And that, my friend is the problem. Digital media has killed the traditional way of obtaining music physically. I blame the evolution of technology and the internet for the decline in physical media sales. Everything in life has become so limp, sterile, and devoid of any value. It's sad that my generation doesn't appreciate what made music so meaningful in the first place.

I hope independent record stores continue to strive and even see new ones coming out in the future.

Things are always changing... I love physical media and hope it doesn't go away, but now we just have other options. Personally I think there'll always be some market for it - hell, people still like buying vinyls and tapes.

I think talking about how "everything is sterile" and "my generation doesn't appreciate (x)" is a pretty sweeping, baseless generalization personally.

I walked past a demonstration on my way home from work today. I have to say, I'm not a fan of That Metal Show but this whole thing is getting out of hand.

Yes, I'm sure there will be a market for it, but I just don't want it to become an underground thing. Music is too big for that.

I'm younger than you, and I know many people that think I'm weird for buying my music. I'm not saying that all young people don't appreciate physical media, but there really aren't that many of them. As far as I know, metalheads are very big on purchasing music, but other than that, I haven't met any non-metalheads that are dedicated to buying physical albums.

I don't think anything has really been "killed," things have declined, sure, but I am reminded of an article I read about digital photos and how, with changing storage formats in the future, family photos being taken right now may well not last like the photos of our ancestors that some of us may still have from the late 1800s/early 1900s, etc. Memory cards being lost, online storage places and websites going offline, possible changes in the usual file formats, and so on.

I don't make any elitist arguments for buying vinyl, I just like (1) physical media, and (2) larger artwork, and (3) (also for CDs) liner notes, etc.

I have bought albums digitally in the past, mainly if that's the only way they were released/couldn't find them any other way, but I do feel kind of ripped off not having the artwork and a booklet to go with it, and I often forget that I even have a copy of things I only have digitally. It's easy for them to get lost and forgetten in all the folders and files.

I may have exaggerated the "digital media killed physical media", but yes, it has declinded.

I'm also in agreement with you about the family pictures thing. I still have quite a few photo albums of when I was a young kid and other family photos, and they're just a very nice thing to have. You don't feel the same when all your pictures are stored on a device with the potential of them getting erased. Looking at pictures through a screen just isn't as exciting as snapping pictures at the moment and not knowing how they'll turn out, then printing the roll film to get physical pictures that you can bitch about later.

Honestly I've been buying probably 80% of my music digitally through bandcamp. It's just super-convenient to say "hmm, that looks good", press order on my phone and then have it in my phone's library 5 minutes later. Prices are super-reasonable and bandcamp's better with artist cuts than most digital outlets, plus they don't have any restriction on how you can play it. Now I agree that books and photos still "feel" better to me in physical format, but I'm really leaning toward legal digital music these days.

I'm still very much against paying for digital music. I like having the objects and spinning them in my stereo. It adds a material component to something that is immaterial!

On that note, I do appreciate it when Amazon has the "auto rip" feature for some albums so you can download and listen immediately, while you wait for the CD to come in the mail, but that's not available on everything, and not everything is available via Amazon anyway.

I guess I feel like I haven't bought/do not own an album if I only have the mp3s, legally-obtained or not.


Well at least now we don't have to pay to print out multiple photos of our thumbs covering the lenses, we can just delete those.

I do periodically have digital photos printed, though.

Barnes & who? Seriously, I've never seen one of these. Glad to see Canada's bookstore monopoly is still Canadian. You go, Chapters!

Edit: On the other hand, Chapters came up with a great idea to fuse book-shopping with coffee-drinking, allowing customers to sit in a nice chair and read after purchasing... but the coffee chain they partnered with to set up shop in their stores is Starbucks - not Tim Horton's, the People's Coffee.

I know this was a preamble to discussion on the fate of music and physical media and such, but you've reminded me of this article, which is a really interesting study and something I like to point people to when these discussions come up generally. It's old but still pretty relevant I think.

http://partners.nytimes.com/library/mag ... -hitt.html

Really makes you think about what the idea of "long term storage" really means.

