Is the iPod ruining music?
 

When I first got my iPod a few years ago, I thought it was the greatest thing ever. The ability to hear whatever song you want to hear, whenever you want to hear it.

But recently, I haven't been taking it in my car with me, instead, I'm just listening to CDs.

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 - Jackson Browne - Running on Empty, 10,000 Maniacs - Our Time in Eden, Dream Academy's self titled album (there's an oldie from the 80s), and even more recent things like Social Distortion's recent CD from a couple of years ago.

Do people still buy whole CD's anymore, or is the majority bought song by song now? Isn't this going to hurt music? Great songs that don't have instant appeal in the first 10 seconds are going to be tough to sell or package.

I buy CDs. No Ipod. Love to hear certain artists and have collected everything they have recorded, giving me (IMHO) more insight into their range of talent.

I won't touch iPods.

I don't like the compression. (I will hear minor things missing when I listen to songs I know.) To me, the MP3 is a step backward in audio quality, I'm waiting for the next step forward.

I still buy whole albums on CD because my favorite song usually ends up being one not played on the radio. Jet and Franz Ferdinand come to mind. I've had some dissapointments. I bought an album from the Darkness and quickly realized they were a one-hit wonder.

hate to tell you but cds are compressed as well. AAC sounds much better than mp3, so that gets you back to almost indistinguishable with cds.

You can still buy a whole album for your ipod. And listen to it front to back. What is the big problem here? The ipod gives you *choice* in how you listen.

Everything is cyclical. In a few years, someone will come out with something higher quality than CDs and package them into albums, and the masses will flock to the higher quality and being able to hear more than one song from an artist...

What do you mean by this? In 'my world' of transferring dats>cds, they aren't, nor are any commercial cds that I'm aware of.

Chris -
Further to nostatic's point, it may be the means/machinery by which you're listening to AAC that makes the difference.

As far as compression/cleanliness. If it's material that there's a need for cleanliness, I'll buy the CD. I don't think I need the subtle, nuanced clarity of higher definition audio for the car, especially "Shinedown" or "Disturbed".

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.

Life in a Northern Town. Great song; good album. The album that convinced me to buy albums rather than singles was Love & Rockets' "Earth Sun Moon".

MP

you're right things are cyclical, but I don't see your scenario happening. being able to buy single songs harkens back to "singles" of the 50's and 60's. That concept has been around since recorded music started being commerciallized (78s could only contain limited amounts of music).

Higher definition audio formats have been around for quite some time. We do 10.2 surround sound mixes for some of our work. But in the real world it is about lowest common denomonator and consumer choice. You will likely see better compression algorithms, but until multidimensional headphones get better, plain old stereo will continue to rule, and CD is "good enough" for 99.9% of the market. Hell, look at sat radio. I listen to it for the choice even though the fidelity is worse than FM.

I know, but in this instance, choice may not be a good thing, that's my point. I know it isn't for me! I hear a new song, sounds good, so I look it up on iTunes, listen to the 30 second blurbs of the other 9 songs on the album, think "ahh, not worth $10, when I can buy the one song for $1."

My guess is that a lot of people exercise their choice to only buy the one hit song, because the others on the album are more subtle or take some time to warm up to. When albums or CDs were the only choice, it seemed like an artist could take more risks with those songs, and those risks seem to produce some of the best, most enduring songs (to me at least).

Answer: Yes.

I listen most of my music on the go, so the iPod is perfect. It actually lets me listen to the whole album, because it has the capacity to store it. If i was lugging around a discman, then i would burn a mix cd with only the popular stuff.

choice, choice, choice. That will win over quality.

As for compression, there are two very different types of compression that exist when talking about music. We're talking about data compression, but there also is signal compression.

Signal compression is a technique used (to great effect I might add) to squeeze the maximum amount of sound on a medium without clipping (distortion). The specifics have changed somewhat between analog and digital, but in broad strokes you have electronics that will see a peak and squash it down. This allows you to make things sound louder and get an even mix. In extreme use you get breathing and pumping effects. EVERY commercial recording you hear has audio compression. It is ubiquitous. There are other tricks you can play with it (like ducking...where a voice is talking over music and the music automatically drops in level when the voice comes in). In addition, analog compression (with tasty tube circuits) impart a "warmth" to the signal, along with a bit of distortion. This distortion, made up of even harmonics, actually is somewhat pleasing to the human ear, and is also quite common in commercial recordings.

