Everyone Has Gone Digital?!

[gunjack]

cant wait for china to turn into techno heads, 1 billion souls to convert to the wax....

sorry bro, but bwahahahahahaha you really think the chinese would go out and buy original copies of techno records in mainland china? the bootleggers would build a lathe out of balsa wood and cut copies themselves before ordering 12"s ;) and how would you even ship to mainaland china???? dang bro you are optimistic and that is cool, but mark my words: china aint gonna convert to wax.

[gunjack]

Anyway, I seem to remember someone explaining to me that vinyl has next to no bass on it when pressed, as otherwise the needle would jump all over the shop. That's why records sound weak if you accidentally plug your turntable into the Line socket instead of the Phono socket. The Phono socket runs the signal through an EQ curve which boosts the bass right back up. It looses definition in this process - and this is the "warmth" you hear people talking about. Though why this degradation can't be simulated if people really want it is beyond me...

ummmm no dude, go do your homework. vinyl sounds like that because it needs a poreclain preamp.

[TechMouse]

Anyway, I seem to remember someone explaining to me that vinyl has next to no bass on it when pressed, as otherwise the needle would jump all over the shop. That's why records sound weak if you accidentally plug your turntable into the Line socket instead of the Phono socket. The Phono socket runs the signal through an EQ curve which boosts the bass right back up. It looses definition in this process - and this is the "warmth" you hear people talking about. Though why this degradation can't be simulated if people really want it is beyond me...

ummmm no dude, go do your homework. vinyl sounds like that because it needs a poreclain preamp.

Yes, you're right - my mistake. Same net effect though.

Also, have a read of this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/1xtra/1xmusic/r...eringp06.shtml

When you're working digitally, pretty much the same limitations apply to the sound of the engineer's mastering workstation as to the final CD.

With vinyl, the limits aren't so obvious and there are certain things which will sound fine in the studio but not so great when transferred onto a vinyl master.

For example, really extreme stereo effects on bass sounds and kick drums don't tend to cut very well.

That means that there may be compromises which will be needed when mastering for vinyl and that's why you need to find an experienced engineer and to be there while they're working.

You have to make compromises with your sound when cutting a vinyl?

Surely not...

[TechMouse]

Ah, here we go... the definitive word on the subject from SOS.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/aug0...rmastering.htm

Vinyl is an unforgiving medium, and mastering for it is extremely difficult. Its dynamic range is a puny 50dB or so, even with decent vinyl, compared to the 80dB or more we enjoy with even the most basic digital media.

Bass is also troublesome. Bass waveforms have a very wide excursion and, with stereo, if the left and right channels are even slightly out of phase, the stylus can 'jump the track' as it tries in vain to follow different curves for the right and left channels. We take concepts like stereo bass for granted now, but back in the days of vinyl bass had to be mono.

[OriginalTechnobastard]

Let's get this straight. CD's put a top end on your tracks that vinyl just cant do. But vinyl, puts a bottom end on your tracks that CD's cant do.

So what's best?? Who cares as long and the music goes forward. Aphex Twin ala 1992 is some of the best music I ever heard but the top end is shite compared to these days.

And here comes in Hereos point. If you're a producer, you need to put food on the table if you're involved in this shit 24/7. So ppl like Hereos and anyone who's soley a techno producer need an income off this. We're not being gready, we just need to put food on the table. Techno at the mo doesnt allow for this without SERIOUS SERIOUS hard work. MP3 is killin artists like Hereos, and me, and anyone involved in techno. Be honest.


Men I was thinking the same. There needs to be some kind of lock to stop mp3. Its not fair on the artist.

So then how does something innovative come out of something that doesnt allow ppl to survive or buy the equipment that the damn commercial software or hardware industry has thrown upon us musicians???

F it, take it to grass roots level, we all need to stop being TWATS and be able to make a little bit of cash from our records. Have we not got the intelilligennce to do this or are MP3's gonna make us bow down and submit. F That.

[schlongfingers]

How exactly do you propose to stop MP3's?

It's like trying to ban radio, or television, or little mobile phones.

Technology exists, there's no point fighting it, you have to move with it.

