The Moan Zone

[Ben Milne]

So I was looking to expand the genre range of my music collection , (and wanting to avoid the MP3 format), was quite surprised to see the state of music stores today.
WTF?

Even the Ma+Pa country music store that was in the city is gone...

[Ivan Kelsall]

That's 'par for the course' over here in the UK,but i though things might be a tad different in the US - apparently not !. The state of play in your record stores seems to be reflected in the 'Bluegrass' recordings of some of it's major performers.I listen on-line to the Bluegrassmix.com
& some of the stuff i've heard wouldn't get past the starting gate over here & shouldn't be on a Bluegrass radio station EVER ! (IMHO). I've yet to hear Rhonda Vincent perform a Bluegrass tune. Everything they play of hers seems to have come straight of a Dolly Parton / George Jones record ( not that that's BAD - just not Bluegrasss).
I've aired my personal feeling on here in a thread that i started (the ''Country & Westernising of Bluegrass'') a while ago, & the process still continues. Fortunately,we still get to vote with our wallets ,
Ivan

[foldedpath]

You're fighting a losing battle if you're trying to avoid MP3's as a format for buying music, and also trying to expand your music collection. Record stores selling CD's are dying. The CD format itself will only last a little while longer as a convenient way for bands to sell CD's at a gig, until someone figures out a more universal format (USB sticks, WiFi instant downloads, whatever).

We're losing some things, and we're gaining some things. We're losing semi-permanent physical storage of our music collections, cover art, and liner notes... although CD's aren't as permanent as most folks think they are. Maintaining a digital music collection means learning how to back up files and "roll forward" onto new media, which is a foreign concept to most people who don't manage computer systems for a living. It's the one thing that still makes me a little nervous about converting my old vinyl and CD's to a personal digital archive, but I think I'm on top of it... maybe.

On the positive side, we're gaining tremendous access to music that would never have made it to our local music store. Like it or not, MP3's is now the default standard for the next 10+ years, if you want to buy music online. For example, look at what Amazon has in their online sale catalog for Bill Monroe as individual files:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss?ur...Monroe&x=0&y=0

And here's what they have as full album downloads, 41 albums!

http://www.amazon.com/s/qid=12551579...in%3A625150011

I've never lived anywhere, including big cities, that had a catalog that deep in relatively obscure categories like Bluegrass, Blues, Jazz, or Celtic music... any of the genres I'm interested in. I don't miss having to wade through aisles of store displays for pop music I'm not interested in, to find the gems I am interested in.

Amazon sells the files as 256kbps MP3's, very high bit rate with no copy protection (there is a digital buyer ID in the meta tag you can easily remove). If you can tell the difference between a 256kbps MP3 file and an uncompressed .wav file ripped from a CD, then your ears are better than mine. I've done blind ABX testing to prove this to myself; your mileage and ears may vary.

There is also the instant gratification factor. I've been warming up again to my octave mandolin after a period of not playing it much. There was a recent thread in the CBOM section here about "must have" recordings for the instrument. I saw a mention of two Aly Bain/Ale Möller albums that I didn't know about. I had one Aly Bain album (purchased earlier as MP3's through Amazon) and I knew he was a great Shetland fiddler. It took me just a few minutes to log onto Amazon, find those two albums ("Fully Rigged" and "Beyond the Stacks"), buy and download. Amazing playing by both of them, it's inspiring me to do more on the OM.

In the old day of real physical media, no local record store would have carried those albums as in-store CD's. I'd have to place a special order, and wait weeks for them to arrive. With all the hassle, I might not have bought them at all. Instead, I get instant gratification, and some small pittance might wend its way towards the artists selling this CD online.

One day soon these business models may collapse, and we'll be able to just download all this music from the Internet "cloud" without paying for it. But in the meantime, if you're shopping for new music, it would be a shame to avoid deep catalogs like this, just because you don't like MP3's. Try a high bitrate MP3 and you might find that you really can't tell the difference from a CD track.

If you do decide to convert to digital music collections, be sure to research how to back up and archive your collection. That's the one major downside that has to balanced against almost-instant access to the deep catalogs.