See I totally get that too; I'd even agree with SLK when he said "a collection of MP3s isn't a collection of anything." Somehow the convenience of digital superseded my appreciation of tangible media though - possibly since I've been listening to a lot of IDM/ambient music where digital releases is the new standard (the new Autechre releases have been entirely digital, and only a few people in the scene cried foul.)

I don't think it's a generational thing, music consumption has changed across generations as availability has changed. There were/are a lot of lousy ways of hearing music that aren't exactly conducive to a meaningful experience with it. Popular music on the radio, disposable compilations in physical formats - that's all trash. Same thing with single-oriented albums. I recall an era when physical singles were nearly extinct, and $20 CDs were the norm. Over two million people in the US bought Eiffel 65's "Europop" and maybe a tenth of them even remember the second single, never mind the rest of the album.

Before Napster and iPods, there were "Now! That's what I call music" and mixtapes and pop radio and DJs who just played the same top 40 singles. A lot of music consumption has always been relatively meaningless and disposable.

I don't have a problem with it if it's really cheap. I buy a lot of CDs but I also buy MP3s if it's under $10 and the actual album is way more expensive than I like paying - Fireleaf's and Dynazty's albums last year fell under that for me. And sometimes I just feel like doing it for the hell of it just because it's convenient, like Gnu said. I also don't play any music on stereo or anything as I'm hard of hearing and it's much better to play on headphones than on a speaker system for me.

I never agreed with SLK's 'a collection of digital files isn't a collection' stuff - mostly because who cares really? Do your own thing, etc. Doesn't bother me to have mp3s and CDs side by side.

I have grown out of buying stuff used though... unless it's at a real thriving business like my record store in town, I tend to avoid it now. If it's just some dude selling his old collection for a few bucks on the side I'm not as interested... maybe that's a bit cold of me, I dunno. At least with mp3s I would be contributing to the artist still, from bandcamp, Amazon, etc.

I've gotten a lot of stuff over the years from peoples' collections, both personally and when I know they've been dropped off at used stores. I think it's simultaneously sad and great when someone does this. haha

My 67-year-old dad is now almost completely digital with his music purchasing/listening. This is a guy who has a huge LP collection that I grew up with and when he got a CD player in 91 or 92 started amassing hundreds and hundreds of the things. Now, he doesn't even listen to them. Everything over iTunes, basically. He also loves hunting up obscure jazz and tango concerts on youtube.

I prefer physical media too, but digital-only is just the reality for some genres - your choice is giving the artist nothing, or paying for digital music, and if it's something I like I'll always do the latter. Most people are cool and charge very reasonable prices. Honestly we're spoiled in metal, where having a physical release is still pretty much the norm.

Yeah, what Zodijackyl said, also: people don't buy physical singles anymore, and you don't the people listening to regular radio on a radio with a cassette deck and getting music that way (comparable in some ways to downloading mp3s). Nobody buys compilation CDs. Even the radio itself has changed with satellite radio; my grandpa's car was permanently tuned to the "Sirius Sinatra" station and he literally listened to nothing other than Frank Sinatra on the radio.


That's the nice thing about digital downloads and also Youtube, though; you can find things you can't just go out and buy because they're too rare or obscure. Even in the early '00s I used to trade live bootleg recordings through the mail, now you can find torrents and YT videos with the same material.


I buy lots of stuff used if it's some dude selling his old collection, esp. if it's something I'm looking for. But then, I tend to only collect things on vinyl that were originally released on vinyl, not ones where they just transferred the digital recording to a vinyl format to financially take advantage of fans.


Same. Last digital thing I bought was the new nine inch nails, which I've barely listened to, but it apparently has a "physical component" if you bought it from the official site (no idea what), but if that's all there is (digital), I'll buy it.

I'm sharing this because I can't bear this pain on my own. I must share it with the unsuspecting masses. Please, forgive me.



EDIT: It's mostly the intro though. The rest is still shit, but it's at least bearable shit. Kinda. If you're not really paying attention.

