" IMHO. CD is tolerable, but then someone comes along and downgrades the sound massively = crap. I'd NEVER pay money for a file downloaded from the net - UNLESS I could have a physical copy as well (ie, on something more robust than a CDR).

As for Amiga/ST versus PC - they might well not do so much as PCs but at least the things are tested properly so that a) they don't fall over if you breathe on them wrong and b) you don't have to reinstall windows every 6 months because of the PISS POOR programming that is the registry. I hate windows - but have to use it/PC as Macs are still too damn expensive and only have one mouse button - I really can't get on with that!

 

oh how short memory is. i remember may happy hours spent wasting the time it took for workbanch to load or having to take disks back to the shop for replacement because the dodgy loaders used as copy protection didn;t work with that particular floppy / drive combination.
the st's gem o/s was awful as well. the day i was able to deveop on a pc and cross assemble for st / amiga was a happy one inded.
cheers

julian

 

Actually, my memory of early PCs and software , (I'm thinking 286s and Wordstar 4 etc), is of computers that booted up quicker, loaded applications quicker and just plain ran faster or certainly no slower than todays mega machines. Of course the software etc was a lot simpler but I think the ever increasing spiral of hardware performance increases has lulled software writers in to producing bloated, inefficient code, loaded with loads of features that 99% of people will never use. Imagine how quick a simple word processing package like those used in the days of Dos would run on a 3ghz + processor !!! Only problem is .. if the software companies produced such stripped down versions, (upgradable with the features if you wanted them), PCs would be so fast that most people would never consider upgrading them .. ever.

GTM

 

before recent (win 95) os's there were compatibility problems (especially with things like sound and graphics cards). win 95 sorted this out but at the expense of speed (until machines caught up). nowadays software is so much more sophisticated than the old dos days full of features that we take for granted. yes there is a certain amount of code bloat and i'm not a huge fan of micro$oft but they have made my life easier as i no longer have to write 5 sound drivers and 15 graphics drivers just because someone might have some obscure sound or graphics card.
the march of technology continues it has replaced evolution as the way the human race advances (since natural selection no longer applies) we can either reject new technology and stagnate or embrace it and move on in the way we have chosen. just my opinion.
cheers


julian

 

"Music is art,not software"

excellenty put

 

Actually I think a more reasoned response would be to evaluate new technology and embrace or reject it on it's merits/usefulness. Rather than just embrace or reject it per se on the basis of it being something new. Not all new technology is an advance or for the better and not all new technology is bad.

GTM

 

with reference to the articles cited it seems that technology is being rejected out of hand purely because it is new and not fully understood by the writer(s). this is what i was referring to.
cheers


julian

 

You should read them again, I think you've missed the subtleties.

-- Ian