From: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org (ecto-digest) To: ecto-digest@smoe.org Subject: ecto-digest V9 #173 Reply-To: ecto@smoe.org Sender: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk ecto-digest Wednesday, June 18 2003 Volume 09 : Number 173 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: cd collecting [Nadyne Mielke ] Re: ecto-digest V9 #172 [aural gratification ] RE: cd collecting [Steve VanDevender ] RE: cd collecting [Steve VanDevender ] Re: cd copy protection redux ["Phil Tate" ] Re: ecto-digest V9 #172 [Anji ] Re: carousel players [Joseph Zitt ] Re: cd collecting - musician's earnings [Joseph Zitt ] Collecting CDs / Bettie Serveert ["Mike Gray" ] Re: Collecting CDs / Bettie Serveert [Joseph Zitt ] cd colecting ["ron" ] Re: cd collecting [jonathan soong ] Re: cd collecting [jonathan soong ] Re: cd collecting [Nadyne Mielke ] Re: cd collecting - mp3 vs. lossless [jonathan soong ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 09:53:40 -0700 (PDT) From: Nadyne Mielke Subject: Re: cd collecting adamk@zoom.co.uk wrote: [snip] > But anyway, the subject was collecting: yeah, I'm anal, and I think > I love to collect. I have about 750 cd's, right now and --- > obviously --- some just never get listened to, but you dig one out > one day and go "Wow, I'd forgotten about this", even if you don't > listen to it again for another couple of years. I just finished ripping my complete CD collection (all 1000+ discs) to my hard drive, and fit as much of that as I could on my 20-GB iPod. One thing that I love doing is setting iTunes or my iPod to shuffle through the whole thing. I get that 'oh, wow, I had forgotten about that song ...' feeling pretty regularly. It's quite cool. I had totally forgotten about R.E.M.'s cover of 'Have You Ever Seen the Rain?' but got to groove to that last night. > But....burn them all onto a hard drive? I'm sorry, I just don't get > it. Maybe I'm just toooo anal but...I remember when cd's came in, > and everyone bemoaned the death of the sleeve artist, the old > gatefold sleeves with illustrations and liner notes and short > stories. I thought -- well, cd's aren't the same (and no, you can't > roll a joint on them very well) but there's still something to work > with. Note the Throwing Muses new release, for instance, which does a > lot with such a small canvas. I like reading the liner notes, still, > I like the feel of the cd in my hand. Burnt onto a hard drive, it's > just one more step towards it being mere digital information, removed > from the whole art form. I like the artwork on the album (vinyl or CD), too. But, for the most part, I don't look at the liner notes all that often. I want the music. I didn't buy the album because it had pretty artwork, that's always been gravy. At least, for me. :) > More importantly....you guys have a lot of faith in your hard drives. > My experience (mind you, this IS England) is of hard drives that > crash, freeze, change your files so that they'll only play on some > program that you've never seen before or don't play at all, and > implode all together. A few years ago I lost everything of mine, > everything of my partners, all my kids school projects, when a drive > started acting up. Imagine wiping my entire cd collection! I can't speak for anyone else, but it's not that I have a lot of faith in my hard drive. I like having everything on my laptop and my iPod for the following reasons: 1) It's portable. I can take my iPod, which has something like 8000 songs on it, anywhere. I could never reasonably transport the requisite CDs everywhere. 2) It saves me from having to use my CDs that often. That means that I don't have to worry about scratching them, losing them, having them stolen, etc etc etc. I'm careful, but life happens. 3) I can make as many back-ups as I want. For me, there won't be such a thing as 'wiping my entire CD collection', short of a natural disaster that destroys all of my belongings. I have a back up. [snip the rest] Ideally, I would like a digital jukebox stereo component. This would have my complete collection in a lossless format (not MP3!), and would have a nice interface for me to choose the music to which I want to listen. As an interim measure, I'm considering the purchase of a firewire hard drive [1]. Then I could encode my collection to Shorten (a lossless compression algorithm) and store it on that hard drive. Then, on my old Windows laptop, I can install WinAmp and SHNAmp to play these files. This isn't ideal, but it's a step up from hooking my iPod up to my stereo. And the firewire hard drive will have other uses anyway. :) /nm [1] This actually isn't entirely true. I doubt that I'd get a firewire hard drive. I'll likely instead get a firewire enclosure and plug an IDE hard drive into it. It's cheaper and more flexible. