1. Do you have too much music?

No, but I have too many new choices available to me. I think the risk with on-demand services like Spotify is that people decide they don’t like something too early in the listening process. Most of my real favourite music took a while to learn to love, and rewards more and more as time goes on.

2. How do you (sucessfully) find new music?

Twitter ! More new input from there than any other place recently, just seeing what people with similar tastes are listening to.

3. What formats do you listen to?

AAC via iPod. I still haven’t found an mp3 I liked – well OK, the downloadable version of “In Rainbows” was OK – but the codec just isn’t clever enough. AAC is good enough for casual listening, but I always sigh with pleasure when there’s actually time to listen to a CD.

4. Is audio quality a problem?

I’m a Jekyl and Hide about this. On the one hand it pisses me off when people claim that mp3 is good enough, or worse that it’s actually preferable. But the pragmatist in me agrees with Johnny – ultimately this is a blip, and soon uncompressed will be the norm again. AM radio sounded pretty shitty, and that didn’t kill music…

4. If you know you like a band, how much would you want to pay for a digital album?

I won’t pay more than £4 for lossy audio, full stop. FLAC I might pay a little more, but for me to pay £10 or more I want physical product and decent packaging. What’s interesting, is I’d assumed that’s because of my age, but apparently even the kids want to own their own stuff.

Keep up the great work !

Ian

To answer your poll questions-

Do you have too much music?
Probably. I have kept around 50 albums on CD from my formative years which I literally never listen to. Perhaps one day. iTunes tells me I have 15 days worth of music in my MP3 library. For the last 5 years I have almost exclusively been listening to mash-ups. It’s called bastard pop, it’s very self aware. Most of that 15 days is mash-ups.

How do you (sucessfully) find new music?
Through the mash-ups and occasionally through music on adverts (even the OS X Leopard intro tune). I guess I’m showing my age here and my lack of passion for any one band. I have more passion for unsigned band, then I really can dazzle people with legitimate band music that they have never heard of

What formats do you listen to?
MP3 (prefer well encoded 192Kbps and up)
Unprotected AAC, all from the iTunes store. These are 256Kbps by default.
Protected AAC (128Kbps) I would burn to CD and re-rip at 192Kbps VBR MP3.

Is audio quality a problem?
Sometimes when some mash-up artist uses low bit rate joint stereo. But what the heck, it’s free
I have no real issues with AAC at 128Kpbs or 256Kbps unless it is infested with DRM which I immediately remove by burning to AudioCD and re-ripping into iTunes as MP3.

If you know you like a band, how much would you want to pay for a digital album?
(eg you go the first album free, how much would you instinctively pay for the second?)
For an impulse buy then around £10 (I did buy an album from iTunes for £7.99 recently).

I think the biggest fans of music prefer it live, anyway. Now that cannot be copied and you might just buy a T-shirt …

It’s something I’ve thought about many times over the last 5 years. After music being the most important aspect of my daily life since I was a chile, I recently turned off to the whole thing. Was it the music business’s bulls**t turning me off? Was it the fact that having a small child running around the house all the time meant that when it was quiet I would keep it that way?

I now wondering if it’s the whole of the “clear demarcation between the music that you had and the music that you didn’t”. I hadn’t really thought about it like that before but I was a real collector and it was nice hearing new music and going out and buying it… and then everything else done by that artist normally. However, it’s not like that anymore; it’s just impossible. There are too many artists that I’m interested in hearing. I can’t afford to buy all of there CDs and I don’t really care for illegally downloading them… and even if I did, I don’t think there’s enough time in the day to give them the time that they deserve. I mean, I used to know every word of every album when I was younger. I haven’t given an album that kind of listen for 15 years or so I would guess.

So, it seems that I’ve turned a corner on the whole music thing. Instead of enjoying less, I’ve subconsciously decided to leave it all behind instead.

It’s all a bit pessimistic of me isn’t it.

Anyways, great article. Very thought provoking.

Is there a problem with digital music? – Yes. I think so. But some of that problem lies with the consumer and our general attitudes. Just because your ipod CAN store 10,000 tracks, does NOT mean you have to fill it up. And having instant access to everything via the internet is not always a good thing. People need to appreciate what they have at a pace that actually allows them to ‘expereince’ the joys of what they have.