[Coffeecup]

Music stores here don't even have a section for folk music, lumping the few examples they have in with "world" music. I don't even remember when I last bought a CD from a shop. The only sources for "good stuff" now are direct from the performer at concerts or via mail order, or by mail order from specialist on-line stores.
On the subject of formats - what is your listening environment? For example, even if your ear can pick the difference between CD and MP3 on your home equipment it wouldn't be relevant if you only listen while driving the car.

[Ben Milne]

That's 'par for the course' over here in the UK,but i though things might be a tad different in the US - apparently not !.

sure but I'm in Brisbane (QLD), which is like the biggest country town in Australia.

hey... C/cup resides around the corner. Music for me is both at home on Hi Fi and On Various PAs Venues etc i work on throughout the year. I have an Ipod Loaded with Wav/Aiff and the difference is very noticable to me... the artifacts created by mp3s to trick the ear grate on me. there used to be a great country music CD shop near the other end of the arcade near were skinny's used to be. country was never my thing but the shop was handy for gifts. i remember the range they had was pretty awesome. "RIP" skinny's and that joint i guess.

[Coffeecup]

sure but I'm in Brisbane (QLD), which is like the biggest country town in Australia.

hey... C/cup resides around the corner.

I thought that CD rack looked familiar. JB?

[Ben Milne]

Okay, so I was on the hunt today for some single nickel strings for my GF. I decided to drive further across town to a guitar shop to grab them so I could get two birds stoned and check out an RM-1 as I'd seen it advertised in local streetpress. It had been on "special" in a few emails i received from them and the ticket price was still reflecting the sale.

As they didn't have the gauge string I was after I asked for one of each size gauge bigger and smaller (2 strings).
$9.70
Sorry, I just wanted 2 singles.
9.70 - thats what singles are these days man (It turns out their price for single strings reflected their advertised mandolin pricing policy.)

with regards to the RM1 I will reserve judgment especially considering the special price and the seller's attitude toward it. It does however make me wonder how they expect so much for it when It could be bought from somewhere like Elderly (for whom I've read much praise with regards to service) and save a good 25-30% even considering the exchange rate and the freight to get it here.


I kept My 10 bucks and went to my usual haunt for things like strings and a yarn.
Now to get a little OT but my regular joint gave me 5 singles for $5 because they weren't all the usual brand or all the same... No wurries they're singles i don't see how thart matters mate... Ripper.

With regard to the threads original moan, I've now posted in the ...listening to now thread with 5 or so CDs I grabbed while i was in Melbourne earlier this year. There is a great little record shop in Collingwood with a great variety of stuff like i was after.

[catmandu2]

What a dour forecast, foldedpath. Makes me thankful for what I've got--probably nearly 3K CDs of hand picked titles that I've been collecting for the past 15 years; during grad school, I scoured the used bins in Denver and Boulder for several years acquiring many OOP titles. I don't ever expect to "upgrade" or convert to another format, as I'm only interested in the music and not particularly interested in the sound quality. I find CDs quite adequate for me. I also like the compact size and the liner notes. Most of my collection is be-bop, post bop, "new thing," avant garde jazz and art music, but also a lot of ethnic and traditional music from around the world, and American folk and blues. The longer I live, the more attached I become to this collection. I'm going to have to bequeath it to someone...but no one I know is as obsessive about music..

[TonyP]

I find it interesting and disheartening too. I've always lived where it was hard to get the kind of music I enjoyed, it not being mainstream.

Our band did a cd a couple of years back, and one of the guys in the band put it on CDbaby. Within no time it was all over. As far as I know we never uploaded it, only offering it in cd form. Yet it's being sold all these different places as a mp3s.

My point is, it reminds me of the Soggy Bottom Boys. We have no idea the life our music is living out there. And no way to keep track of it. It might be sitting there, it might be selling like hot cakes. dunno. And if it's selling like hot cakes, we're certainly not getting any of the action.

A friend of mine who I've played with forever who commutes long distance and listens to Xmradio, heard us on there! But it was never announced, he just knew it was me.

I remember when the whole idea of being able to bypass the record co's and the vampires that they are, would benefit the musician directly and make their music more available. The idea I saw was shops that would have computers with headphones and you could browse the selection(the musicians would either have a website, or would be part of the co op). It would be then transferred to the counter, and the proprietor would burn the cd, and liner, and you would pay him, he'd send you a cut. Somehow that's gotten hyjacked somehow by other middlemen, with net sites with no real accountability.

