Vinyl records are growing in popularity!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[tdbajus]

Do you think it's scary because people gave up their CD collections so readily? If so, that kind of freaks me out too. Just yesterday we came across a stoop sale with someone selling all of their CDs. I bought 12 of them, good stuff too (Clinic, Freedy Johnson, Money Mark) for a buck each. I understand that people love their iPods, but I don't understand their devotion to hard drives.

Good god, no- I just moved in with my girlfriend, and my mountain of CDs got boxed up in about 20 wine boxes and moved to my studio.

I wish I could get rid of them. Nothing but landfill anyway.

You know, when I got my first and only turntable at 14 or so, I used it primarily to make cassettes, because there was no auto-reverse on an LP.

It astounds me how much I am willing to spend on equipment to MAKE music, and how little I spend to LISTEN to it. My stereo hasn't been hooked up in years.

[Judas Jetski]

I hear enough of this stuff to start thinking that there's about to be a 'sea change' in the way people approach things. It seems like in our society stuff reaches some sort of weird tipping point, and then all of a sudden the general way we (as a people) do things changes.

Evidently, music is of critical importance to our lives. It's everywhere, and if TV commercials are to be believed, it's one of our defining characteristics as human beings. There's a huge industry built around making it easy and inexpensive for people to access the music they want at a moment's notice. And yet the means available to listen to that music are strikingly inadequate. These two realities are at odds. Sooner or later, things are going to go in one direction or the other--either music will become markedly less important, or sound quality will become markedly more important. I think it's going to be the latter.

[Bill @ Irie Lab]

Collateral post -

Speaking of analogue delivery and, even more, risking all for your music.

During the Soviet era, reactionary, counter-revolutionary, revisionist arts were punished severely; think Gulag, Siberian labor camps, "re-education" at "psychiatric" hospitals, and disappearances of all kinds.

Music lovers of rock, jazz, atonal art music, etc., etc. went to great lengths and at outrageous risk to obtain their tunes.

Party members and their families simply smuggled them through in the diplomatic bag while lesser officials looked the other way.

Here's the cool part - regular folks created underground swaps and distribution networks.

In many cases this is what they did; x-ray film is coated with a waxy coating where the photographic emulsion resides, orderlies in hospitals would steal the used film and take it to 'studios' where it was cut into circles and grooved with home-made lathes, on down the line.

How many of us would have the cahones to risk it all for our music.

Remember your gifts and privileges; it could be ALOT worse!

Cheers,

Bill

[Knights Who Say Neve]

And yet the means available to listen to that music are strikingly inadequate. These two realities are at odds. Sooner or later, things are going to go in one direction or the other--either music will become markedly less important, or sound quality will become markedly more important. I think it's going to be the latter.

Unfortunately I see no technology on the horizon that will make high fidelity significantly less expensive. Sample rates will go up, compression algorhithms will improve, storage capacities will inprove, yes- but good speakers and amplifiers will continue to cost money and space, and when "good enough" is convenient, small and cheap...

...but none of this will make music less important. Fidelity and "meaning" do not equate.

[Judas Jetski]

Ehh, you've got a point there.

Still, I think these things have an ebb and flow to them. The question is just where and how the ebb and flow ... ebb and flow. I do suspect the home theater market has caused a significant drop in price point and availability of decent quality audio... but since I have no direct interest in home theater stuff, that's really just a hunch.