[tocsin]

F it, take it to grass roots level, we all need to stop being TWATS and be able to make a little bit of cash from our records. Have we not got the intelilligennce to do this or are MP3's gonna make us bow down and submit. F That.

BTW, Mark. You need to keep in mind that not everyone is submitting to MP3. I've always been a huge supporter of audio compression tools to facilitate the transfer of music and started doing it with my own as soon as I had the means. Just about anything I've ever touched, finished or not, has been put up on my webspace or soulseek at some point. So, with some artists, there might be a bit of an ideological difference. With the way I view MP3, I'm sure I could be viewed as that annoying kid like the DJ who will play for free and undercut all those hard working DJs who are so much better and need to make a living. The free exchange of information has been an ideal of held sacred now for a majority of the time I've been on this earth. Now, I certainly don't care and can respect if an artist does not want their work spread around for free. But, what I find frustrating, particularly in the techno scene, is the "with us or against us" attitude that seems to go along with it. And considering I can't think of 1 techno artist who hasn't, at some point in time, illegally sampled copyrighted material, the stance against MP3 and filesharing is often borderline hypocritical. The way people can stop being twats is through trying to find a means to work with advancing technology rather than fighting it. Working with it will encourage people to be fluid and possibly discover someting completely new and beneficial in the process. Working against it will inevitably lead to rigidity and eventual frustration when you find that, for the most part, a hugh number of visible people simply are never going to give a **** whether or not you can put food on your table because of your music. Especially if they think they can do the same thing themselves.

On a grassroots level, try starting a space for MP3/WAV/whatever sales. Hell, at this point, I've blabbed about the idea enough that I'd be willing to help set the thing up. Wit the piracy that does occur, what does anyone have to lose?

[Komplex]

This reminds me of the whole "rebelling" thing that gets mentioned.

People, musos and dj's across the scenes and genres are rebelling against the bulsh!tness associated with the established, even "exclusive" "we won't listen to or play it unless its on vinyl" mentality.

Shit is hitting the fan. In a big way.

It will come down to adapt and evolve or be prepared to sooner or later become obsolete.

The kids of today didn't grow up with records and tape players so there is no connection on that level. What makes everyone think that they will suddenly drop their cd's, ipods and whatnot to hunt down (actually go out of their way, find and fork out for stupidly overpriced) pieces of black plastic which they can't even hear conveniently? Cus it sounds "warmer"? Cus the established labels fear piracy?

Last time I checked, soulseek had sh!tloads of copied vinyl only releases. Why is that? Maybe cus people don't want them on vinyl but thats all they are force fed with. Now theres something to rebel against. Those guys are probably thinking "f*ck you guys. Shove that vinyl in your 40 year old asses, we want something better"

Sorry but with techno's tiny audience and no airplay or decent media presence there's only one way to make it ACCESSIBLE again for the next generation. Adapt and evolve.

Techno was all about futurism. What happened to that? Oh yeah, it got arse-raped by money grabbing labels and dodgy distributors. "Buy vinyl, its cool. Buy lots of discs with loops and you can be cool too. Oh no, people aren't dumb anymore. The drugs have become weak. They want proper music! What to do now? Lets blame something that has nothing to do with the actual problem. Yeah, lets blame cd's, mp3's, filesharing, technology, the kids of today, your mum, his mum etc...."

That sort of attitude is just too RIAA styles for my liking.


SORRY about the drunken rant guys. No more for me tonite ;)

[dirty_bass]

Last time I checked, soulseek had sh!tloads of copied vinyl only releases. Why is that? Maybe cus people don't want them on vinyl but thats all they are force fed with. Now theres something to rebel against. Those guys are probably thinking "f*ck you guys. Shove that vinyl in your 40 year old asses, we want something better"

Never really thought of this. Good point.

the rest of your post was a bit strong, but I can`t say I disagree.

[Komplex]

Last time I checked, soulseek had sh!tloads of copied vinyl only releases. Why is that? Maybe cus people don't want them on vinyl but thats all they are force fed with. Now theres something to rebel against. Those guys are probably thinking "f*ck you guys. Shove that vinyl in your 40 year old asses, we want something better"

Never really thought of this. Good point.

the rest of your post was a bit strong, but I can`t say I disagree.