But another interesting point is I was talking to a well known mando player, and he said even though his music sales were down, he was doing better than he ever did financially. More gigs, and more people at the gigs. I think his take on it was like mine, somehow you just can't worry about it. You are trading control for access. So more people know about him through this viral network he has no control over, and go to see him when he plays somewhere.

Still our best way is through direct sales at gigs, or off the bands website. I also get most of my cd's directly from the bands I listen to. I've only started delving into digital players, but I find no need to downgrade the bitrate as I can still put a bunch of music on my player without going to the mp3 format. I don't buy mp3's or download albums.

When I listen to my stereo at home, there is a noticeable difference between the cd and mp3's. Everything below a certain threshold is gone or diminished. I guess it depends on how you listen to your music, and what kind of music it is.

[Brent Hutto]

For many years before iTunes existed my CD purchases had been predominantly mail-order. Then again I have to buy musical instruments, strings, most books and even shoes mail-order. And I live in a fairly prosperous small city with 300,000+ people in the metropolitan area.

[JeffD]

We're losing some things, and we're gaining some things. We're losing semi-permanent physical storage of our music collections, cover art, and liner notes...

On the positive side, we're gaining tremendous access to music that would never have made it to our local music store. .

Thats it right there. A tradeoff between to awesome, valuable, cherished things. And I have to say, the access to the music slightly edges out my love of the liner notes and cover art. Not that I had any choice, but there it is.

[sgarrity]

Like it or not, Foldedpath is right. Cds won't disappear overnight but they are definitely on their way out. Have you been in a Borders lately? Their music section has almost vanished. If it's not from a handful of "pop stars" you can hardly find it for sale in cd form these days. I still buy cds but mostly from CDbaby and individual artists. I subscribed to eMusic and they have a great selection of bluegrass and acoustic music. Both Compass and Rounder have the majority of their catalogs on there.

Tony, as for your cd being sold without you knowing.........I'm not saying it can't happen but I would want to see some proof. Are there people that download/trade music illegally? Absolutely. But there were people that copied cds too. If I was a recording artist today I'd have my cd and download available on my website, iTunes, eMusic, Amazon, etc. More exposure is more opportunity to make money and get people to your shows.

P.S. -- Where is your recording available Tony? I always like hearing and supporting fellow board members!

[Ed Goist]

The internet has hit all brick & mortar vendors hard, but the record store, and the video rental store really don’t have a chance.

How is one supposed to compete against an on-line vendor which can basically have an infinite inventory that takes up no physical space?

It's basically the same situation with musical instrument accessories (strings, straps, tuners, etc.)

When the product is a commodity (no matter from whom it's purchased, every copy of 'The Mountain' by Steve Earle and The Del McCoury Band is the exact same, as is a set of J74s), and the key purchasing parameters are selection and price, brick & mortars don't have a chance.

[Folkmusician.com]

I am far from an Audiophile and don't have a golden ear, though I do hear a difference between MP3 and CDs, especially if the MP3s are 128kbits. To take this a little further, I also hear a difference between a high quality CD player and your standard consumer CD player with poor DAC.

That said, the only time I ever listen to a CD is for the purpose of analyzing or comparing mixes for recording projects. The convenience of mp3s far outweigh any quality shortcomings for me. My wife and I share one database and stream the music all through the house. We each have an Iphone that is with us at all times. It is great to have access to thousands of songs anytime, anywhere. We have the Iphone remote controlling ITunes and integrated with the car stereo. I wouldn't carry a portable CD player with me everywhere, but having a digital player with me 24/7 opens up all sorts of opportunities. Anytime I am together with friends that are into music, we are always "hey listen to this". I do a bit of Kayak fishing and find it more enjoyable with some background music.

In a small way, MP3s and portable players have been life changing for me.

[Mandoviol]

Up until very recently I bought only hard CDs. I still get them when I can, but mp3s hit the wallet more softly for me (and as a college student, that's a plus). The funny thing is, I usually put the mp3 album on a CD-R after downloading it, so in the end, I still do get a playable CD. But this is mainly because I find mp3s, which are an intangible item, to be too vulnerable to accidental deletion or loss during a computer crash, etc. The only thing that can kill a CD is either super heat, awful humidity for a prolonged time, or placement in a microwave.

