music purchasing patterns

[egypturnash]

Every time there's a story about something related to the current state of the music industry on Slashdot, a significant portion of the comments seem to repeat the theme that "paying $26 for two singles and filler is a rip-off". (This time, the story was about a documentary on how the music industry's pouring itself down the hole, with many interviews from it online as text.)

Less so, now that iTunes makes it pretty easy to pay $1 for the single you like. But, of course, iTunes doesn't use a Free, Open Format, so it's 3v1l to a hardcore Slashbotter. And nothing's as good as OGG!

And every time I see someone bitching about paying $26 for two singles and a bunch of crap, I wonder if I'm profoundly alien in my purchasing habits and my expectations of artists. If I buy an album because I heard a few songs off it (probably from a friend passing me a lovingly-encoded high-bit-rate copy of them), I want everything on the album to be a little different and a little surprising. If a new album sounds exactly like the last one from that artist, I can be a little disappointed.

Of course, I also don't listen to anything resembling pop music, where the focus does seem to be on one or two super-polished singles that're exquisitely machined to fit the percieved flavor of the week - I listen to weird stuff. I don't go to great lengths to seek it out, I probably don't have too many instances of Bands you'll never hear of! showing up in the 'music' field of my LJ, but the music I listen to just isn't built for two singles to get assloads of airplay, it's built for a CD full of the occasional surprise.

I don't know where I was going for with this. "I feel ripped off when I pay $26 for two singles and a bunch of filler" is just something I see a lot in people complaining about the current state of the music business, and it's something I've never had happen...

Comments

[radd.livejournal.com]

I'm more upset with the RIAA's treatment of artists, customers, and fans of music in general.

There are web radio stations, privately run endeavours, that have been forced to pay the RIAA thousands of dollars a year to not play their music. I have issues with that.

I do think there is a problem with how they distribute the profits from the albums they sell, and how much they charge for a 20 year old media format.

[alinsa.livejournal.com]

There are web radio stations, privately run endeavours, that have been forced to pay the RIAA thousands of dollars a year to not play their music.

Got a reference for that?

[strredwolf.livejournal.com]

www.live365.com is one who's been against the RIAA and the major distributors for overuse of licencing fees.

[lediva.livejournal.com]

iTunes doesn't use a Free, Open Format, so it's 3v1l.

Psst. (http://hymn-project.org/)

[mattlazycat.livejournal.com]

Silly thing is, without the DRM, the files are still in MPEG-4 AAC format, which is still a licensed, patent-encumbered, and proprietary format controlled by Dolby (through "Via licensing"), if I remember rightly. So the OGG-nerds won't shut up just because Hymn lets you put it on more computers.

But it sounds so nice on my iPod, that I don't give a flying fuck ;)

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

ITS NOT OGG SO ITS EVIL OGG SOUNDS BETTER BECAUSE IT'S FREE PAYING FOR ANY KIND OF SOFTWARE IS EVIL AND WRONG BECAUSE RMS SAYS SO BUT PIRACY IS WRONG TOO

ALSO LINUS IS GOD

I really should quit reading Slashdot.

[mattlazycat.livejournal.com]

Seriously :)

[defenbaugh.livejournal.com]

Ive had a few purchases Ive regretted. But typically they are rare and far between ... Maybe 1 in 75 albumns? Im talking PURE STINKY put the Cd in the microwave types.

[kyhwana.livejournal.com]

Oh noes!
Oh well, there are numerous way to strip the drm off and get normal playable AAC/"m4a" files.
Yay for crackers!

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I don't even have an iTunes Music Store account - while I have a bunch of AAC on my machine, it's all stuff I've encoded myself from CDs I've bought. So I'm not affected by the DRM one way or another; I could put the stuff on as many devices as I like.

Though as Makali pointed out in a comment above this... it's still an 3V1L format 'cause it's owned by someone.

[trikotomy.livejournal.com]

I find I have very particular (not narrow, but definitely picky) tastes in music, and while there are plenty of things I'm willing to experiment with, my money isn't one of them. However, if you happen to have any specific album recommendations, I may be willing to forgo my stinginess. Of the few song-of-the-days of yours I've been able to locate online, I feel your tastes are fairly trustworthy.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Ozric Tentacles - Strangeitude
Because it's the first one I picked up by them. Just about any Ozrics album will do; I once saw a review of another of their albums that pointed out that they essentially make the same album over and over again... but it's a really good album, so this is okay. They're a trippy improvisational band, prone to the odd bit of flute in the middle of cycling guitars. Pink Floyd with different drugs and more synths.