1.. Do you have too much music? -> No. But I am content with what I have and do not feel the need to actively seek out more. (see question #2)

2.. How do you (sucessfully) find new music? -> I would say that I let music find me. Through my life travels I am exposed to music at every turn. ie.. someone with their IPOD to loud, street musicians, TV, radio, elevators, waiting rooms, movies… Music is all around us, almost to the point it has been a layer of background noise. But occasionally I hear something that ‘peaks’ my interest. When that happens, I endeavor to find out more about it.

3.. What formats do you listen to? -> CD and wav files mostly. Some MP3 or AAC.

4.. Is audio quality a problem? -> Yes. Why listen to a MP3 and not get the full experience the artist meant for you to have? Unless of course the artist actually manufactored their music with the limitations of MP3 compression in mind…. But I have never heard of anyone doing that. (has one done that?)

5.. If you know you like a band, how much would you want to pay for a digital album? -> $0.00 – I would rather have a DRM free hard copy that I could with as I please.

Do I have too much music is a good question, and ot be honest I don’t think so. I listen to a lot of music, and most of the times it can’t be in the background (I find myself listening to the music, not doing the thing I should). But I listen to more new things I would if I got to buy them all on CD. And I discard more easily what I don’t trully like after some times.

I find new music by, well stumbling upon it with movie/television serie, friend recommandation, website, curiosity (this band like this ? I should try to hear of their album). I’d love to get pandora in Europe !

It’s tough to have a broad discussion of this issue because I suspect you, and most of your readers, have deep respect for musicians, musicianship, and art, which predisposed to go the extra mile in audio quality, actually paying for music, and otherwise supporting the output of artists as they would have intended.

Therefore, I can’t speak for the broader population, but for me, digital music distribution has massively deepened my love of, and respect for, music of all kinds. I get new music from friends (and their recommendations), and also those rare gems like aquariusrecords.org, who post samples and review almost anything they stock (also local to the SF Bay, REPRESENT!), and of course the blogosphere.

My iTunes shows over a year’s worth of music, if one were to listen to it 24/7, and it doesn’t feel like too much. They’re all MP3′s, which despite its age feels still like the most portable and translatable format (that changes so frequently, though!_. I’ve been turned on to more music history this year than any other, and suddenly more contemporary acts I like are put into context like a flashlight shining on a missing clue. It also opens me up to artists I can try with little risk through sharing, and if I like them, I definitely want to support their efforts by buying the rest of their catalog.

Too much for a comment, but how iTunes changed the playing field for emerging artists can’t be understated. I wish all self-publishing artists the best – we WILL buy your music if it touches us!

ive just been up in AK at an electro-acoustic music symposium and you could not move for genelec speakers ( the peak being 24 in the same room creating some amazing/some naff “music”) but the genelecs being used were all near-fields ( 1032s) and as my friend pointed out wer exactly the wrong sort of speaker for the rooms and the context ( middle size lecture rooms and 50 people.. thus even though there were some high quality music there were also clipping amplifiers because they were the wrong speaker for the room.. im not complaining just pointing out another contextual issue of quality at the other end of the transcription from sound to listener..
( please note i use genelecs all day in my studio as nearfields and i love them very much.. others think they are rubbish)

i also visited a friend who owns a funktion-one system and he was relating how there were only 3 DJ mixers they( the funktion-one company) would LET YOU USE! .. none of them were pioneers.. and they also stated that if you play mp3s you are wasting your time.. on friday me and my friends went to a bar in AK which had f-one system and we universally agreed it sounded like shit, and that it came from the dj end not the speaker end.. thats a lot of money to spend on a system that sounds like shit because someone doesn’t understand sound and codecs.

i also have done mp3 compresion rate tests with my classes and they universally agree they can hear the difference at different rates( usually at about 256kbps) but they also universally dont have a preference…( they also have a tendency to listen to music too loud in there headphones).. i blame FM radio station compressors.

also while smearing occurs with mp3s.. it also occurs with rooms that havent been acoustically treated ( read : everywhere) …and adding reverb.. so ….

i heard “remain in light” a while ago in 5.1 and that was like visiting a whole new planet wearing mushroom goggles.. awesome.. thats the place i want to hang out..

::::
1- no
2- friend recommendations,blogs and boomkat
3-wav and mp3
4-sometimes, depending on an equation with the love,resonance,resolution axis
5- for radiohead =zero, for major labels less than for independents..i also have paid retrospectively.my albums have a minimum price then buyers decided how much above that they value the music, and supporting moi. im on bandcamp.

:::

hey tim.. nice blog.