Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[PECOAE]

If someone is not invested in the music they listen to, it seems to me that it's a problem with the person, not the medium.

Second'd.

And why can't music become background music sometimes - it seems to me that would make it more important, bringing together one's life in some way, maybe?

[Jeneration X]

i'm not saying it can't, i love to make a quick playlist, wack the volume up and get on with the cleaning, washing etc etc. what i am saying is that i dont actually listen to it, its just there to kill the silence and make the housework that bit easier. when i put on a record i'm very rarely doing anything other than sitting down and listening to it. plus if an artist is ever going to bonus tracks on an album, they''l put it on the vinyl. 

[PECOAE]

except for big black

and anything on itunes ever.

[LucyStag]

F*ck Yes! Vinyl Matters

One of the first things i did when i stopped living in London a few months ago was buy a record player again. I had given up records largely because of practicability: storage and retrievability, real problems when living in cramped conditions, ceased to be an issue when music was consumed as digital objects accessed via a searchable database.

But this user-friendliness was not without its drawbacks. Everyone knows that the compression of sound upon the mp3 format depends makes for a thinner sound. Yet listening to music via an iPod involves compression in another sense. With an iPod, it is the space in which  one experiences music, as well as the space 'in' the sound itself, that is radically attenuated. The term 'i' and 'pod' here are all to accurate: with the iPod, music functions as a means of keeping the world at bay. It is part of an urban defence kit, a means of transforming all territory into 'my' space. Instead of circulating in public space in which social interaction is possible, iPod users move in a solipsistic bubble that rebuffs contacy. The mp3 player cannot be held solely responsible for this trend of course - it began with Walkman - but the iPod has certainly exacerbated it.

Charlie Bertsch has argued that the timing of the introduction of the ipod , in the immediate wake of 2001, was crucial. Its appeal, he argues, was in large part that it transformed, "music into shelter". Economic, as well as political, changes means this has a special attraction in the 00's: with increasing numbers of people commuting, the iPod allowed time spent travelling to and from work to become leisure time.

Yet the easy availability of music anywhere, anytime has inevitably meant that music has become less valued. Researches from Leicester, Surrey and York universities announced last year that listening to music typically involves less emotional commitment than it used to. "In the 19th century" they announced, "music was seen as a highly valued treasure with fundamental and near-mystical powers of human communication. It was experienced within clearly defined contexts, and its value was intrinsically bound up with those contexts"

Returning to vinyl is a way of restoring this sense of context and occasion to music. the sheer fact of having to turn a record over means that it cannot be relegated to background listening in the way that a potentially endless iTunes stream can. The LP becomes a discrete experience again, with a sense of drama dictated by the two sides of the record. Records demand both space and time. Vinyl decompresses the listening experience, making the music a tactile presence in a room rather than just a background noise in your head.

Words: K-punk

I get this, and I have heard this from -- dare I say it -- older people. I rememeber a Joe Strummer interview where he mentions that sitting down to listen to a record was a big deal, an event, entertainment. Now it's just part of multi-tasking.

And that's true. I'm listening to a song as I type this. I multi task and have music as my backround much too often.

I get that appeal of vinyl, and I have vinyl myself where that sort concentration happens.

But, never fear, music will not stop having "near-mysical powers of human communiction." That's why I am dumbfounded by my favorite artists, and I dare not try my hand at music. I can master words, but I cannot master the impossible, life-saving magaic that comes with music. It intimidates the hell out of me because it's THAT important.

So, iTunes won't ruin it, don't worry.

I still dig the vinyl, too. I like the history of it, the scratch of it, the crackle, the noises. But I like CDs too, and I like to be able to fit 400 songs into my jeans pocket.

It's all good, kids.   

[muffy]

To add to the debate...(and to re-interpret parts of the fact post)...

I get dragged into discussions about the merits of vinyl versus cd versus ipod on a weekly basis - I work as a dj, and the snobbery that surrounds format is obscene. My preference is with CDs, the main reason being practicality.

Firstly - it's more cost effective. Though buying 7" is cheaper in the short term, records, especially when being transported, do get damaged, and having to buy 2 copies of some single seems pointless - I resent having to spend money on back-ups of songs when the money could be spent on even more music. With CDs, you buy it/download it, burn it onto your computer and ta dah! You have a back-up for when one messes up.

Secondly - transport and space, as the fact post stated. Huge record bags look cool as, but they're virtually impossible to carry anywhere. I injure myself on a regular basis just trying to carry a CD wallet around. Plus, if my music collection was on vinyl, I wouldn't have room to sleep or live in my room. Plus, it would be harder to find what I needed at any given point - I'm scatty at best and like to have my music sub-divided into genres and alphebetised, and like to be able to create playlists and compilation CDs in a second. YES I AM A NERD. But I still get derided by other DJs for using shiny plastic discs, despite the fact that my set never suffers from it.

Throw into this the fact that the majority of places I work at no longer have both record decks working, but have super flash CD mixers, this is a sign that even clubs, the main bastion of Vinyl Snobbery, are giving up on the cherished reverence of vinyl in favour of having cables for iPods and decent CD equipment.

That said, my basis for preference is one based on listening to and playing music in a commercial setting. I haven't disowned the notion of vinyl at all, and still get seduced by the ones with pretty colours and shapes (Fiery Furnaces still win with the green glittery 7"). But,  I have to really know and love an album to want to own it on record - much like London Calling. It'll take me a year or so to know that an album is important enough for me to want to actually cherish, and enjoy the whole process of setting it in the player, admiring the artwork etc and just listen to it. I'm not saying that I'd get any less pleasure from listening to it on CD, but having the vinyl seems to be my personal indicator that this album is something to treasure, rather than just be told that I've listened to the songs from it 554 times on an iTunes playlist...