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 13:09:51 -0400 From: aural gratification Subject: Re: ecto-digest V9 #172 Hey Y'all or "All Y'all" (which is the proper plural of "Y'all") I noticed my good friend and confident, Robert "Great Spirit" Lovejoy, was inquiring as to where the money goes from CD sales and how musicians make their bucks. I thought I'd post this very interesting article, so that "all y'all" could get an accurate picture as to how it all goes down. Hope all is fine, loving and Summery with everyone. Kevin Excerpted from Baffler No. 5 by Steve Albini Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit. I imagine these people, some of them good friends, some of them barely acquaintances, at one end of this trench. I also imagine a faceless industry lackey at the other end, holding a fountain pen and a contract waiting to be signed. Nobody can see what's printed on the contract. It's too far away, and besides, the shit stench is making everybody's eyes water. The lackey shouts to everybody that the first one to swim the trench gets to sign the contract. Everybody dives in the trench and they struggle furiously to get to the other end. Two people arrive simultaneously and begin wrestling furiously, clawing each other and dunking each other under the shit. Eventually, one of them capitulates, and there's only one contestant left. He reaches for the pen, but the Lackey says, "Actually, I think you need a little more development. Swim it again, please. Backstroke." And he does, of course. I. A&R Scouts Every major label involved in the hunt for new bands now has on staff a high-profile point man, an "A&R" rep who can present a comfortable face to any prospective band. The initials stand for "Artist and Repertoire," because historically, the A&R staff would select artists to record music that they had also selected, out of an available pool of each. This is still the case, though not openly. These guys are universally young [about the same age as the bands being wooed], and nowadays they always have some obvious underground rock credibility flag they can wave. Lyle Preslar, former guitarist for Minor Threat, is one of them. Terry Tolkin, former NY independent booking agent and assistant manager at Touch and Go is one of them. Al Smith, formersoundman at CBGB is one of them. Mike Gitter, former editor of XXX fanzine and contributor to Rip, Kerrang and other lowbrow rags is one of them. Many of the annoying turds who used to staff college radio stations are in their ranks as well. There are several reasons A&R scouts are always young. The explanation usually copped-to is that the scout will be "hip" to the current musical "scene." A more important reason is that the bands will intuitively trust someone they think is a peer, and who speaks fondly of the same formative rock and roll experiences. The A&R person is the first person to make contact with the band, and as such is the first person to promise them the moon. Who better to promise them the moon than an idealistic young turk who expects to be calling the shots in a few years, and who has had no previous experience with a big record company. Hell, he's as naive as the band he's duping. When he tells them no one will interfere in their creative process, he probably even believes it. When he sits down with the band for the first time, over a plate of angel hair pasta, he can tell them with all sincerity that when they sign with company X, they're really signing with him and he's on their side. Remember that great, gig I saw you at in '85? Didn't we have a blast. By now all rock bands are wise enough to be suspicious of music industry scum. There is a pervasive caricature in popular culture of a portly, middle aged ex-hipster talking a mile-a-minute, using outdated jargon and calling everybody "baby." After meeting "their" A&R guy, the band will say to themselves and everyone else, "He's not like a record company guy at all! He's like one of us." And they will be right. That's one of the reasons he was hired. These A&R guys are not allowed to write contracts. What they do is present the band with a letter of intent, or "deal memo," which loosely states some terms, and affirms that the band will sign with the label once a contract has been agreed on. The spookiest thing about this harmless sounding little "memo," is that it is, for all legal purposes, a binding document. That is, once the band sign it, they are under obligation to conclude a deal with the label. If the label presents them with a contract that the band don't want to sign, all the label has to do is wait. There are a hundred other bands willing to sign the exact same contract, so the label is in a position of strength. These letters never have any term of expiration, so the band remain bound by the deal memo until a contract is signed, no matter how long that takes. The band cannot sign to another label or even put out its own material unless they are released from their agreement, which never happens. Make no mistake about it: once a band has signed a letter of intent, they will either eventually sign a contract that suits the label or they will be destroyed. One of my favorite bands was held hostage for the better part of two years by a slick young "He's not like a label guy at all,' A&R rep, on the basis of such a deal memo. He had failed to come through on any of his promises (something he did with similar effect to another well-known band), and so the band wanted out. Another label expressed interest, but when the A&R man was