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I do think that we are going to see a rapid dwindling of physical media
for recordings. It's inevitable given the iPod generations' predilection for instant access to mostly free music. At the same time, I'm with Mark Francombe about the importance in my life of the hundreds of hours I've spent all over the world in record and CD shops...........browsing over live gig merch tables, talking about music with other music lovers in, gasp, real time and not on chat; Handing a physical copy of a CD to someone who I'm trying introduce a new artist to......watching them look at the artwork as they experience the music. I love artwork (and even have been purchasing Vinyl which has trebled in volume at the wonderful local indie all vinyl record store, Meta Music and the large indie CD/Vinyl record store Streetlight Records in Santa Cruz where I live. (also, as a side note: many of the oldest of the baby boomers are beginning to pass away now and there are incredible Vinyl music collections coming into Logos Books and Records in the past couple of years. Record players are also seeing a huge boon in sales. they are for sale in at least a half a dozen locations on our own Pacific Garden Mall. As a self proclaimed music fetishist, I love taking out CD artwork and reading it and perusing it. I love reading album liner notes and looking at the cover art. Hell, I love the feel of taking a vinyl record out of it's sleeve. Right now I'm really enjoying listening to Matt Davignon's excellent new release "Living Things" in glorious 16 bit/44k CD quality and enjoying the hell out of his really beautiful zen graphics...............also I'm really digging that I paid for it to support his wonderful artistry. This may make me a dinosaur but there is an aesthetic enhancement to me and makes the entire experience more pleasing. I just jammed with Peter Hayes of BRMC down at NAMM and loving his musical sensibility but being unfamiliar with his work, I delighted in taking a couple of days to track down three of his CDs in used condition and going to support my local independent record store (which hires several extremely good indie musicians by the way) and buy the remaining one at full pop. I just wouldn't get the same kind of joy out of downloading even a high fidelity FLAC recording for my iTunes on my laptops (and, shudder, I still don't own an MP3 player). And we haven't even talked about the sound yet. There is something really enjoyable to me about the sound of Vinyl, the sound of CDs, hell, even the sound of old cassettes (whose only copies of roots reggae I have on that medium). It's just a different experience. Perhaps not better, but certainly enjoyable. So, I"m truly hoping that the vinyl record, the CD, the audio cassette, the reel to reel tape recorder and the wire and cylinder recordings to disappear for good. |