

An industry commits suicide and blames us - mariuz
http://gwolf.org/blog/industry-commits-suicide-and-blames-us

======
relix
The bashing of MP3 in that article is unwarranted. I can't find any decent
source, but I'm pretty sure a 192kbps MP3 is indistinguishable from a CD for
99.999% of the people. Especially with the crappy included headphones everyone
is using.

I would bet you my day salary I could find an article from 30 years ago,
bashing CD's vs vinyl in exactly the same way.

~~~
antris
Many (most?) vinyls are pre Loudness War
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war>). But CDs are mostly post
Loudness War, where all the sound has become wimpy due to bad mixing practices
driven by marketers. This also affects digital music, no matter how it's
compressed.

So in general, many vinyls actually do sound more dynamic and clear. It's not
because of the media, but because of how they were produced at different times
in the industry.

~~~
StavrosK
Oh God, Holy Mountains from Hypnotize actually has CLIPPING! This isn't some
college band, it's System of a Down. They couldn't hire an engineer that knows
the first thing about sound?

I'm just a guy and I know your fucking track shouldn't clip _ever_. They
ruined that song.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Your apt rant brings up a tragic point: It's not just the loudness war
anymore. As David Lowery pointed out in his essays, recording studios are
expensive beasts and audio engineering takes a lot of time by skilled labor.
As the money drains out of the ecosystem all those corners get cut.
Unfortunately, mic technology isn't as good as our ears and just aiming mics
at a stage and pressing record won't give you high quality, even if we assume
the live mix is good. Which is not always the case.

~~~
dedward
But is it not true that the tools necesary for decent recording are only
getting cheaper and more accessible?

I'm not suggesting a crappy mic and no brains is all it takes to produce a
record, but your home PC these days can handle the mixing that it used to take
hundreds of thousands of dollars in gear to do, and good recording gear can
still cost a pretty penny, but it must be getting better and cheaper like
everything else. We've seen more well-produced stuff by "amateurs" these days
than any time in the past...

~~~
mechanical_fish
Unfortunately, if you make one component of the supply chain cheaper it
doesn't affect the other components.

Digital audio workstations are, indeed, a lot cheaper. But they're just one
piece of equipment, and it's capital equipment at that. (That is, you buy it
once and then use it for years, to produce hundreds of recordings. You don't
pay by the hour and it doesn't wear out rapidly with use, though it does
become gradually obsolete.)

The rest of your kit includes mics, preamps, amps, cables, consoles with jacks
and lights and knobs and sliders, power supplies, stands, properly designed
studios with isolation and acoustical treatments and talkback mics and quiet
air conditioning, and so forth. Although almost none of the technology behind
these things has changed since 1965, they are a bit cheaper today, because
we've gotten more productive at manufacturing. But they aren't "Moore's Law
cheaper". Meanwhile, revenues from music sales _are_ "Moore's Law smaller".

The other thing that hasn't gotten cheaper is the time. Audio engineers are
trained experts. Setting up all those mics and positioning them right and
listening critically to the results through take after take is necessarily
time-consuming, and your audio pros need to be around most of that time,
fiddling with things. And they're paid by the hour.

There are definitely specific genres of recording that are in their golden
age. If you like the sound of stuff that doesn't bother with all the recording
techniques that have been patiently developed since the 1950s, but just parks
a few mics around the garage and plugs them into the 4-track, you're all set,
because every part of the production chain after the 4-track has tiny capital
cost now, and distribution is cheap. If you stick to digital instruments,
you're all set. If your talent consists of taking samples and mixing them into
music, or spending months recording one track at a time in your bathroom with
strategically placed towels on the walls and a single decent mic, and then
mixing and transforming the results in post using that cheap DAW, things are
pretty good for you. And lord knows that there's never been a better time to
be an _amateur_ audio engineer.

But if you want the modern equivalent of, say, _Revolver_? Decreasingly
economical, unless it's part of a larger project, like a show or a soundtrack.