asked to release the band, he said he would need money or points, or possibly both, before he would consider it. The new label was afraid the price would be too dear, and they said no thanks. On the cusp of making their signature album, an excellent band, humiliated, broke up from the stress and the many months of inactivity. II. There's This Band There's this band. They're pretty ordinary, but they're also pretty good, so they've attracted some attention. They're signed to a moderate-sized "independent" label owned by a distribution company, and they have another two albums owed to the label. They're a little ambitious. They'd like to get signed by a major label so they can have some security-you know, get some good equipment, tour in a proper tour bus-nothing fancy, just a little reward for all the hard work. To that end, they got a manager. He knows some of the label guys, and he can shop their next project to all the right people. He takes his cut, sure, but it's only 15%, and if he can get them signed then it's money well spent. Anyway, it doesn't cost them any thing if it doesn't work. 15% of nothing isn't much! One day an A&R scout calls them, says he's "been following them for a while now," and when their manager mentioned them to him, it just "clicked." Would they like to meet with him about the possibility of working out a deal with his label? Wow. Big Break time. They meet the guy, and y'know what-he's not what they expected from a label guy. He's young and dresses pretty much like the band does. He knows all their favorite bands. He's like one of them. He tells them he wants to go to bat for them, to try to get them everything they want. He says anything is possible with the right attitude. They conclude the evening by taking home a copy of a deal memo they wrote out and signed on the spot. The A&R guy was full of great ideas, even talked about using a name producer. Butch Vig is out of the question-he wants 100 g's and three points, but they can get Don Fleming for $30,000 plus three points. Even that's a little steep, so maybe they'll go with that guy who used to be in David Letterman's band. He only wants three points. Or they can have just anybody record it [like Warton Tiers, maybe-cost you 5 or 10 grand] and have Andy Wallace remix it for 4 grand a track plus 2 points. It was a lot to think about. Well, they like this guy and they trust him. Besides, they already signed the deal memo. He must have been serious about wanting them to sign. They break the news to their current label, and the label manager says he wants them to succeed, so they have his blessing. He will need to be compensated, of course, for the remaining albums left on their contract, but he'll work it out with the label himself. Sub Pop made millions from selling off Nirvana, and Twin Tone hasn't done bad either: 50 grand for the Babes and 60 grand for the Poster Children-without having to sell a single additional record. It'll be something modest. The new label doesn't mind, so long as it's recoupable out of royalties. Well, they get the final contract, and it's not quite what they expected. They figure it's better to be safe than sorry and they turn it over to a lawyer-one who says he's experienced in entertainment law-and he hammers out a few bugs. They're still not sure about it, but the lawyer says he's seen a lot of contracts, and theirs is pretty good. They'll be getting a great royalty: 13% [less a 10% packaging deduction]. Wasn't it Buffalo Tom that were only getting 12% less 10? Whatever. The old label only wants 50 grand, and no points. Hell, Sub Pop got 3 points when they let Nirvana go. They're signed for four years, with options on each year, for a total of over a million dollars! That's a lot of money in any man's English. The first year's advance alone is $250,000. Just think about it, a quarter-million, just for being in a rock band! Their manager thinks it's a great deal, especially the large advance. Besides, he knows a publishing company that will take the band on if they get signed, and even give them an advance of 20 grand, so they'll be making that money too. The manager says publishing is pretty mysterious, and nobody really knows where all the money comes from, but the lawyer can look that contract over too. Hell, it's free money. Their booking agent is excited about the band signing to a major. He says they can maybe average $1,000 or $2,000 a night from now on. That's enough to justify a five week tour, and with tour support, they can use a proper crew, buy some good equipment and even get a tour bus! Buses are pretty expensive, but if you figure in the price of a hotel room for everybody in the band and crew, they're actually about the same cost. Some bands (like Therapy? and Sloan and Stereolab) use buses on their tours even when they're getting paid only a couple hundred bucks a night, and this tour should earn at least a grand or two every night. It'll be worth it. The band will be more comfortable and will play better. The agent says a band on a major label can get a merchandising company to pay them an advance on t-shirt sales! Ridiculous! There's a gold mine here! The lawyer should look over the