My 2 cents - If the release is truly digital only, as in, there didn't make any physical copies at all, then I will pay for it. I just want to give the band my money if they release good stuff. If a physical copy is available though, I will buy that instead. Sometimes on Bandcamp there are a very limited number of physical copies available in addition to the download, sometimes as few as 50. I'll get one of those if I can.

Wow, that was fucking horrible. Not as bad as some stuff listed on the site *cough* Liturgy *cough* though.

I know I'm in the minority, but honestly I'd rather pay for a digital copy than a physical copy in most cases. This is, of course, assuming that the digital copy is a bit cheaper than the physical copy, as is usually the case, but it's just so much more convenient to have music already on my computer than to have to rip it, then have it take up space and never use the physical copy again. I'll buy it if it's literally the only way to get something, but honestly I've just never cared about having a physical medium for music, at all. I'm sort of on the border between the mostly physical/mostly digital medium generations, so I don't really know how much that has to do with it, but having a physical copy just does almost nothing more me, with the one exception of having a copy signed by one or more band members. This seems to me to just be part of my personality, as visual aesthetics are mostly negligible to me in most situations. But really, if I'm going to buy music these days, I just buy it digitally if possible - less hassle, exact same product in every way that's relevant to me. Like, for you guys that are really interested in the physical medium - are you actually using a CD player a significant amount of the time you hear music, is it more of a collecting sort of mentality, or is there just some psychological benefit you get from buying a CD even when you listen to it on a computer or mobile device the vast majority of the time? Just curious, since I literally feel no difference listening to a CD I bought on a CD player vs. listening to something I just pirated on my computer.

Yes, somewhat yes, and yes.

Most of my listening occurs on a CD player at home, or the CD player in my car. I never listen to anything pirated because I don't feel like I "own" the album. I will listen to stuff on YouTube to get a feel for an album, of course, but once I purchase a CD, I don't listen to it until I get it. If a release has no CD physical distribution, I will never buy it, and probably will never listen to it. I'm pretty particular this way.

Despite this, I know that I will have to move to digital listening at some point. I just can't bring myself to do that yet.

I'm not sure what happened with Borders in America but in Australia they opted to become website only. Now it looks like they were bought out or merged with Angus and Robertson.

http://www.peta.org.uk/blog/peta-warhammer-fur-free/

lol

Same, pretty much. I tend to listen to whole albums anyway (rather than playlists or one song from this band, then another song from another band), so I don't see it as any great hassle to put in a CD and then, later, change it to another CD.

I also listen to vinyl a lot and don't have any real issues with having to go turn the record over halfway through. Of course, it helps that I work from home and am able to access my records/record player during the day while working.

If I am out walking the dogs, I will use an mp3 player. I can appreciate the practicality of having many Gigs of music in a very tiny, portable device; I just don't feel the need to use it that way all the time. I pretty much never listen to music on the computer, though. People send my links to YouTube videos and I'm like "shit, I don't have speakers hooked up to the computer. The computer is for work!" And then people think I'm weird because apparently everyone else just sits around watching YouTube all day rather than fucking around with shelves and boxes full of vinyl. XD

Well it's an American company so I'm guessing the ones in Oz were franchise stores or else already owned by an Aussie company just leasing out the license or whatever.

I guess Barnes & Noble has done some other wise things in the face of the electronification (and overall decline) of reading. They, too, usually contain a Starbucks like the Canadian chain that was previously mentioned. They also bought SparkNotes, which has to be a pretty solid revenue stream from students, and their line of "Barnes and Noble Classics" where they just print cheapo editions of literary classics that are no longer under any sort of copyright is probably a huge source of income for them as well. I know they've also partnered with tons of universities to serve as official campus bookstores, which was a smart move (as much as I hate the textbook industry). I would prefer a dusty old bookshop over a shiny chain megastore any day, but I would still be very sad to see the last big name in book retail in the US go under. Seems like a real possibility even with the efforts to the contrary, as all of their financial figures were down in 2016.