Digital is different, and any distortion is bad...ugly odd harmonics that sound terrible. In analog recording, it is common to run levels a bit hot (into the red) to get some natural compression and warmth. In digital, you absolutely do not want to go into the red, insteal tending to run about -10db. You get a great clean signal, but miss the warmth. Enter digital trickery to simulate the analog distortion/compression.

ok, thats for the music. Now when you take that and prepare it for someone to listen to it, you end up compressing the file because hirez audio files can be very large (too big for cd). In that case you have a number of different comporession algorithms you can use, but you are essentially throwing away data to approximate what the original signal looked like. The more data you throw away, the poorer the sound. There are plenty of sophisticated tricks that you can play but lossy compression is lossy compression. AAC is Apples compressions scheme, and it sound better than MP3. There are other compression algorithms out there, and they tend to get better as we get more computing horsepower.

I buy CDs, but use an iPod when I run (and that's the only time). I *have* bought single songs off of iTunes, but probably only 10 or so. I like to read the liner notes in CDs, etc., so I almost always buy the CD.

For me personally, iTunes is my window into a world of music that I am just not exposed to here in Alabama. I love to get lost in there digging around for obscure stuff (like some Dandy Warhols songs I downloaded the other day...).

No, it's not ruining music. I've got an ipod and while I still like to take it to the gym and on trips, I don't much listen to it in the car anymore. I still buy CDs like I always have, and listen to them in the car.

As far as downloading music via itunes to the ipod, my biggest beef is that many of the songs/albums I like/want, aren't available on the US itunes store, but are on the UK itunes store. Since I live in the US, I can't purchase songs/vids/albums from the UK store. (I like a lot of obscure British music--obscure in the US anyway) So I'm still forced to go to Amazon.co.uk or ebay to get my CDs, as none of the local CD stores have them...

I was with you up until the last part...which I disagree with. Although a cd is certainly limited to 44.1khz (signal compression), as far as I know, there are no data compression techniques performed on cds that conform to 'red book' standards. In other words, the amount of storage consumed on the cds is essentially the same as the raw .wav file (i.e. no data compression). I'm not trying to argue...just curious that maybe I'm missing something.

I buy CDs, download to the ipod and play them on the car radio.

Which is exactly what I do. The new truck which I just ordered will have an mp3/iPod jack in it, as well as a CD player. I'll probably use both -- but nothing beats the ability to jam 1,000 songs into a small device that's about the size of a cassette tape.

-Z-man.

For me the music started to be ruined when Sony came out with the walkman, diskman et al. Plugging the earphones in your ears and making yourself deaf at an early age will doom the hearing of many of our generation at an early age. Sorry but when you are sitting 5 feet away from someone and you can hear the music coming from the phones plugged in their ears, think about what its like for their ear drum. I like to feel the music and that takes speakers moving air around.

That said, I do something illegal at times when testing music. I travel for a living and use a sharing program to download individual songs from the internet to my laptop from the hotel room. If the song is good and I listen to it often then I will buy it, otherwise I try it then its deleted.

Have as well downloaded entire albums but 99% of them are ones that I have purchased years ago that went missing or no good now. I paid the commission that the band/recording label etc demanded one time, and am not going to pay it a second time. Purchased at least 5 copies of albums like Dark Side of the Moon until doing this...

I don't buy CD's anymore but I will buy entire (mostly) albums digitally. The personal music players (iPod, Zen, Zune, etc...) are way more convenient than CD's. Both our vehicles have CD changers that now sit dormant in favor of the portable device.

The iPod isn't ruining music - the music cartel is ruining music.

The iPod has nothing to do with bands/labels putting out one catchy tune and 12 tracks of filler.

No. Crappy and uninspired music has ruined music.

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.

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

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!!

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".

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.

I still like vinyl.

Call me nostalgic (not nostatic)

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?

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.

i wonder that as well.

me too.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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

Re: Is the iPod ruining music?
 

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.

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.

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!