merchandising contract, just to be safe. They get drunk at the signing party. Polaroids are taken and everybody looks thrilled. The label picked them up in a limo. They decided to go with the producer who used to be in Letterman's band. He had these technicians come in and tune the drums for them and tweak their amps and guitars. He had a guy bring in a slew of expensive old vintage microphones. Boy, were they "warm." He even had a guy come in and check the phase of all the equipment in the control room! Boy, was he professional. He used a bunch of equipment on them and by the end of it, they all agreed that it sounded very "punchy," yet "warm." All that hard work paid off. With the help of a video, the album went like hotcakes! They sold a quarter million copies! Here is the math that will explain just how fucked they are: These figures are representative of amounts that appear in record contracts daily. There's no need to skew the figures to make the scenario look bad, since real-life examples more than abound. Income is underlined, expenses are not. Advance: $250,000 Manager's cut: $37,500 Legal fees: $10,000 Recording Budget: $150,000 Producer's advance: $50,000 Studio fee: $52,500 Drum, Amp, Mic and Phase "Doctors": $3,000 Recording tape: $8,000 Equipment rental: $5,000 Cartage and Transportation: $5,000 Lodgings while in studio: $10,000 Catering: $3,000 Mastering: $10,000 Tape copies, reference CDs, shipping tapes, misc expenses: $2,000 Video budget: $30,000 Cameras: $8,000 Crew: $5,000 Processing and transfers: $3,000 Offline: $2,000 Online editing: $3,000 Catering: $1,000 Stage and construction: $3,000 Copies, couriers, transportation: $2,000 Director's fee: $3,000 Album Artwork: $5,000 Promotional photo shoot and duplication: $2,000 Band fund: $15,000 New fancy professional drum kit: $5,000 New fancy professional guitars (2): $3,000 New fancy professional guitar amp rigs (2): $4,000 New fancy potato-shaped bass guitar: $1,000 New fancy rack of lights bass amp: $1,000 Rehearsal space rental: $500 Big blowout party for their friends: $500 Tour expense (5 weeks): $50,875 Bus: $25,000 Crew (3): $7,500 Food and per diems: $7,875 Fuel: $3,000 Consumable supplies: $3,500 Wardrobe: $1,000 Promotion: $3,000 Tour gross income: $50,000 Agent s cut: $7,500 Manager's cut: $7,500 Merchandising advance: $20,000 Manager's cut: $3,000 Lawyer's fee: $1,000 Publishing advance: $20,000 Manager's cut: $3,000 Lawyer's fee: $1,000 Record sales: 250,000 @ $12 = $3,000,000 gross retail revenue Royalty (13% of 90% of retail): $351,000 Less advance: $250,000 Producer's points: (3% less $50,000 advance) $40,000 Promotional budget: $25,000 Recoupable buyout from previous label: $50,000 Net royalty: (-$14,000) Record company income: Record wholesale price $6.50 x 250,000 = $1,625,000 gross income Artist Royalties: $351,000 Deficit from royalties: $14,000 Manufacturing, packaging and distribution @ $2.20 per record: $550,000 Gross profit: $710,000 The Balance Sheet: This is how much each player got paid at the end of the game. Record company: $710,000 Producer: $90,000 Manager: $51,000 Studio: $52,500 Previous label: $50,000 Agent: $7,500 Lawyer: $12,000 Band member net income each: $4,031.25 The band is now 1/4 of the way through its contract, has made the music industry more than 3 millon dollars richer, but is in the hole $14,000 on royalties. The band members have each earned about 1/3 as much as they would working at a 7-11, but they got to ride in a tour bus for a month. The next album will be about the same, except that the record company will insist they spend more time and money on it. Since the previous one never "recouped," the band will have no leverage, and will oblige. The next tour will be about the same, except the merchandising advance will have already been paid, and the band, strangely enough, won't have earned any royalties from their t-shirts yet. Maybe the t-shirt guys have figured out how to count money like record company guys. Some of your friends are probably already this fucked. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 10:56:20 -0700 From: Steve VanDevender Subject: RE: cd collecting Dave Williamson writes: > First, MP3 sound quality is horrible. It is a sampled and compressed medium > of something that is already sampled in the first place. It sounds fine > played through headphones with a portable box that is not capable of quality > sound production. It sounds fine in a car where the background noise > overwhelms blemishes. But through any decent quality sound system in a > proper listening environment, it is painful to listen to. So storing all of > your CDs to a hard drive in MP3 format has ultimately destroyed the quality > of the original product, and you are protecting nothing. Some people say this, but I think most people are not perceptually capable of distinguishing between the audio quality of a reasonably-compressed (128Kbit/sec or higher-rate) MP3 file and the original CD, especially when a good MP3 encoder like LAME is used. _All_ recorded music, even on analog mediums like tape or vinyl, is in effect "sampled". Analog mediums do not exactly duplicate the original audio because of