Reply to post: Re: It's understandable

Re: It's understandable

>>"There was always a simple pleasure in flicking through someone's record collection that could never be replicated with CDs."

>I used to have CD racks that allowed me to flip through CDs just like with proper albums. Now they're all in a cardboard box in the loft somewhere near the server that contains all the rips of them.I used to have CD racks that allowed me to flip through CDs just like with proper albums. Now they're all in a cardboard box in the loft somewhere near the server that contains all the rips of them.

With apologies to G Larson, the arguments are like sheep in the night.

One is, "its more fun to play vinyl," while the other is purely about a measure of sound quality. Given that music is for entertainment, some measure of sound quality may or may not be the [only|main] metric used to denote "good."

Some people enjoy interacting with the music collection. The shorter format vinyl offers more chances for interaction with the collection (you have to change the record more frequently), savouring the expectation and the memories of the tunes. CDs also offer some physical interaction, though compilations and the longer format reduce this. The upside may be that CD's can be ripped and re-created at home to work around physical damage to the media, though the generic blank CD is a soul-less thing. Almost as bad as a playlist.

Playlists on the other hand might be good for doing chores with headphones on or for when you're blasting zombies. There, the infinite length doesn't become a social faux pas.

Anyway, those are just my opinions and my point is not to convince you of the relative merits of various formats as much as to note that what we all want from a music collection may not be the same. The bit that we derive pleasure from may not even be the listening to the music - it might be the associated social interaction or the memories of events we associate with the music. That's something I fear the headphone generation will miss out on, Apple's blatant lies about their personal devices being social, notwithstanding. IT is all about standardisation and it is highly efficient at shepherding demand into the few channels which are profitable to a few companies.

<rant>

As an observation, we have at least two high-quality stereo systems in the house, both hooked up to CD players and gigabytes of server music, but apart from myself, everyone else either wears headphones or listens on horrid built-in iphone speakers. They can't even be bothered to download the stuff, they just stream from youtube. They don't even bother make their own playlists. I'm not too surprised though, the "music" is entirely disposable. I don't understand why anyone would want to listen to men who sound like a cat going through a mangler, and both male and females resolutely determined to take the sawn-off shotgun approach to hitting the target notes. I'd like the person to twisting the corkscrew through the singer's foot to take a break and use it on my eardrums instead, at least the pain will stop for me!

Icon: Maybe AI has taken over the music industry...