catharsis wrote:manatee wrote:One of her students nonchalantly disclosed that not only had he NEVER purchased a CD before, but he had never even felt the NEED to purchase one. Dude was 20 years old! (and he didn't download mp3 albums or songs either... only torrent downloads)
that's a damn shame. i have a few friends that don't buy too many CDs nowadays (if any) but they atleast USED to. Everytime i buy a CD that i already have downloaded, my friend goes "what the hell is wrong with you?" i guess it's just getting harder for people to comprehend the concept of owning something physical, to sit down and look at a booklet while listening to the CD and to support a band you really enjoy.
then again, i refuse to pay for porn when i can watch it for free online.
Jumping into the CD discussion... part of the reason a lot of people don't buy anymore (I think) is because they don't get why they even
should. As in, they've been raised in a world where music is 'free', for all intents and purposes (you can just download it - what's stopping you?) so when they see someone who actually
paid for the music they listen to, they're like 'why would you pay for that when you could have it for free?' Since they were raised in this era, they don't get that, at one time, music was a physical product - something you had to BUY to listen to! You'd have to go over to your buddy's house and listen to his copy with him if he had an album you wanted/didn't have; there was no such thing as ripping files from a CD, or downloading torrents, etc. But since we live in a digital age, now, and media so quickly and easily distributed... the concept of actually
paying for something that was once a product is foreign, to them, seeing as they can have it for free now. That's how all my friends see it, at least. If nothing else, just buy
any version - physical or digital - just to support the artist in question! How else can they be expected to continue doing what they love, if they don't have the funds? They have to make a living too, obviously, so I'm pretty proud to say that I've gladly paid for every album I own and love... Dev's work included.
Speaking of myself - I buy physical copies of everything; I've never downloaded anything. Youtube and free streams (when available) more than do the job for me, if I'm looking to preview something; I don't feel right downloading the actual music (knowing it's... well... illegal) even if I wind up buying the album. Primarily, I pick up CDs; I'd go for vinyl in a heartbeat, but I enjoy having the digital files too - I like to be able to have both physical
and digital copies of what I listen to. I have a Zune (yeah, I'm such a rebel!) because I'm a freak about audio quality, and I like to be able to put my headphones on and listen wherever... something I'm sure pretty much everyone here can relate to. For me, nothing beats the anticipation of previewing a track or two online, falling in love with what I hear, waiting for it to show up in the mail, and finally listening to the record in question and having my mind blown when it arrives. I love the really elaborate packaging some albums come in, too (those digibooks Kscope releases come in are gorgeous; that's how ALL CDs should be!); but I'm very well aware that I'm not the norm. Maybe it's just because I've grown up in a household where my folks have over 800 records on vinyl, 500 something on CD, and a ton of 'out-there' stuff in that collection like Zappa and King Crimson and whatnot, that I've grown up into what I am: someone who appreciates music as an art form, not to sound snobbish or anything.
It's everyone else's business, how they perceive music, but the whole downloading thing... it's sad, really. Steven Wilson can be very pretentious, at times (suggesting that there shouldn't be portable music players?) but he had a point in saying that it's sad how physical copies of albums these days are often pretty mediocre. CDs and vinyl aren't the main way of selling and distributing music, anymore (if anything, they're be becoming novelty items for people who want them) so why not make them a little bit more SPECIAL for the people who actually care to buy them? When all you get is a plastic case with a disc and booklet, and then you look at something like Porcupine Tree's Lightbulb Sun reissue (once again, in a beautiful digibook format) all your other albums just kind of... pale, in comparison. How music should be released, nowadays (I think) is for there to be two standard formats - digital, and elaborate physical. Digital as in file downloading, obviously; physical as in an expanded package that's a little bit more expensive, but with a LOT of thought put into it - in other words, a high-quality product that actually feels like it's worth it's price tag to the people who actually care to buy it. It'd kind of being a way to say 'thanks' to the people who still buy physical... and giving them (and others, too) more of a reason to consider buying physical. Make it look like a product; put MORE into it than what you can just download online, and you might see people start to become attracted to that format a little bit more...
...on and on...
