Is the iPod ruining music?

[Rearden]

No. Crappy and uninspired music has ruined music.

[VaSteve]

For me, the ipod is about convenience. I no longer have the time to manage a huge collection of stuff like I used to. I used to search out cool stuff and spend a lot of time at the CD shop looking for stuff at bargain prices. I have like 400 CDs (only some which I have put on the ipod – I don’t even have the time to load them all) but rarely do I sit around the house by myself and listen to discs. I throw them all on the ipod and listen while I commute on the train or work.

Lately, I have been using itunes to find a song or two from a band to see if they are any good. I’d rather pay $.99 and get the tune I want and sample the others rather than end up with a $15.99 steaming pile of s***. What I don’t like is the issue of everything being sorted. I’m too lazy/busy to build playlists so I have to skip around between a buncha stuff where I have onesies of a band’s work. That’s a pain since I like to set the thing to roll and listen for a while.

I do like the liner notes and what not…at least I used to…..but at 33, what good is a poster to me? I have some discs I have played the “disc” exactly once… on the car ride home. They go right into the ipod.

Over the past week, I have been coding a bunch of old tapes into the ipod so I have something new/different to listen to. Stuff you can’t buy (legally) mostly. While the quality is somewhat sketchy on some, it’s fun to listen again (with convenience!) to something I haven’t listened to in years. That’s been rewarding.

[VaSteve]

Originally posted by Rearden
No. Crappy and uninspired music has ruined music.

I wonder if it's a case of use just getting "old" and no longer relating.

[Moneyguy1]

Not really. Good music will always be good music. Harmony, theme, cadence, the ability to "play together", are just some of the essentials. I enjoy everything from current to jazz to even some (egad!!) classical!!

[craigster59]

I recieved an iPod shuffle from a client for Christmas. I had it sitting around in my computer case, and decided to pull it out for gym use on my way to winning the "Pelican's Biggest Loser" thread. Holding only 1 gig, you can let iTunes randomly place abot 240 songs into it. It has been pretty "enlightening" hearing some songs I haven't played so much or juxtaposed with other material (blues song followed by hip-hop followed by jazz, etc.) It's made me listen to some of the albums I "forgot".

[nostatic]

with today's recording technology, when you go to CD you are throwing out data to get to red book. I routinely record at higher sample rates and have to downsample to get to 44.1 16 bit. While it may not be "compression", you are losing data/signal. To me it is worse when you go from analog to CD, as you're throwing away a lot of "data" although it perhaps isn't obvious.

[Moneyguy1]

I still like vinyl.

Call me nostalgic (not nostatic)

[VaSteve]

Originally posted by nostatic
with today's recording technology, when you go to CD you are throwing out data to get to red book. I routinely record at higher sample rates and have to downsample to get to 44.1 16 bit. While it may not be "compression", you are losing data/signal. To me it is worse when you go from analog to CD, as you're throwing away a lot of "data" although it perhaps isn't obvious.

That was a big deal back in the AAD ADD days, but nowadays aren't almost all recordings straight DDD, and thus why they don't put that on the back any longer?

[nostatic]

People often record at 192 then downsample to 44.1. You're losing data. Whether it is audible is up for debate.

Some still record analog. And in fact, it is not uncommon for people to track digital, then bounce the mix to analog to warm it up, then back to digital for mastering.

[berettafan]

Originally posted by VaSteve
I wonder if it's a case of use just getting "old" and no longer relating.

i wonder that as well.

[porsche911girl]

Originally posted by Moneyguy1
I still like vinyl.

Call me nostalgic (not nostatic)

me too.

[VaSteve]

Originally posted by nostatic
People often record at 192 then downsample to 44.1. You're losing data. Whether it is audible is up for debate.
.

Oh I know... I just recall hearing it more from the oldtimers (and wanna be oldtimers like Pearl Jam) 10-15 years ago more than the current musicians.

[john70t]

The RIAA lawsuits against the 13y.o. Napster kids is that they purchased a single license to the listening rights for the digital media on that CD, which cannot be shared. There was no money exchanged, nor physical CD's. The issue of contention was virtual media.

