Throwaway Download Culture

Pot Noodle Music Nation

Whilst I was thinking in bed last night my mind jumped suddenly to the phenomenon of downloading music and whether it has effected my patience and judgment on whether I actually give any music I download a fair chance of a listen anymore before lam yet again off downloading something else.

Perhaps lam chasing the progressive rock rainbow the pot of gold album that will never ever exist but it doesn't seem to deter me trying though.(I am sure we have all had the thought that this is the album)

I remember when I was growing up it was a real treat to save up for an album and I used to be a lot more choosy about what I purchased. There seemed to be something satisfying about holding an album in your hands. It was a work art musically and graphically for my £3.99 or £4.99 I had a product I could see and touch and become at one with.

Records became like your closet friends someone you could share your innermost thoughts with,more reliable and better looking than most of the girls I went out with anyway then again that wasn't difficult. I used to have a record brush to clean them with,and plastic sleeves to store them in and handle them by the edges and frown when ever anybody else touched them apart from me. So records were my social and love life all mixed into one without the headaches or the fear of being turned away by my fumbling chat up lines or clumsy advances towards the opposite sex.

I do remember with great excitement the first time I ever downloaded a track from the internet,well I admit it I was a music pirate at that point.

Thinking about it I would have made a crap pirate,i would have been the one with a dodgy plastic pirate patch from the joke shop with the ridiculous piece of elastic on and a wooden leg made out of balsa wood.

This something I have never felt comfortable with. I felt like I was the only person doing this and I would have all the government agencies at one point knocking at my door. I must have spent weeks hiding behind the sofa and dodgy curtains every time the door bell rang.

It was something of a revelation at first when all these music download stores starting popping up with legal downloads for about £6.99 or so,i was downloading like mad and I felt good about it legal music downloaded off the internet,even though at this point I still had a thought in the back of my mind?

How does this effect the bands that make all this great music ,would they be getting any of the money that I was giving to these various websites,it just didn't feel right to me and still doesn't to this day.

It really is a double edged sword because I know that without the internet I wouldn't have been able to listen to as much music as I have,and bands perhaps would not get the exposure that they have now.

But has all this actually helped any bands has it made them financially viable? It has obviously widened their audience quite dramatically but does that mean the music fans are actually buying any more of their music?

Perhaps I am just getting older but it seems people from my generation (I am 42 years old now) seem to be more responsible in the way that they manage their music collections and embrace the internet and music in general.

Personally I listen to new music tracks now on the internet and where ever possible order the cd`s direct from the band themselves. Where this is not possible I use specialist progressive rock online shops to purchase from.

I have at times even downloaded music from mindawn.com but always end up with a physical cd in my hands afterwards. This is the problem everything is now so immediate and we really cant seem to wait for anything any more. You cannot beat the excitement of waiting for a cd to arrive and trying to smuggle it upstairs without your wife or girlfriend knowing. (Perhaps prog cd`s should come in plain brown envelopes)

So mp3,flac,ogg,wav,aa,rac there are so many different types of music extensions fueled by the ever growing market of mp3 players,we must have music in a portable format so we can listen when ever we want.

I have been caught up in the technological addiction of this I bought one of the first ipods ,a lovely white colour and managed to annoy everyone on my greenline bus with the volume when I was a lot younger. The thing is I now look at these people with there various ear pieces in headphones,sabretooth or whatever it is called this week and just sigh.

Without all this technology i wouldn't have been able to make my site current with new reviews of music and updates etc so i have embraced this technology up to a point but just feel a little sad at times that things have changed this way.

Music to me should be enjoyed live where ever possible,if not in the comfort of your living room with a decent stereo and a proper book of rules to go with the listening experience not some instant electronic file that is turning us into a pot noodle music nation.

What does everyone else think?

Todds www.progboys.com

Edited by tworoads - October 01 2009 at 03:20

joel

thanks for your reply and  your insight that is a great quote from steven wilson,i hadnt seen that before. thanks for sharing it with me.

adrian

i completely agree joel, it is a major issue to be honest it is so refreshing to hear someone say that for once.

i do believe that the majority of progressive rock fans though have a conscience and like to support their favourite artists   though. 

I think that SW is wrong here ... sure, downloading an album is a much faster and less intense thing than buying an album, unwrapping it and putting it in a player. On the other hand the internet with all the free sample sites (myspace, last.fm) and download stores makes the music available to many people who would not have bought a full album in the first place. Sure, some of them will check out a few tracks, decide that it's not for them and move on. But many others will be motivated to download a full album ... and - at least for me - a downloaded album can be appreciated as much as an album that you have in your physical collection. I know that this transition is difficult for some people who are simply very used to holding albums in their hands, but in time the digital versions will replace the paper and plastic.

BTW: Don't think that musicians get rich by selling physical albums ... they may be more expensive than downloads, but that doesn't mean that the musicians get a big share of that money. In any case, the musicians are responsible for selecting which stores their albums are available at (or, by extension, the record companies that the musicians chose to make deals with). If they choose to make the album available at iTunes or Amazon MP3, or even at eMusic.com (which is the most affordable MP3 store AFAIK), us fans should not hesitate to purchase their music there.

^ I simply don't share SW's resentment when it comes to digital data.

BTW: if I wanted to put all my albums on my wall, I would clearly need a bigger room ... maybe a cool solution would be a digital picture frame, with the cover art of all my albums, cycling every two minutes.

And incidentally: How is a jpeg that different from a printed reproduction of a painting?

^ you can display the jpeg on a monitor (or in a digital picture frame) - then you can hold that in your hands.

Edited by Mr ProgFreak - October 01 2009 at 05:31

Digital Downloading (even bootlegging) is a blessing to small, up and coming bands.

Mr ProgFreak wrote: ^ you can display the jpeg on a monitor (or in a digital picture frame) - then you can hold that in your hands.

Its just not the same - I don't know how to explain...

Mr ProgFreak wrote: And incidentally: How is a jpeg that different from a printed reproduction of a painting?

Edited by Dean - October 01 2009 at 05:55

floydispink wrote: progkidjoel wrote: Mr ProgFreak wrote: ^ you can display the jpeg on a monitor (or in a digital picture frame) - then you can hold that in your hands. Its just not the same - I don't know how to explain... With a CD booklet you've got to skip pages or unfold it... on a monitor all you need to do is scroll down. Also, you can touch the monitor, but you can't touch the artwork directly, which you can do with a CD booklet. People can feel they are holding a paper booklet, while they can't feel they're holding a Jpeg... Also, one little malfunction and the monitor turns black and the artwork is gone.

That explains it a lot better - I love to feel the texture of the slipcases, digipaks or booklets...