179,854Messages
9,130Senders
30Years
342mboxes

← back to listing · view thread

From:
chthonic
To:
Date:
Fri, 26 Oct 2007 09:45:59 -0700
Subject:
Re: [idm] who still buys CDs - tangible evidence
Msg-Id:
<200710260945.AA12650118@chthonicstreams.com>
Mbox:
idm.0710.gz
"jason parent" <jasonparent@rogers.com> wrote:
quoted 3 lines and, in my opinion, the worst thing that could happen would be for the>and, in my opinion, the worst thing that could happen would be for the >smaller labels to give up on sound quality in return for lower production >costs because it would give the majors a monopoly on my cd collection.
agreed. if one possibility is that CD's will not die but become a more "specialized" market like vinyl, then indies need to make CDs a VERY COOL THING. not in terms of status/brag/geek value (though that may factor in too), but in terms of quality, value, and physicality. one thing i see over and over in the posts from listmembers who still buy CDs (and even some of those who buy downloads or rip their CDs and file them away) is that people don't feel a strong connection to downloaded music. it's easy come, easy go (or easily ignored in some subfolder or backup drive). the physical connection is obviously important on some level, not just as a consumer to feel value, but as someone trying to in some way connect to the artist. i don't think anyone in their right mind believes the CD in their hand was literally touched/made by the people credited (unless it was, in the case of handmade limited editions). but i think this intangible feeling about a tangible object is an important angle to be addressed. this is one thing that has pissed me off a bit about a lot of CDs in recent years, especially minimal electronica. the CD design is basically a flat color with small amounts of helvetica type, perhaps a small vector graphic. the center and/or back panels of the insert may even be totally blank. artists like this may be trying to impart something specific with design like this, or perhaps it's just laziness, or that they don't really care about visual presentation. i think those sorts of attitudes have led to people feeling they are getting less or even to the point of not caring if the CD art is lost because what are they really losing? d. ________________________________________________________________ Sent via the WebMail system at chthonicstreams.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: idm-unsubscribe@hyperreal.org For additional commands, e-mail: idm-help@hyperreal.org