Mad about the music

Observations on digital technology

By Adrian Molloy Published 04 December 2008

Recently, at a dinner, I found myself talking in very measured tones to a certain species of music fan (well, music bore, actually) that I had thought was long since extinct. I was trying to explain why I thought we were living through the best time in history to be a music fan.

The person next to me was full of stories of how he and his friends used to rip the cellophane from their vinyl records and of how, as he put it, he loved "lowering the needle carefully on to the record". I understood, really I did, because that was what I used to enjoy doing as well. Only recently, I took delivery of the most gorgeous vinyl box set, complete with four discs, beautifully printed booklet and tactile embossed cardboard box.

I don't have a record player any more, but I do still love the artefact and the artistry of the old vinyl records. But the point I was trying to make during my conversation was that the younger music fans of today are just as obsessed as any music fans were before them. He profoundly disagreed.

Digital technology has liberated the music fan: today, you can stand on the shoulders of giants and pick through the entire history of recorded music at the click of a button. The kind of information that once could only be gathered by trawling through magazines and album credits, as well as hours and hours of hard listening, can now be achieved in an afternoon spent following links on the internet.

Nor has music ever been as accessible as it is now. Music fans can lose days, weeks and months, as I have, tracing the development of their latest heroes back to their heroes' heroes, and their heroes' great heroes. For the so-called heritage artists, this is the lifeline that enables their back catalogue to be discovered by a new, worldwide generation of listeners; the astonishing recent success of the mighty AC/DC in India and elsewhere is a great example of that.

Music is more readily available whenever, wherever and however you want it. The younger generation makes full use of technology (MSN, email, webcams, YouTube, MySpace and so on) to connect with others who share the same tastes, to argue about which is the best track on a particular album and, of course, to dissect every nuance of every statement issued by favourite bands in interviews or on forums and message boards.

Try, for instance, keying the name of your favourite band into the search box of any of the following sites: http://www.last.fm, http://www.hypem.com or http://www.youtube.com. What you will find is an endless resource of streaming music that you can listen to (in amazingly good quality more often than not) of both new and old artists. What you'll also find is that music fans are more informed and opinionated than they have ever been, and all the better for that.

Adrian Molloy manages recording artists

 
 

4 comments

gtr's picture

Tue, 2008-12-16 17:40 — gtr

Right on exempt!

I teach guitar and because of mp3 some don't know who the artist is, what album it's from(they might not even know this word), or even the title.

They only nitpick crud songs instead of listening to an entire album so 'artists' put out horrible 'albums' with 2 'hit' tracks that are annoying in their trite catchiness.

they've never heard a vinvyl record. They aren't aware of sonority. Their ears are terrible...

Mp3 is convenient, more accessible but lower quality: sublety doesn't work when the sound is weakened...
etc.

katy carr's picture

Tue, 2010-12-28 13:27 — katy carr (not verified)

freedom of information is always a good thing --- if the quality is slightly lost on digital format so be it but i would personally prefer to have access to as much music as possible. I agree that quality on MP3 can be lost compared to other formats but it can also be hindered by not having the right stereo system, speakers etc.
This time of the digital music format is a fabulous opportunity to get exposure to all genres of music at the click of a button. Being a musician myself I often find myself looking for a very rare song that say a record company has hidden in it's vaults for years but because somebody has taken the time to post a live footage of it on youtube we musicians still get the chance to appreciate and learn the song. Youtube is invaluable. Spotify is great. Vinyl is outstanding. I say the more portals for music appreciation the better. World peace through music. Power to the people and power to music. Long live Music!!!! lol x x www.katycarr.com

jhn's picture

Thu, 2008-12-04 17:32 — jhn

I'm a younger music fan. We value physical
recordings less, but music as much as anyone. The
caveat is we have more music, so sometimes we may
know individual tracks less.

I have a digital collection that is equivalent to 30,000
albums; I've listened to all of them. When you have
only a few hundred albums, you may know each of
them more deeply.

Some older music fans are fans of *records*, not of
music. This is like being a book fan, rather than a
reading fan. A common affliction but not one to brag
about.

(I'm actually both: I tend to buy my very favorite
albums on vinyl. It's physical copies of digital media
that are totally worthless; analog media tends to have
unique, tactile qualities that I value.)

username exempt's picture

Thu, 2008-12-04 22:28 — username exempt

The author inanely enthuses about having easy access to music as if
that was ever a problem or all that ever mattered anyway.

The point is: easy access to WHAT exactly?

Answer: 'online digital files representing sound (for downloading or
streaming) containing data which typically employs drastic lossy
(degrading) data compression'

This is a good thing?

What's great about having 10 squillion songs on your iPod if they all
have degraded sound quality ranging from 'attrocious' to 'unlistenable'?

mp3 is (for the music fan) a huge step DOWN in terms of fidelity
compared to CD's, tapes and vinyl. It sounds thin, papery, brittle, dry,
one dimensional and is fatiguing to listen to. It is the music equivalent of
compressing digital images to a lower resolution (eg for emailing, or
avatar use).

This has several effects including:

Older music originally on vinyl/ tape/ CD is often too sophisticated, too
sonically rich to sound good as mp3. eg Most of the amazing music of
the 60's, 70's and all orchestral music sounds rubbish as mp3. Young
people (and older ones who forget) simply DON"T KNOW what hi fidelity
music can sound like.

Mp3's poor quality and inability to represent complex, full arrangements
and sophisticated sonic textures has in part driven musicians away from
'musical' music and has encouraged them to write more simplistic,
'obvious' music. This is like a photographer composing a shot
specifically for a low res, pixilated image.

The whole emphasis of 'music' now has shifted even further towards
marketing shocking celeb behavior, image, ego, soft porn videos, as
well as media players, ringtones, sharing, rating your music etc THAT is
where all the buzz is to get people interested - REASON? the medium is
now of such unpleasurable quality and the music equally bland.

Music is now about having a fast food takeaway on every corner and
was once about searching for great restaurants and savoring their fine
food. THAT was what the music fan was nostalgic for.

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