[rico mando]

i prefer to listen to vinyl LP. bought 2 new opeth albums and a elluveitie . and you can still get lots of stuff. saw a DGQ album in great shape for 9$

[Bertram Henze]

Technological progress does not mean the old things die out. Instead, the multitude of incompatible technologies of different ages increases, and the multitude of resulting connecting technology to bridge between them explodes. Nothing is lost except simplicity of life (but honestly, can anyone remember a technologically simple life? cause I can't).

There will always be CDs, just as there's shellac, vinyl, cassettes, myriads of compression algorithms and players to use them, be they real or virtual. And there will always be shops to buy all that stuff, be they real or virtual.

Now you must decide: will you take the blue pill or the red pill?

[Tom Haywood]

I'm a recent convert to MP3s. I think I was the last person in the world to convert from vinyl LP to CD, because my ears didn't like the sound of CD. Finally got used to it when I had to buy CDs to get the music I wanted. Then hooked ye old stereo from the 1970s (it doesn't get any better than that) to the computer. Was a die-hard WAV file guy so that no sound was lost in compression. That was better than CD, which for me was still a "lower" standard than LP, but alas was filling up the hard drive too fast. So now the ears are getting used to MP3, and they actually sound pretty good through the old Marantz and JBLs. Just started looking for a cheap MP3 player that I can hook to the car stereo. Nuts! Ivan, I try to listen to the "Mix" and a couple of others, but they seem to think that if it has a mandolin in it, it is bluegrass. It's country to me, bad country.

[catmandu2]

CD quality isn't the best, of course--what I like about it is the convenience factor, since I'm much more musicologist than audiophile. I have most of mine in 250-count folios with the liner notes separate and alphabetized in tupperware containers. Kind of like old-school library, card-catalog system. It's organized and only occupies one large bookshelf--a pretty tidy way of storing ~3K titles.

I quit vinyl when I left a couple of hundred albums and a girlfriend, long ago.

[Matt DeBlass]

Interestingly enough, I've noticed that tube amps are making a comeback because of the perception that they compensate somewhat for the loss of warmth in digital music files. I don't know if this works, because the things are pretty darn expensive and I haven't had the chance to plug my iPod into one, but it's an interesting idea.

I like vinyl a lot for sound, and my dad has quite the stereo setup (he designs and builds his own cabinets and likes to tinker with designs) but 1 - I don't have the budget to be a real audiophile at the moment and 2 - I'm more interested in the songs than the medium of delivery, also, I tend to listen to a lot of music while jogging, and I just haven't been able to get the turntable to keep from skipping

[catmandu2]

I happened to be perusing ebay for CDs, which is where I look for OOP titles, and ran across this, which really surprised me--as I picked up a copy for $8.99 back when I was building up my library:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Joelle-Leandre-P...9?pt=Music_CDs

Had no idea that some of these OOP CDs--especially on a label as prolific as hatart--were selling for so much. Makes me very glad that I acquired mine when I did--I've got scads of hatart and hathut titles--some of the best recordings in improvised music, IMO.

[mandroid]

One of my friends snagged the card catalog furniture, when the Library cataloging switched to computerization and stores his Cassette taped music in it ..

[catmandu2]

One of my friends snagged the card catalog furniture, when the Library cataloging switched to computerization and stores his Cassette taped music in it ..

Now that's real old school.

[RobP]

I made the switch a couple of years ago. I have almost all of my music on my Ipod Nano. I bought really nice Bose speakers for my computer at home. I got the amazing slow-downer. I am totally off of CD's. The only thing I really kind of miss is the ability to physical "see" all of my music on a shelf, but I'm sure I'll get used to the scroll eventually. And when I get a faster laptop, hopefully Coverflow will help with that transition.

Have you noticed the trend with renting DVD's? Hollywood closed, Blockbuster is in trouble. Within a few years I bet all movie rentals will be streamed off the internet and DVD's will be obsolete too.

Cheers,

Rob

[MandoNicity]

About 99% of my music collection that's not CD is Flac files. I burn the Flac off to CD-R also.

JR