| |
|
View previous topic :: View next topic
|
|
| Author |
Message |
RoundTheBend
I miss the comfort in being sad
Location: Ground Control
|
- #21
- Posted: 04/06/2016 02:27
- Post subject:
|
| noWaxJim wrote: | Interesting topic, this.
Being a child of the 80s and a student in the 90s it wasn't that hard to discover new music. What you needed is a lot of time and patience, as well as the benevolence of a kindly record store clerk in the likes of Our Price. Never underestimate the role the in-store listening post played in the pre-Internet days. Five disc minimum? Yeah right. You'd just have your limit, go out for a crafty cig and come back in again. You tended to go a lot more with pretty covers or something you'd seen in Select magazine (ah the Britpop years), only to stick it on and realise how crap it was.
|
Wow... how did I forget this experience. I totally remember now (thanks to you) looking through used CDs and asking to listen to a stack... of course you'd feel like an arse listening to more than just a taste of the album, but now becomes vivid. I remember my first record store being Tom Tom Music... and they had about 3 cd players with decent headphones.
|
|
|
|
|
Back to top
|
|
|
|
dihansse
Gender: Male
Age: 60
|
- #22
- Posted: 04/06/2016 05:31
- Post subject:
|
About the crap music: it's really mixed; even when sometimes you had to wade trough crap when you were listening in record stores and from mixtapes, if you had the right friends, read the good magazines and listened to good radio stations you were able to discover good music.
Now there is so much availability that it all becomes a bit blurred and you listen to a lot of crap but also if you don't like something on a first listen you immediately dismiss it;
A recent example is Sublime which I see regularly acclaimed on this site (although many times linked with youth sentiment). I don't know the band at all so I skipped through their album quickly without even listening to all the songs and dismissed it as not my cup of tea while I can imagine I could like it after a couple of listens.
|
|
|
|
|
Back to top
|
|
CA Dreamin
Gender: Male
Location: LA
|
- #23
- Posted: 04/06/2016 20:52
- Post subject: Re: How have ways in discovering music have evolved over tim
|
| dihansse wrote: | I'm just wondering: technology is evolving and the way we "consume" music is also changing.
I'll start with my own experience (being at an age of 52 and Belgian):
I started as being just a listener of radio, at first just public radio stations and then pirate radio stations which also used to have shows where they mainly broadcasted album tracks and at a certain point also hard rock shows where I discovered bands like Van Halen. Another big influence was top pop, a Dutch television show with clips ( ex the clips of Bohemian Rhapsody and Lust For Life where Iggy was just showing off his torso on a kind of boxing rink come were legendary). For younger people I suppose that would be MTV.
Then came my cassette period where I first started taping from the radio (again Lust for Life was one of the first tracks on my tapes), then an uncle of mine was doing mix tapes for me (I remember him making the remark why I was asking to include Child in Time because I could have included 5 other songs instead of that long one).
Then I started to tape complete albums from friends with mainly things like Pink Floyd, The Cure, The Scorpions and Frank Marino. Sometimes I bought albums on cassette.
This means I never really bought LPs. My parents had a record collection (not my type of music) but the only LP I really bought myself was Help! From the Beatles.
So I 'over straight from cassettes to CD's when I started working in 1989 which both meant buying a big back catalogue of older music (from The Beatles to Talking Heads and buying new music (the Pixies and indie and Grunge movement just started).
Another big change was the coming up of the Ipod and ITunes so I first started digitising my hundreds of CDs and then started buying music from Itunes (I never ripped tracks for free because one way or another I found that didn't really help artists).
This changed the way I listened to music because I didn't listen to full albums in one session any more because I listenedto random lists of my collection (although I still make the connection with actual albums).
And the next stage is Apple Music which allowed me to discover more music, although I still put full albums in my playlist. |
Before I begin, I want to say thank you dihansse for sharing your experiences. My mom is a couple years older than you and she has dozens of mixed cassettes so I know what you mean. She even showed me how to make mixed tapes but I never went that route. And I know where you're coming from about digitized music and the 'Skip' button making it less likely for albums to be played start-to-finish. I can only imagine not having a Skip button. And thank you for supporting music all these years. At some point, most people give up.
For me, I started off discovering music through other people, my parents and close friends. CDs were the format I listened on because that's what my parents and friends had. Anyway once my tastes were established, the radio had some input in where my tastes expanded to, but I still relied mostly on older friends' recommendations. We would exchange CDs. I would have certain CDs in my collection he didn't have in his, and vice-versa, and we borrowed from each other. It was more me borrowing from him but that's another story. Anyway, for me this made discovering music a social thing as well because it tied my friends and I closer together. I did dump my CDs onto iTunes and an iPod, so yes I was only sometimes listening to complete albums, but I always made a point to listen to them start-to-finish at least twice before I dumped them on my computer.
I didn't really begin listening to albums online until about two years ago. The reason I shifted to online listening was because peers' recommendations, record stores, and the radio were becoming unreliable. For me, rock radio died, partly because most new mainstream rock artists stink, and partly because stations play a lot of the same stuff over and over again that I've heard a thousand times. My high-school CD-exchanging pal became unreliable because we both moved away from where we grew up. And finally, record stores became unreliable because I started working full-time, making it harder to go to them. I needed a new outlet for music and I found BEA, and started listening online much more. I still have respect for the good ole days when discovering music was more adventurous and spontaneous. There was definitely something rewarding about exchanging CDs with friends, prowling record stores once a week to find an a used CD I had been seeking for months and popping it in my Walkman as soon as I got home. There is nothing rewarding about discovering music online. Nothing. You don't need to hear something on the radio that captures your attention; You don't need to spare a few bucks; You don't need to make visits to a record store; You don't even have to leave your fucking room, or put on a fucking pair of pants. But it's obvious listening to music online is faster and easier. My musical intake is actually higher now than ever before, and I'm grateful for the wonderful music I've found online. I do miss my pre-online-music days, but they're not coming back. If I come across a song I really like, but don't really care for the album it's on, then I'll pirate that one song. But if I find an album online I really dig, I don't pirate it. I buy a physical copy when I get a chance.
Anyway, that's how my means of music discovery have evolved. Now to answer your questions:
| dihansse wrote: | | attention span: are we (both the older and younger generation) still able to appreciate a full album? |
Yes, I believe the human brain will always be able to comprehend and appreciate full albums, but I worry that only a small percentage of people will even bother in the long run. I certainly hope not.
| dihansse wrote: | | is the fact that music is available at a fingertip makes it less exciting to discover (new) music. At the time we really were looking forward to new albums because we had to make an effort to go and buy them. |
Uh, yes. Free albums at our fingertips isn't any fun. I've already explained why above.
| dihansse wrote: | - What is the surplus value of indepent reviews by magazines or even sites? At the time they were really important and I dicovered many interesting albus in a way I never would have discovered otherwise.
- Are the new media not just pointing you to types of music you already know because we are tempted to stick to sites which just confirm your taste. In the past I discovered lots of new music because magazines and radio stations directed me to music I didn't know |
I believe this depends on the individual listener. If somebody is hungry to expand their music taste, they will find a way.
|
|
|
|
|
Back to top
|
|
dihansse
Gender: Male
Age: 60
|
- #24
- Posted: 04/06/2016 21:03
- Post subject:
|
|
Interesting comments StreetSpirit and can certainly agree with most of them
|
|
|
|
|
Back to top
|
|
|
  |
All times are GMT
|
| Page 3 of 3 |
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
|
| |