Gary Numan - Exile
Yes, the same guy who did 'Cars' way back in the eighties. He's older and a lot darker now. Very thick music, very bitter and decaying, and lovely because of it. Industrial rock, full of the kind of angst you only get from ex-Christians.

Barry Adamson - The King of Nothing Hill
Adamson started out doing soundtracks for non-existant noir films, and there's still a theatrical and narrative quality to his work. Hip-hop, dark smoky jazz, bebop, and electronics all blend together into ambiguous little stories of bad choices and betrayals. I have most of his stuff and I'll just warn that "Soul Murder" is his weakest.

Man or Astro-Man? - EEVIAC
They're aliens and they play surf rock. And they rock out. Their early albums are kinda weak, and their last one is very difficult listening; this one is a transitional phase between being damn fine instrumentalists and going a little crazy. Also "Made from Technitium" is really damn good. When I need guitar noises, MoAM? is one of the bands I'm likely to pull out.

Plastikman - Consumed
A dark, subliminal passage through realms of slow, throbbing d&b. This one is great with the volume up at 3AM. It manages to be bleak, ominous, and gloomy, and to make you want to get up and dance, at the same time.

Amon Tobin - Out from Out Where
Strange hybrid beasts of jazz rhythms and structures with banks of synths and samples. Very varied moods within the space of each track, never mind the album, though the whole of it tends towards a little ominous. Someday I'd like to do an animated short to one of his tracks, but they're all a little too long to really do it easily.

[trikotomy.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, with little reviews and whatnot. Thanks, I'll give those a listen.

[nefermoon.livejournal.com]

I agree that no two songs on an album should be alike.

My problem with buying whole CDs is that the RIAA would like very much if I bought them sight unseen. Thanks to internet music downloads, I can avoid that. There are definitely albums that have a highly-varied track list, but there are also albums that clearly try to ride off the potential success of a single track that gets played 100 times per week, mandated by the industry, not by taste.

There was once a time when, if a radio hit song were to get stuck in my head, I would have to either run through the stations to try and find it, or I could buy the whole CD. MP3s have changed that. And that's where I think, in a way, we might agree.

Now an artist can be held responsible for creating a full album of quality, because people know before they unwrap the disk from Best Buy whether it's worth the cash (but $26?? I haven't seen a single-disk CD album priced that high since we still had our vinyl-player in the living room). And in a way, I see iTunes like a voting booth. Click "Yes" on "Little Drop of Poison", click not at all on "Toxic."

I'm perfectly happy to buy my MP3s one at a time rather than downloading them for free. But I do not feel an ounce of guilt for hopping over to Limewire to download the latest Sting album to find out he still is, indeed, as graceful a writer in his turning years as a wet potato, and I don't need to shed the money.

I don't really know where I was going with this, either. I guess just that I hope the "current state of the music industry" will lead to a revival in quality. Or that you have adorable boobs. Either one. ;)

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

$26 was a number pulled out of mid-air. I'm not sure what the current going price for a CD really is; it seems like the stuff I buy usually starts around $20, because not much of it is popular enough for the economies of scale to really kick in the way it is for very popular bands, and there's the occasional tiny foreign label import... It's been a while since I bought any, 'cause money's really tight.

I'm not used to buying music because of airplay at all any more. You just don't turn on the radio and hear a new Amon Tobin track, as a rule - word reaches me there's a new album out, and maybe there's a few snips on the net, but really, I just go grab it. I think the last time I bought a CD due to the radio was five years ago when I heard the Señor Coconut cover of 'Trans Europe Express' on the way to work, and got the album a few months later (it's a joke album - a German ambient artist masquerading as a Latin American band leader, doing cha-cha covers of Kraftwerk's pioneering electronic music). And that's mostly what this entry was about. That my music habits are so alien to what gets pitched as pop now that I don't even have a functioning radio right now, much less buy stuff on the strength of one single that gets airplay.

(Although when Moby's last album came out... word of mouth and a few suspicions prompted me to grab it off of Limewire, listen, and delete, and save my bucks.)