jwb

If you could perfectly replicate the sound of a live performance would you just skip the concert then?

Nah cause it's not just the sound, it's the experience of being there with other people getting trashed / trying to get laid / etc plus being in the same giant room as the musicians you idolize

Just like vinyl isn't just about the sound. It's about novelty seeking. Looking for that special sound that "can't be gotten" digitally. Plus the whole vintage aesthetic involved in the medium. Like, I get why people like that as a hobby. Doesn't bother me if that's what you're into. I used to collect Chinese garbage and scraps of cardboard from trucks I unloaded at Lowes distribution center cause I loved the idea of having a weird connection to another part of the world that I interacted with only inadvertently. So I totally get novelty seeking behavior.

I just get annoyed/amused by how every single person with vinyl records claims it's all about the pursuit of this unique sound and don't acknowledge that at least 50% of it is that they like the idea of vinyl. Just say that instead of pretending to have special ears or something and I would respect vinyl hipsters more. But hipsters can never own their hipster behavior. They're like vampires hiding from the daylight.

Guybrush

Sorry if I've annoyed you. I have gone on bashing something you like and work with, after all. It's nothing personal.

You got a point about there being bigger fish to fry, but it also seems fallacious to say something good is not worth doing because there's an even bigger, better thing that could potentially be done.

Or that it's okay to throw candy wrappers on the street because waste problems are so much bigger elsewhere.

Something that is special about media like music, books and films is that their digital representations serve us very well, so western society could basically get on just fine without these things existing physically even today.

It's a step we're basically ready for.

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jwb

lol @ the idea of giving someone a cassette of music you recorded. That's proper psychopathic behavior in 2021 bruh. I would certainly laugh at you for that one pal.

Reminds me of when I worked at Walmart in Florida

It was like 2009 or so.. CDs were still a thing sorta... And on break we're all outside smoking and it's me and pretty much half the Haitian dudes I knew in lake worth.. we all got hired on at Walmart at the same time in a hiring frenzy... And so this white guy sees this group of mostly black men standing outside smoking and decides to come up and give us the spiel about do you like to check out local artists.. hands my friend Nelson a CD and says that's his music and to check it out. Real heartfelt moment. You could tell he was nervous too but Nelson played it off like yeah man definitely we'll check it out.

So anyway he walks away and as we're heading back inside the store this fat black cashier girl is walking the opposite direction Nelson walks right up to her and is like "Yo, this that new transformers" (movie had just come out) and hands her the CD then we keep walking. **** was hilarious

rostasi

yeah.

hilarious.

rostasi

Actually, I can see where he’s coming from with that.
With a live band, you can’t have them move ahead to
a favorite song. On YouTube, you can. So saying that
you can’t easily move ahead on a cassette is missing
the point.

rostasi

All of these formats do have their own sound to them whether they’re vinyl, cassette, mini-disc, DAT, and so on. Because of this, there are various desires coupled with rituals that people will go thru to hear them. I see no problem with that. Sometimes convenience is the driving force, sometimes not. I have all kinds of recordings not available digitally - even new stuff that’s available completely or partially away from digital. Actually, cassettes are being offered by all kinds of labels now. On meeting one of our forum members here a couple years ago, the first thing he did was give me a cassette of his music. Even tho I already had a digital copy, I accepted his gift and I still play the cassette, because it does have a different sound to it (and a convenience). Cassettes dropping out or being eaten up just means that you either stored them in a crappy way or haven’t cleaned your deck in ages. Yeah, LPs are now too expensive for the often lousy pressings, but there’s a historical reason for that having to do with the closing of several pressing plants, and other factors. ...and this idea that some people are too cool to accept CDs from someone just trying to ply their trade is just asinine. What the fuck do you think all of this product is anyway? They’re audio business cards. Like nearly all activity, people don’t always have some secret desire to annoy or feel superior or whatever nefarious quality you want to pin on them, it might be that they have a ritual or convenience that works for their current lifestyle.

innerspaceboy

Relevant quote -

- Brian Eno, A Year With Swollen Appendices

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Frownland

Nah, weird thrift store tapes are a legitimate thing. Most of them date back to the 80s and 90s before it was so easy to upload your music to the web.

Also let's see you run the tape from your distrokid account across the room to warble the sound while it plays. Until then, cassettes have a place.

Information is physical, and storing it indefinitely will likely contribute to a wider negative environmental impact than the one-time production of physical media.

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Guybrush

Yes, there's stuff like server upkeep power consumption. This will get greener as we change to cleaner and more sustainable power sources.

But all in all, the digital versions are here to stay. At least until the digital apocalypse comes. You could possibly make the argument that we should turn the servers off, produce only the bare minimum of what we need in terms of physical mediums and live a cleaner existence that way in the very long run, but it would seem unlikely and non-sensical

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Frownland

Oh good, it'll just fix itself.

Then you agree that it was pretty silly of you to introduce that as a point against cassettes.

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.