new or old ?

Now,I mean right now, I feel I miss the old way , where you had an album on a format that was a hassle to change ( as in, physically get up from your chair and change) . . that you wanted to listen to from beginning to end.


Now days with ipods etc and being able make mp3 cd comps in seconds , it seems that listening to a whole album is a long gone concept.

I know we all have a choice, but it seems that albums are dead ?


I hope not.

Vinyl has been making a comeback even BestBuy is stocking LP's again.

There is no sole in mp3's or owning them, but take my town you are lucky if you can buy a cd since woolies went under. .

r o y a l ® said:

Now,I mean right now, I feel I miss the old way , where you had an album on a format that was a hassle to change ( as in, physically get up from your chair and change) . . that you wanted to listen to from beginning to end.


Now days with ipods etc and being able make mp3 cd comps in seconds , it seems that listening to a whole album is a long gone concept.

I know we all have a choice, but it seems that albums are dead ?


I hope not.

Click to expand...

there is so much excellent music being made below the radar . i mean you are right there is a turn aways from the album in whole. i mean most people dont have the time to dedicate a hour to listen to a album in its entirety these days. i can assure you tho the full length is far from dead. there is so much music out there but you need to look for it and there is a really huge ammount of music that is not interesting or good out there as well.
the death of the album has been here for quite sometime. so many bands put out records with maybe two or three songs on them being decent the rest being crap.
there is a lot of cool albums from the last decade some bigger bands put out some decent music but i am all about the smaller labels when it comes to music now. i mean its not that i dont think the major labels put out talented artists. its just that i can hear there best work on the radio.
really the last decade has been both good and bad for recorded music.
the good is there is more music out there than ever before in history.
the bad is there is more music out there than ever before in history.
what do i mean by that.....
well simply put is there is so much out there that the searching process can be overwhelming.
dont give up on the full length man. i am sure there is cool stuff out there but you are not going to find it at places like hmv or best buy.
i mean one of my favorite albums of the last decade was danse macabre by the faint.
pretty much every track was solid and the album itself was cohesive and fluid.
theres lots of other bands that put out cool records but as i say the obscurity of these bands is frustrating.

Every now and then, I have to put on a piece a vinyl just to get that "old" sound back in my head. You start to miss it after a while. The thing that really bothers me with new stuff is the fact that most artists don't really come up with good album songs any more. One or two "hits" out of 12 songs is all you're going to get. Bring back the days of concept albums!

Amen Brother Bobby, the last concept album that truly effected and inspired me was Daft Punk's Discovery.

I'm leaning towards the theory that music isn't being appreciated anymore. It's consumed and is disposable because of the manner it's now listened and distributed. Like r o y a l ® says it's so easy to load up an mp3 player with 100 albums and make playlists and such, this has taken away more appreciation I think. Sitting down and listening to an album from start to finish isn't how music is enjoyed these days. Just like Bill says, the sheer volume around makes it hard for anything new to have an impacting cultural significance. I don't have the proof to back it up, but I'm betting you aren't getting albums staying in the charts for 6 months at a time anymore.

I personally find nothing more exciting than listening to a brand new album from band I've never heard of before from start to finish, but I am only finding I get that satisfaction these days in underground grindcore albums and far less with my favoured rock/pop/hip hop/dance acts. But due to the ease of modern media, I'll just download an album and skip through a few tracks before I'll give it that kind of treatment, as I need that spark to get my interest in the first place to then sit through the whole thing.

So I guess I've been conditioned as well to adapt to the new media formats. BUT, if i do like an album I always either try to buy the cd or get high quality .flacs that I can then burn to CDDA and record to tape to fully appreciate and enjoy. And I always find the permanency and physicality of a cassette that I've gone through to effort to creat makes me get that little bit more of a connection to the album than just listening to the mp3s on my pc/ipod every time.



Rock On.

I love my albums and cassettes, And yes digital music has taken over, records are still present and so are turntables, I sometimes have to copy my records to listen in my car. My car radio have both the cassette player and the cd player, And everytime I copy my records I copy them into blank cassettes to hear them in my cassette player. I preffer records and cassettes cause to me they sound deeper and fuller . I'm proud of being oldschool, Just another example I love my records, I just won a JVC-DC7 so I can play them, ANd have a VZ-3000, And a Panasonic RX-SJ-6000. This summer I'll bring a few of my records to the picnics and play them in either the JVC or the Panasonic .

i don't own an ipod!

Never been a big one for listening to an album in it's entirety, I tend to pick and choose tracks and 'dip in'.

Although to be fair, I've always been FAR more into 12" / 7" singles than LP's - partly because of sound quality, partly because I've always found most of 'my' kind of music gets released on 12", and partly because I'm one of those odd people who enjoys the 'mechanics' of playing records, watching records spin, and getting up to change a record.

The whole vinyl experience is so much more engaging than any other way of listening to music.

Don't get me wrong, for sheer convenience I access my gigantic mp3 library which I tend to encode at at least 256kb and consists of an ever-growing number of my vinyl rips, so I still get a little of the vinyl 'feel' even from my mp3s

Good thread Royal.

it really boils down to different strokes for different folks.
there is and always will be artists that make a album intended to be listened to from start to finish.
on the other side of the coin there is always going to be bands that have a couple good songs and the rest is filler.
i like all kinds of formats. vinyl is my favorite tho.
split 12 inch records even ten inch records. i mean pretty much most of the creatures stuff was released on the ten inch format.
theres a lot of cool arty releases on vinyl . dont get me wrong some of the cd releases have been cool too. like the metal album i saw down at rasputin in berkley that was packaged in a metal case. that was pretty fun.
i dont think the full length is dead by a long shot.
i think my musical preferences tho are way way way way off the radar of anything mainstream.
its just not what i listen to . i mean i am way more interested in what a band like camera obscura is doing than a band like aerosmith. its not that i think the music is bad its just not what i am interested in hearing.
i do prefer the old way of listening to music tho.
you put the album on turn off the lights and listen to it from start to finish. a excellent album can take you on a journey and thats a cool thing. sure the immediate buzz from a killer tune is cool.
i dunno i mean theres been a lot of records over the last few years that have the one song,then the rest of the album is basically just filler.
i am very picky for music tho. i dont really care for alot of what many think is either good or cool.
i can appreciate talent but if it dosent move me in some way i wont buy it.
i think that one reason the impression music is bad when you get older is the lack of time one has to discover new music.
i mean alot of people have mortgages car payments and high stress jobs.
it does not leave alot of time to head out to the record store and spend a hour or two listening to new releases and deciding what new bands you enjoy or dont.
the main vehicle for the introduction to "new music" for most i am afraid is still the radio.
for me tho the ultimate way to enjoy music is watching a band at a live venue when it is still intimate enough you can stand a few feet aways from them and watch them place. i dont care for perfomances that duplicate a recording. its two different things really.
its funny how there is so many ways to enjoy music. i guess that is one of the things that is cool about it.