nonlinearities and noise introduced in the recording electronics and limited resolution of the recording medium in use. Digital recording is subject to similar effects, but a properly-designed digital system can actually better duplicate the original audio than the original analog systems, if the resolution of the digital system is measurably better than the uncertainties and introduced noise of the analog one. I think it's basically an audiophile myth that analog recording is inherently superior to digital recording, and this leads to people fooling themselves into thinking that analog sounds better even though it may be measurably less precise at duplicating audio signals than digital; some of this comes from digital systems actually being able to make precise specifications about their resolution in ways that audio systems cannot. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 11:38:26 -0700 From: Steve VanDevender Subject: RE: cd collecting Dave Williamson writes: > You and I are not talking about the same thing, and it was not a > non-sequitur to the thread that was opened. Excuse me for expressing an > opinion. If you really and truly pay for what you keep, more power to you. > I wasn't talking about you. I've just had my fill of the arguments for free > music distribution and copying based on arguments of "I need a backup", or > "it's only for my own use", or "I only copy it to give to friends", blah, > blah, blah. I've heard it all before too. I think those of us who are doing the right things with the technologies for copying recordings and converting audio formats -- only doing it with stuff we have properly bought, not allowing unrestricted or unauthorized duplication or use of our copies, and so on -- are quite rightly uphappy about the extremism on _both_ sides of the debate. Those who advocate taking away our ability to make valid use of such technology because it's possible to abuse it are just as much of a threat to listeners _and_ musicians as those who advocate its abuse. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 17:12:31 +0100 From: "Phil Tate" Subject: Re: cd copy protection redux >Is there a CD logo on the Lennox album etched into the jewel case tray? That >one's gotten at least one record company that routinely copy-protects into >hot water :-) Are protected discs allowed to call themselves Compact Discs? Because my copy of the special edition of the new Radiohead, which is protected (from CD-Wow), has "Compact Disc" written across the back in big letters. Phil ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 12:02:17 -0700 From: Anji Subject: Re: ecto-digest V9 #172 well, thanks, dave. unfortunately i, and probably a number of the other musicians admired on this list, can't even survive off the little we DO make from the music. our band makes just enough money to put back into our studio to make the next album, or do a few shows. its very, very sad and disheartening for us right now in the biz..... just my little 2 cents. anji On Wednesday, June 18, 2003, at 09:25 AM, ecto-digest wrote: > Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 08:47:38 -0400 > From: "Dave Williamson" > Subject: RE: cd collecting > > [snip] > > Second, I've heard every argument under the sun about music piracy. > Ultimately the guy at the end of the food chain is the musician that > created > what you're listening to in the first place. When you pay for > something, > that musician gets something for it. Do I believe that the musician > gets an > appropriate share on the sale of a CD? No. Do I believe the record > companies have taken advantage of the consumer? Yes. But ultimately > I will > only be able to continue to enjoy one of my life's passions if the > people > that create it get paid for it in one way, shape, or form. > > If you steal music from the Internet, or rip your friend's CDs, and > never > buy anything yourself, then you are in the end stealing from the > guy/gal who > created it in the first place. Plain and simple. There is no > argument in > the world that makes that right, just or ethical to an artist. And in > the > end continued proliferation and condoning of the theft of artistry will > ultimately result in an end to what we all enjoy in the first place. > Artists are people. People need money to live. An artist makes their > money > from what they create, and the distribution of same. If people steal > what > they create via the distribution mechanism, then the artist ends up > with > nothing. I can't tolerate all of the arguments against corporations > that > are pro theft of copyright because the ultimate copyright is owned by > the > artist. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 12:33:10 -0700 From: Joseph Zitt Subject: Re: carousel players cjmacs wrote: > i was DEFINITELY more married to vinyl though. the thrill of ripping the > shrinkwrap off and the excitement of having all of that LARGE size artwork > was way more gratifying! i HATE opening cds- that sticky, goppy sticker > annoys me to no end! BTW, for those who might not know, there's a trick to getting those maddening top-bar stickers off of jewel boxes: Holding the jewel box by the sides, carefully press outward on the lower hinge of the box so that the cover detaches from the tray. Flip it upward so that the cover and tray are lying flat together. The sticky bar will now also be flat, and relatively easily peeled off the cover and body, which you can then snap back together. Disclaimer: I'm a trained professional but still find myself occasionally flinging the cases across the room in frustration :-) Maybe someone with a webcam can make a visual HOWTO to aid EWS sufferers... ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 12:44:06 -0700 From: Joseph Zitt Subject: Re: cd collecting - musician's earnings Robert Lovejoy wrote: > This is an interesting topic. Dave's post is well taken, but I am > wondering if most musician's income is from recording sales or concerts? It > would be helpful to know that. I had been under the impression that > musicians didn't get all that much, relatively, from album sales, compared > to what they earned playing venues. The idea was, if the recording was > popular people would buy tickets to see them play. The problem is that I've heard that musicians don't make much from recordings, which serve instead as inspiration for people to attend performances. And musicians don't make much from performances, but they serve as inspiration for people to buy recordings. > A lot of the ripping problem stems from the record companies' greed. > CDs have been so overpriced. When I was in college in the sixties albums > were $3.29. But how were prices on other things compared to now? I ran across a letter recently that I wrote in 1977, complaining loudly that an 800 page book that I wrote had the ridiculously high price of $1.95. > I could see CDs being $7, but they started out around $18 and > are still there. I know there were startup costs to recoup, and in fact the > industry promised at the beginning that album costs would go down with mass > acceptance. But they got greedy. One curious thing is that I got used to getting almost all my CDs either used or on sale, and poopooed the idea that people were actually spending $18-20 per disc on CDs. But spending much of my life behind the register nowadays, I see that they do. People are dropping incredible amounts of money on CDs nowadays, and it does seem to be all out of proportion with everything. And the price doesn't seem to correspond to anything. A lot of recent releases (such as Zwan and the new Metallica) come with a DVD casually thrown in and are cheaper than the simple recordings without frills. Ah, capitalism... ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 12:48:34 -0700 From: Joseph Zitt Subject: Re: cd collecting Dave Williamson wrote: > How can you help artists directly? Donate money to them for recording time. > Pay to see them live - most artists do get a share of the gate receipts from > the venue. Directly send them some $ when you download their music. But > providing their creations for free to others who are not going to pay for > them, or stealing their creations themselves only screws the creator in the > end. As small as their take on a CD sale might be, at least in the end they > got something for what they produced. It's interesting that different people have different threshholds of guilt-feelings on this. I eagerly make MP3 mix tapes (as it were) for folks but shy away from copying whole albums. And the Happy Gift Project is also somewhere on this spectrum. n.p. my MP3 Singles directory on random play, which I use as my alarm clock. It gently woke me up to Don Henley, bounced through the Modern Jazz Quartet, played a few moments of Morton Feldman, and is now playing Genesis. Ahhh.... ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 21:25:42 +0100 From: "Mike Gray" Subject: Collecting CDs / Bettie Serveert > how about it, anyone else out there who is willing to admit they're a > little more married to the medium than maybe they'd like? With more than 2,000 CDs and 400 DVDs, I would say that I indeed have a problem. Re: the Bettie Serveert album, I like it a lot - had it a few months... "Smack" reminds me of the old Britpop group Sleeper... it's a great album, well worth investigating, although I believe they've recently finished a US tour so might be a bit hard to catch live. Hope they're coming to the UK. Incidentally, anyone else who can't abide the new Jewel record? It just depresses the hell out of me to even listen to it. Mike ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 13:57:10 -0700 From: Joseph Zitt Subject: Re: Collecting CDs / Bettie Serveert Mike Gray wrote: > Incidentally, anyone else who can't abide the new Jewel record? It just > depresses the hell out of me to even listen to it. I kind of like it, but that may be helped by being mostly unfamiliar with her earlier work. It's certainly a lot less dumb than a lot of the stuff in the genre she's playing with for this disc. But I have a hunch that it's sort of an experiment and that, now that she's familiar with that way of working, she'll reintegrate that stuff with stronger songwriting in the future. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 17:47:15 -0400 (EDT) From: Sue Trowbridge Subject: RE: cd collecting On Wed, 18 Jun 2003, Dave Williamson wrote: > In theory the ease with which the medium can now be produced should have > promoted a multitude of small labels distributing product at a much lower > price point which in the end would have applied the appropriate competitive > pressure on the big guys. Artists generally get a better percentage from > smaller labels. However I have been unable to comprehend how the smaller > labels that are out there charge as much or more than the big labels > themselves. Have pity on the small labels... once we've pay for manufacturing, a photographer & a graphic designer to do the artwork, advertising, mailing 300+ free promo copies to radio stations & journalists, and in many cases helping to finance the production costs of the CD, we're usually WAY in the red before the disc ever hits the streets. So don't begrudge us if we charge $15 or $16 for a CD that we've already sunk several thousand dollars into. I will point out, though, that you can often save money by buying a disc directly from the record company's web site or from the artist -- remember that of the $18 you spend on a CD at Tower or Virgin, a big chunk of that is going to the distributor and to the retailer. It could take many months for payment to *finally* trickle down to the label and then to the artist. It's tough going, but we do it because we love music -- believe me, you don't start a small record label 'cause you want to make money! I still think CDs are a pretty good deal, considering that first-run movies now cost $9.50 at most theaters here. For just a few dollars more, you get something you can keep forever, theoretically anyway ;) - --Sue ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 00:39:21 +0200 From: "ron" Subject: cd colecting hi >>>>some negative comments about mp3s & file sharing yes there are some miserable bastards who collect hundreds of mp3s and never buy the albms. so what??? in my experience they are normally, the tasteless fools who have hundreds of copies of the tasteless garbage put out on the hit parade by bands who are promoted by the same companies ignoring the type of music listened to by people on lists such as this. we hear the stats about how many millions of copies of tracks are downloaded. but they are downloaded by the same miserable bastards who would *never* buy the cds if forced to do so. so how much are the recording companies missing out on if people who wouldnt buy the cds anyway download them??????? i personally, and a number of people i have come across treat file sharing as a means of discovering new music. mp3s i have downloaded, or shared by mail have caused me to discover more music & buy more cds - mainly because the music i like is *not* available at my local cd store where i can listen to it first. so yes - i have a whole heap of samplers, and some copies of full albums in my rack. some artists who i have gone on to buy more of. some who i havent. but the record companies have earned far more out of me via copies than they will ever lose. ron ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 08:46:04 +0930 From: jonathan soong Subject: Re: cd collecting >Yes a revolution is necessary, but the only revolution I see being advocated >these days is the free distribution of music. That solves nothing, and will >in the end destroy it. > It will destroy the music *business* It won't destroy music. The people left making music are the people who would make music anyway, regardless of being paid. Isn't that what an artist is? ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 08:50:18 +0930 From: jonathan soong Subject: Re: cd collecting >> First, MP3 sound quality is horrible. > > > I rip mine now at the highest quality VBR (variable bit rate) so the > sound > is pretty good, but you're right in that CDs will always rule, > sound-wise. They already *don't* rule. check out the lossless audio codecs. http://www.monkeysaudio.com/ (is just one, but there are many). 1minute of music ~ 5 meg. Hence your 45 minute cd is about 200 meg. That's 5 cd's per gig. 600 cd's per 120 gig. A 120 gig drive is ~ $200. 600 CD's burned in EXACTLY THE SAME quality as cds. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 16:44:15 -0700 (PDT) From: Nadyne Mielke Subject: Re: cd collecting jonathan soong wrote: > They already *don't* rule. check out the lossless audio codecs. > http://www.monkeysaudio.com/ (is just one, but there are many). > 1minute of music ~ 5 meg. > Hence your 45 minute cd is about 200 meg. > That's 5 cd's per gig. 600 cd's per 120 gig. > A 120 gig drive is ~ $200. > 600 CD's burned in EXACTLY THE SAME quality as cds. Well, depending on the quality of a few other things in the chain, too. If your computer has a bad sound card, then it isn't really the exact same quality; a bad sound card can have a sizeable (and audible) impact on the quality of the output, even if using a lossless compression codec. It's pretty much useless to encode your files to a lossless algorithm if you don't have an acceptable output device. If you're using those horrible little computer speakers that everyone seems to have, you might as well just stick with MP3. That said, IMHO, there