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Re: (TV) Not so OT: Is music less precious?



At 1:11 PM -0700 9/18/05, Claudia wrote:
And to stay on topic: http://discorder.citr.ca/regulars/03augfuck.html

Xa's often hilarious, and this is an amusing piece, though now tinged with sadness (see #3). There are surely worse things to be remembered for, I guess.

As for music being less precious, I thought Robin's comments resonated quite well with me--yeah, music's easier to come by, but at the same time, it's not any less valuable (or valued) for those who do value it. There are plenty of people who just like a good beat or some kind of image, and really don't parse the contents of the music they listen to, and those people have always been with us.

In my own case, all of my listening is either CD or .mp3, until I pick up a phono preamp. (There's none in the tube stereo, oddly--guess it was calibrated for ceramic and not magnetic cartridges.) If I'm working in a coffee shop, it's nice to be able to work to a soundtrack that I can control, and to screen out whatever craptacular commercial pap is being shoved down the pipe at the customers. It was also nice to have enough high-quality (in terms of composition and performance) music on the laptop to choose from when I was coming up with our son's first playlist. (Yes, I truly am a music geek.) As someone who was hit by a car once, though, I can't say I ever quite understood the practice of listening to a portable music player while walking around. I prefer to be aware of my surroundings. I don't quite get it when working out, either, which is probably why I never took the iPod plunge.

On the other hand, as someone with an album that's just been added to the iTunes store, I surely don't mind if people buy music online. In fact, I encourage it, at least in the case of my music. (You'll get a better-quality insert PDF if you email me, but it's true that it's not like the beautiful printing work that used to be done by Fireproof or is done by ThingMakers.)

Maybe what we have here, Keith, is the curious separation of music from its delivery medium. As fans and enthusiasts, we tend to fetishize the physical object (Edison cylinder, 78, 45, LP, CD), which isn't available to us as music is delivered more as pure information. For people who like a challenge in finding music, there's still an active culture of scavenging used vinyl in thrift stores to resurrect lost classics. It's an interesting question...though I'm an optimist, and I think there's a lot of good to come out of more-available music.

As for myself, I tend to like getting the CD unless the work isn't available any other way. At this point I'm on the cusp of old-man-itude, so y'all are welcome to discount what I'm saying, and to get off my lawn.
--

Maurice Rickard
http://mauricerickard.com/   |   http://onezeromusic.com/
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