I walk over a trainyard every day. I see some good graffiti, but not much that's big enough to be legible on a cell-phone photo, even with full zoom. I saw this one last week, and the light was good.I'm not sure physical copies of music has much of a future. I only ever seem to buy vinyl anymore. In fact, you ain't nobody 'less you got vinyl, and I've never put out any. I wonder what that costs.
Until I decide to pay to press up some records, I think virtual is gonna have to be the way, though I'm moved that you want a copy. I will do my best to make a lot of music easily available for free.
Travis Kincher and I both did lists of great albums; his thoughtful choices are RIGHT HERE. He makes even the M. Ward-children's-album-about-death idea seem pretty reasonable. I don't think kids really listen to the words much. Plus - worst-case scenario - they gotta learn about it sometime, shit. Remember when Mr. Hooper died on Sesame Street? I was sad for a little while, but I've gotten over it.
Anyway, I was gonna post a piece of music, but it seems like that is not an option here! I am annoyed. I can post a video, a picture, or a link, but not a song. So I can either save a song in a video format, which is a yellow on the Apathy Alert meter, or save it in a video format, synched to a piece of a movie, which at least makes the thing seem worth doing. So I shall endeavor to take that extra step in the next day or two. [I didn't - ED]
- Ben Frankenstein
I was never big on vinyl (young kid in the 80's, teenager through the 90's) and while I can definitely appreciate it, I can't cop to the argument that it holds a superiority over anything else.
ReplyDeletePhysical copies of albums still have a future, maybe not one that fits into the great scheme of the big labels but a future just the same.
A lot in the digital movement wouldn't exist without the physical copies and the fact that people go to lengths to do vinyl music rips helps add points toward keeping the physical copy alive, even if everyone ends up having no other option BUT vinyl (a CD might have a shorter shelf-life but it can be extended far easier than vinyl, with little cost).
A downside of the digital market, one that disappoints me, is that a lot of individuals making the move to it seem to want to hit the market with what's widely acceptable and in turn leave guys like myself out in the cold who might want something a little different (an mp3 download of an album is great, but there's been great leaps made toward preserving the music in many lossless formats that are un-restricted (FLAC) and if more distributors got behind the notion of it, it could help change overall perception that you don't need to settle for something that's been compressed a little too much.
But right now, there's few online music distributors that even acknowledge the existence of any lossless format, much less actually sell material in it. To make it worse, a lot of those that do end up doing it, do so in specialized genres which makes it even more disappointing in terms of hoping for variety.
If it ever reaches the point where artists can immediately outsource to individuals who know how to put their material in a wide-range of digital formats (NIN, Radiohead and a few others have been helping push things in the right direction) then I could rest easy knowing the physical copy could be pulled from the picture, barring any weasel-like moves that stated I HAD to re-purchase something I've already paid for in the event of massive data loss.
Anyway, the above is probably ALL over the place as far as coherent thoughts are concerned.
Unrelated to it in a way, but I honestly wouldn't have heard your music had it not been one day years ago while browsing 4Chan when someone had posted up two download links to both versions of Twitch of the Def Nerve in MP3 format. It took me weeks to get around to listening to both of them but I was glad I did. That was what ended up leading me around to the fact that copies of the original pressing had existed but were long gone and the re-issue was still available, which I ended up ordering. Ever since then, visits to the YouTube account to lament about not being able to find a copy of the original and eventual discovery of this blog to do the same have been the only kind of hopes I've had as far as tracking it down.
At this point, if it existed in FLAC and was available somewhere to purchase, I'd be all over it. The notion I had of having the original to do my own FLAC rip of it is probably one that'll need to be stowed away since I'm beginning to accept that those who do have a physical copy out there aren't going to part with it (were I them, I wouldn't either).