Speaking of dusty old bookshops, I had a simultaneously wonderful/sad discovery over Christmas. In my previous town in Korea, which I went to for a Christmas party, I found a used bookstore selling almost exclusively used English books. They had a fucking massive variety and giant inventory, including a huge quantity of old hardcover stuff. It was essentially totally disorganized. The woman working there said the company just bought entire shipping containers of books from bookshops in England that had gone out of business and auctioned off their entire inventories at probably ridiculously low prices.

Now, if only there were such a shop in my new city...

Bolt Thrower won't be happy.

I agree in that I listen to full albums and find it convenient to simply put a CD into a CD player. I actually prefer this to listening to music on my computer. My longtime stereo recently died, though, so I've found myself with a small set of speakers plugged into my computer. Couple that with getting a new computer and being too lazy to transfer/organize my music archive, I've just been playing stuff from YouTube a lot. That's made me realize...

There's a wonderful, relaxing thing to picking a CD and playing it, a physical object isolated from the constant stream of distractions that is a computer/smartphone. Those aren't bad while browsing forums or avoiding work, but it's also a nice mental separation to turn a computer off and walk away and have an album to listen to. That, and...

YouTube is the worst possible way to listen to albums. There's a big list of distractions and things to listen to instead. As soon as an album finishes, there's a big list of other nonsense. While there's an incredible amount of stuff on there, full albums aren't always available, and playlists can be spotty at times. I also really hate nonsense bonus tracks and extra crap at the end of albums, particularly with immersive albums. Worst of all, YouTube's next-up autoplays have some horrible habits. I always use an incognito window in Chrome, lest every listen be tracked an interspersed with targeted ads and hockey highlights, but some of the worst autoplays have been:

-A video of some conservative commentators insulting a clip of Rachel Maddow on election day
-Hammerfall covering "My Sharona"
-Some horribly loud, brickwalled modern metal after a quiet album
-Wolfnacht's "Die Juden sind unser Unglück" (with Spanish subtitles)

Yeah, fuck YouTube. I love BandCamp, but the physical satisfaction of a physical album is worth a couple bucks, as long a I've got shelf space and don't plan on moving regularly.

Just out of curiosity, do you have a house/apartment of your own? Or share with others? Might seem likeca long bow to draw, but since moving past the "keeping all my worldly goods in one room" stage things taking up space is not really a concern. Similarly, not making a computer do double-duty as a stereo makes a big difference. I went from cheap cd players or usingba computer tobeither play cds or mo3s to having a dedicated high-end component cd player and its like night and day.

So another aspect to consider is "are you into building hi-fi" systems as a hobby? If you were, I would guess that its pretty unlikely you would stick to digital. And conversely, I would make a generalised guess that most digital only folks are listening on portable devices or computer speakers.

jeez and i thought after "Got Your Six" theese guys would not get any worst.Guess i was worng

^ Oooh love them blips and bloops in my music especially accompanied by absent buttocks twerking. So futuristic. And I certainly can't get enough of that cut & paste techno drum roll that's in every pop/dance song.

Let's bastardize a legitimately decent song too. I bet there's FFDP fans on youtube who are actively defending it, like "you don't understand, brah, they have evolved!".

Hopefully Trump will choose 5FDP (one of the only, ugh, "popular" bands to publically endorse him) for the in-house band. The White in-House band, as it were.

OK, the past five days in a nutshell:

On Thursday, right in the middle of my lunch, the stroganoff in front of me suddenly lost its taste, and the rest of the food turned bland. Also, I felt quite a bit of soreness in my thighs. I walked back to the office, all 200 meters of it, and when I was there, I already knew I was not going to finish the day, and that I had to leave immediately if I wished to drive my car back home.

As I got home, I was sore all over, with a fever coming, and immediately went to bed. I slept most of the next 26 hours with painkillers. At this point, it was obvious that it's likely swine flu, just muscle pain and fever in the beginning. I took all the precautions I could, and slept as much as possible. On Saturday evening, I felt a bit better, and remember thinking that I got off the hook rather lightly.

Not quite so. Sunday was worse, and during the whole thing, I haven't been able to eat pretty much anything. I get huge gag reflexes, and everything just seems yucky.

