Reply to post: Re: quality..

'Daddy, what's a Blu-ray disc?'

Repnescasb

Re: quality..

When I was younger, listening to LPs was an experience, a group of us would rotate around various houses and listen to an album, sometimes because someone had just bought a new one or you wanted to hear more of a band you were getting into and a friend had more of their albums. The cost was significantly higher per LP compared to earnings at the time, so lending / sharing was common.

LPs were more than just the audio on them, art work, sleeve notes, burn marks from not so carefully consumed items were all part of listening. Generally we used to listen from start to finish, too much effort to get up and skip a track, so some songs which probably wouldn't have had more than a single listen would get attention, with people debating the merits, or lack of.

I had a lot more time back then, before work and family, but still remember many a great evening just sharing music with a bunch of similarly enthused people. Although it's been many years since I've played some the the LPs, they're still good fun to get out and just look and recall, especially when a trip with hard earned cash meant at most a weekly trip to HMV.

These days everything is just so freely (or cheaply) available it's become devoid of much of it's value. Remembering where you bought your first MP3, or streamed your first spotify seems somewhat less valuable.

There's also so much more media and activity demanding people's attention, that it seems few people actually would listen to a whole album these days. I ran a studio for a while and working with one band doing an album's worth, rather than a single song or demo, it really struck me that theirs was the first album I'd sat and listened to the whole way through for many years.

Don't get me wrong, I love having effectively unlimited songs on a phone, but whilst convenient and of technical high quality (well, mp3 aside) it's just not the same. Sometimes too much choice is no choice.

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