------
benologist
This has nothing to do with the recording industry. The reason the record is /
has died is progress. The labels didn't shut down record stores in Costa Rica,
people stopped caring about them. There barely even _is_ a recording industry
in Costa Rica and this is the _most_ developed country of centroamerica.

The reason latinos want MP3s and MP3 players is they're cheap as piss and they
can jump on limewire in any internet cafe and download more songs. It's
convenience and it's progress and it's why the MP3 won everywhere, not just in
CR.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Interestingly, the vinyl record is still making a comeback in the US, even
while MP3s continue their inevitable spread.

~~~
anigbrowl
I used to DJ and think something has been lost with the virtualization of
media, which is why I'm in no hurry to get a Kindle. But when you say vinyl's
making a comeback, I'm skeptical of whether this amounts to more than a niche
market of hipsters, among whom the space and cost requirements of collecting
vinyl can serve as a status marker. Could you expand on your comment?

~~~
annon
<http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2012/120104vinyl/>

~~~
rrreese
It would be nice if you mentioned what was in the link rather then posting it
without context. In this case: "It's Official: Vinyl Sales Up 39 Percent In
2011..."

~~~
donall
I thought the context was abundantly clear from the parent, although adding
the title undeniably provided enough information to allow me to skim over the
link altogether!

------
brudgers
The death of "record" stores is just part of a larger tragedy in retail sales
where cashiers have become scripted popups during checkout rather than being
able to interact like with customers as intelligent adults. When I buy some
pens at the office supply store, the poor cashier has to give me the same pimp
for copy paper and the online survey she just gave to the two customers in
front of me.

The bookstore is the worst. I remember when (Hey! You kids get off my lawn!)
bookstore cashiers were expected to ask about or remark upon or share
knowledge about books. No I don't want to buy the gold discount card,
subscribe to _People_ or go online for a chance to win. If I wanted to go
online I'd already have ordered from Amazon. And get this, Amazon doesn't ask
me to fill out a survey or pimp magazine subscriptions.

------
dsirijus
During the holiday season 2011/2012, the most sold record in the most popular
record store in Croatia (4+ million people) sold 52 copies. And that was a
land slide against the second most popular record - 16 copies sold.

I was flabbergasted with that info, thought the numbers would be MUCH higher.

~~~
thomasfl
Seems like the sales charts is rather insignificant.

~~~
dsirijus
Also, a lot of those are probably purchased by some media/radio/archiving
companies.

------
Altenuvian
blaming the decline of the industry on the sound quality of mp3 is plain bs.
well encoded mp3 with bitrates higher than 169kbps have repeatedly been shown
indistinguishable from the original.

for an informed discussion and public listening test you may want to check the
hydrogenaudio forums:

<http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showforum=40>

more background info in this article on audio codecs by christopher “monty”
montgomery of ogg-vorbis fame:

<http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html>

~~~
mechanical_fish
See "Loudness War", above, and the comments below that one.

Yeah, MP3s can be great if producers actually use them for greatness.

------
smackay
The author's argument is based on the emotional appeal of vinyl and the
experience of purchasing from people who care about the music they sell. I'd
tend to agree that in the world of music company profits and MP3s (notice
there were no references to CDs in the article) that this has been lost and in
some ways this is regrettable.

A high value experience for people who care passionately about something is
always going to be at odds with mass market appeal - the article could also be
written for bookstores - and it is entirely possible that the value the author
put in records and record stores was purely an accident of change, the same
way that listening to early radio broadcasts on a valve-based, bakelite set
was or people sitting around a piano to share songs.

I like the imperfect translation from Spanish to English it greatly adds to
the style and appeal of the article.

------
ommunist
This is why I bought some ethnic percussions and learned how to play. I enjoy
it a lot more now than listening to flattened mp3 drums. Small live concerts
is the place where the music lives now. Like one I visited in Prague during
the last Xmas. You know, these guys don't even care for a "record". They earn
their living by playing live. Like it was hundreds of years ago. And I
personally think, it should be like this.

------
dedward
On the upside - now I know where to find an actual record store, even if it's
across town...