On Monday evening, The New Lady told me to get my ass to see a doctor, and wouldn't you know: I have pneumonia. The doc said that it's been a silent companion of the swine flu lately, and gave me some antibiotics with a warning: "these are pretty powerful, so eat before you take them, so you don't get bloody diarrhea". I got a week of sick leave, I can't have my kids or anyone else over because it's contagious, and I can eat, sleep, or keep my mind focused on anything for more than five minutes. Also, my larynx is infected, too, and I have very little of my voice left. This sucks.

It's also obvious that this is one of those moments where, weren't we living with modern medicine and antibiotics, I'd have at least something like 20% chance of finishing my existence within two weeks.

Guess who is getting his free influenza shots in the future, side effects or no.

Science explains far-right populism:




http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38800987

Well, I'm still living with my parents for the time being, so yeah, space is more of a concern in that aspect, although I'm really just naturally a pretty non-materialistic person. I mean, I'm not saying I'm frugal, I'll spend tons of money on video games, television, digital music, etc., but having a physical object for the sake of having/seeing/looking at it just isn't something that makes sense to me on any level. I may be trivializing this sentiment I admit since I've never felt it personally but eh, I feel like even if I had a house/apartment of my own I wouldn't buy significantly more CDs. But who knows, never done it (shared an apartment once, but still not my own), so I can't say for certain. That could be a significant factor.

As for hi-fi, nah, not into that shit. Not that I think sound quality varies that widely between great speakers and quality headphones, or, say, vinyl vs. mp3 - I've certainly never heard a difference, and the only people I've talked to who claim to hear a difference are audio geeks who I assume are only hearing a difference because they expect a difference, but if others are into that shit, more power to them. Just in a particular situation where I don't think my listening experience would be affected by listening in a different way, other than buying something like a surround sound speaker system, which I may do once I have my own apartment.

Another King Crimson vocalist just died, John Wetton. I got Red last year, and quickly it became my favourite King Crimson album. His singing on Starless, man... RIP.

Not as severe, but I've also had the sudden onslaught of sickness.

It started off entirely isolated to my lower respiratory tract (dystopia4 joked how I sounded four octaves deeper than usual when I saw him). I thought it was just fatigue from having to move to a new apartment and how hectic and stressful that was, but since then it has moved upwards and I am certain it's a cold. This is the second time in the last month I've been sick, even though before then I was sick free for over a year. I hope it doesn't get worse and only gets better from here on out. For both of us.

JESUS! I'm glad your woman was the voice of reason. Pneumonia is no joke man. Rest up!

Please get vaccinated yearly. People think influenza is funny and all, and I was guilty of that when I was younger. The more I learned about it in school, the more I understood how serious it is. It's constantly evolving, which is why you have to get yearly vaccinations. Get well soon, man.

Hope you feel better, Napero.

I started getting both the yearly flu and the pneumonia vaccine (not yearly, I forget how long it lasts) after being hospitalized for a week a few years ago.


Agreed, and that's part of it. And especially if I get a new album I like to at least sit and look through the CD booklet or at the cover art, too; otherwise I feel like I'm not really digesting the album properly. I consider all related materials to be part of the album, which is why I feel ripped off when I just have mp3 downloads.


Agreed. On a related note, though, I have a Facebook photo album called "things I collect," where I sometimes will lay out all the albums I have by a particular band side by side and take a picture. People say things like, "where do you keep all this stuff?"

Seriously? My vinyl collection is mostly on a bookshelf and another box of 45s, and while I have a lot of CDs, they are in stacking CD cases against the walls, taking up hardly any space, so it always surprises me when people talk about taking up too much space and/or call me a "hoarder(!)". If anything, it's my books (or maybe musical instruments) that threaten to take over the house, not my music collection. I do have a lot of bookcases.

You know what took up space? Fucking VHS tapes. I had hundreds of horror movies on VHS back in the day, and was always moving from dorm rooms to apartments to my parents' house in the summer, etc. What a pain in the ass. I'm not sorry I got rid of those, though I still have a working VCR. I cut off all the covers and covered an entire wall with the VHS covers, though, like a giant poster.