are two shortfalls of the various lossless codecs: * Unlike MP3, they do not allow the resulting file to store information about the file. MP3s have ID3 tags that contain (most of) the information you want: song title, artist, album title, etc. Much of the usability of MP3s comes from the inclusion of the ID3 tag. * Most of the various lossless codecs are more intended for storage rather than daily use. You can't play them directly like you can MP3s. I know that Shorten has a WinAmp plug-in called SHNAmp, but it's kinda kludgy. (A large part of that, of course, is that there's no ID3 info ... ) Both of these points drastically impact the usability of these codecs as a playback mechanism. The former needs to be solved in the design of the codec, the latter is (obviously!) a software issue. /nm ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 09:52:58 +0930 From: jonathan soong Subject: Re: cd collecting - mp3 vs. lossless I agree with your points below. I think the fact is tho, that lossless codecs will be in a usable form in a very short time (~18 months) With disk space getting so cheap, its only a matter of time i feel. Hands up who has ipods? :) >ll, depending on the quality of a few other things in the chain, too. > If your computer has a bad sound card, then it isn't really the exact >same quality; a bad sound card can have a sizeable (and audible) impact >on the quality of the output, even if using a lossless compression >codec. It's pretty much useless to encode your files to a lossless >algorithm if you don't have an acceptable output device. If you're >using those horrible little computer speakers that everyone seems to >have, you might as well just stick with MP3. > >That said, IMHO, there are two shortfalls of the various lossless >codecs: >* Unlike MP3, they do not allow the resulting file to store information >about the file. MP3s have ID3 tags that contain (most of) the >information you want: song title, artist, album title, etc. Much of >the usability of MP3s comes from the inclusion of the ID3 tag. >* Most of the various lossless codecs are more intended for storage >rather than daily use. You can't play them directly like you can MP3s. > I know that Shorten has a WinAmp plug-in called SHNAmp, but it's kinda >kludgy. (A large part of that, of course, is that there's no ID3 info >... ) > >Both of these points drastically impact the usability of these codecs >as a playback mechanism. The former needs to be solved in the design >of the codec, the latter is (obviously!) a software issue. > >/nm ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 18:19:57 -0700 From: "London, Sherry" Subject: ecto-digest V9 #172 Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 08:47:38 -0400 From: "Dave Williamson" Subject: RE: cd collecting So if we're going to talk about people getting screwed, and self defence, I'd like to understand what the rights are of the creator of the work instead of the poor mistreated consumer who ultimately doesn't want to pay for anything. When a pair of shoes wears out, you buy a new pair. I have 100's of LPs in my collection that are as much as 30 years old, and in mint condition because I take care of them. I have never had to do anything to copy or preserve them. They will last my life time. As will the 100's of CDs I've bought since the LP faded as a viable medium. Dave, I am not really clear about what you are meaning. I want to do the right thing for the artist but as someone who has bought more than 10,000 + CDs over the years, I don't feel like I am depriving anyone of living but myself and I am happy to do it. I know much of the music I buy these days is a result of a friend emailing me an MP3 to listen to and I love it and immediately go to Amazon or CD Baby or where ever and order it (hopefully one day I can get around to listening to it all :-))). I don't use file sharing programs because I don't want others on my computer but mainly because it is requires more knowledge than I possess or so I believe. I like to down load the CDs I have purchased onto my computer so that I can make mood compilations with multiple artist's songs for my own enjoyment or the enjoyment of friends. It is also the way I expose my good friends to new music, since I only give one sample of an artist and never copy entire CDs for other people. These have resulted in many purchases of the CDs of artists I put on these CDs I occasionally burn. I don't like to think I am doing something wrong because I feel I am getting others excited about an artist, who would other wise never know or hear them. I use to do this with cassette tapes years ago. I joined this list because it seemed to me that the people here were devoted to the music, not getting something for nothing. I am new here but I have been impressed with the things I have read that support music and the artist, emotionally, spiritually, financially and almost any way I can think about. Peace, Sherry Btw...my LPs haven't held up as well but I played them to death perhaps. This e-mail/fax message, including any attachments, is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. 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