Using that same logic, when you purchase an iPod track, you should have the ability to tranfer those listening rights to any mechanical device, and for however long a period, correct?
You've purchased the media, not rented it, correct?.

Personally, I want replacement Metallica CDs sent to me, because their media delivery system(vinyl) only lasts a certain number of years/play. Unfortunately, the lossy digital CD compression would be a downgrade from analog.

[berettafan]

Metallica....what a shame those guys morphed into a bunch of nancies!

I heard their next CD is going to be packaged by Vera Bradley!

[VaSteve]

Here’s my latest issue with the music world. I play guitar… Well used to really. I’m not very good, but I used to go out on the web and find stuff that people “tabbed in”. I’d find files with songs that would have the chord arrangements and the lyrics that generally someone had typed in by listening to the record. Well, apparently this is some sort of a threat to the publishers of this music and they have threatened to shut down most of the sites, which are run on a shoestring anyway.

Unless it was scanned in from a magazine and posted or straight out of the chordbook for sale, what was the harm? I can’t count how many CDs I bought because I liked to play along with my guitar. It’s almost like Porsche coming down on use for writing up a procedure on how to do a valve adjustment. Or NFL interfering with a blog talking about the Superbowl.

[Rob Channell]

Originally posted by Moneyguy1
I still like vinyl.

Vinyl's OK, but it's really hard to beat wax cylinders.

[Zeke]

Originally posted by the


It's really been an enlightening experience. Being "forced" to buy an album, front to back, has some real benefits. I've found that had I had the choice 5 or 10 years ago to just buy the particular songs I wanted, not the entire album, I would have missed out on a ton of songs that I ended up really really liking. Because they are songs I didn't particularly like on a first hear. And also because they "fit" into the theme and tone of the album.

I'd probably have missed out on 80% of the songs I like if I didn't have to buy the whole album/CD, going back 20 years. Some I recently listened to front to back and rediscovered .....

Originally posted by Overpaid Slacker



The lament for a long time was paying $15 for one good, catchy tune, a couple of listenable tunes and a bunch of crap. Perhaps the a la carte music menu offered today will force bands/producers to make an album full of good music, not two songs to which 45 minutes of crap is attached.

I think it goes both ways. I certainly have benefitted from having heard some songs not destined to be played on the radio or any other medium's playlist. But, I have way too many albums of 1 or 2 really good listenable songs.

[K.B.]

Originally posted by VaSteve
Here’s my latest issue with the music world. I play guitar… Well used to really. I’m not very good, but I used to go out on the web and find stuff that people “tabbed in”.

OLGA Remember the On Line Guitar Archives! Was one of the greatest things on the web back when Al Gore invented it.

To bad the music industry hired big guns to kill it. I would think artists would want their stuff to live on forever.

[VaSteve]

Originally posted by K.B.
OLGA Remember the On Line Guitar Archives! Was one of the greatest things on the web back when Al Gore invented it.

To bad the music industry hired big guns to kill it. I would think artists would want their stuff to live on forever.

It orginally started at UNLV until people threatened to sue to the school. Then Cal Woods took it over and started OLGA. Then a number of other folks created free use sites, but got a lot of business from pop up ads and other advertising. That was recently shut off as well. Most of them anyhow.

It had a lot of songs *I* had tabbed out on there. I liked giving to the "free" internet, but I wasn't happy about my stuff out on the sites people were making money from. Guess I'm some sort of hypocrite.

Anyhow, it's a shame. Without the internet, I would have likely never learned to play guitar.

[Cornpanzer]

A bit off topic.......but......
I would suggest that everyone check out www.lala.com

I was very skeptical at first, but this is a great cd trading site. I have traded off approx 30 old CDs that I never listen to for different stuff that I probably would have never found or purchased.

Simply described, it is a music trading system based on a karma point system. For every CD that you give away, you get one of your choices for free. I found it simple to use....and it helped me ghget rid of some real dogs out of my music collection.

If you do sign on, list me (Cornpanzer) as a referral

Also, you will see a link to www.woxy.com which is the greatest independant modern rock station of all time. Try it out!