I guess that post had an in your face "edge" ;)
I'll tone it down from now on before someone takes it the wrong way.

[tocsin]

There's no reason why a shop couldn't be setup strictly DIY either. It's just a question of looking into the economics to figure out how much you can charge for mp3 and how economical it would be. The costs would essentially be bandwidth, space, service charges for credit cards. The bandwidth and server space issues are easy enough to deal with since the cataloging of files can be distributed over different servers on the net which would be invisible to an end user. Since the style of music here is largely a labor of love for many computer geeks, it's possible that you'd find a good number of people that would give out server space for next to nothing if not free, or for the ability to legally play the songs on their server in their home. If you use something like paypal, from the quick look I've done, they charge about 3% per transaction plus a $0.30 transaction fee. So, the question from there would just be figuring out an implementation that would make it affordable. Itunes sells tracks for $0.99.
You could be competitive with using something like paypal through using a points system where people purchase X number of downloads in one shot to keep the $0.30 paypal transaction fee from eating into costs too much. Then, there is also the option of selling your music through already existing services as well like Itunes. Ihave not found what the exact cost break down is for Itunes as far as payment is concerned. But, one advantage they do offer is that they will hit up that Ipod market and there is DRM in their formats for people who are concerned. Hell, one could always take advantage of both. Those are just two means I thought about this morning. There are likely more. Honestly, I think the hardest thing would be the same as the past, letting people know that your music exists. And there is no reason why, in the process of going the digital route, one would need to stop cutting vinyl either.

[j_s]

The kids of today didn't grow up with records and tape players so there is no connection on that level. What makes everyone think that they will suddenly drop their cd's, ipods and whatnot to hunt down (actually go out of their way, find and fork out for stupidly overpriced) pieces of black plastic which they can't even hear conveniently? Cus it sounds "warmer"? Cus the established labels fear piracy?

Last time I checked, soulseek had sh!tloads of copied vinyl only releases. Why is that? Maybe cus people don't want them on vinyl but thats all they are force fed with. Now theres something to rebel against. Those guys are probably thinking "f*ck you guys. Shove that vinyl in your 40 year old asses, we want something better"

this is a very good point. i don't dj. i have no real alliegance to vinyl. but if i want to actually buy the music i like, i ain't got a choice - it's either pay for a medium thats expensive and a hassle to use, skank from p2ps, or go without. course i could rip the vinyl, or download as well as buy the wax, but i shouldn't really need to do that. plus i'm wasting a load of money on materials that i don't actually want.

is it all that surprising that techno doesn't much when the vast majority of releases are aimed only at djs, as opposed to music fans in general?

[davethedrummer]

so .....
we need to decide on a standard cd player
so everyone cen get used to it
and we can introduce the skill factor again
because we will all need a benchmark that we understand.


true?

[davethedrummer]

so .....
we need to decide on a standard cd player
so everyone cen get used to it
and we can introduce the skill factor again
because we will all need a benchmark that we understand.


true?

[Adverse]

This reminds me of the whole "rebelling" thing that gets mentioned.

People, musos and dj's across the scenes and genres are rebelling against the bulsh!tness associated with the established, even "exclusive" "we won't listen to or play it unless its on vinyl" mentality.

Shit is hitting the fan. In a big way.

It will come down to adapt and evolve or be prepared to sooner or later become obsolete.

The kids of today didn't grow up with records and tape players so there is no connection on that level. What makes everyone think that they will suddenly drop their cd's, ipods and whatnot to hunt down (actually go out of their way, find and fork out for stupidly overpriced) pieces of black plastic which they can't even hear conveniently? Cus it sounds "warmer"? Cus the established labels fear piracy?

Last time I checked, soulseek had sh!tloads of copied vinyl only releases. Why is that? Maybe cus people don't want them on vinyl but thats all they are force fed with. Now theres something to rebel against. Those guys are probably thinking "f*ck you guys. Shove that vinyl in your 40 year old asses, we want something better"

Sorry but with techno's tiny audience and no airplay or decent media presence there's only one way to make it ACCESSIBLE again for the next generation. Adapt and evolve.

Techno was all about futurism. What happened to that? Oh yeah, it got arse-raped by money grabbing labels and dodgy distributors. "Buy vinyl, its cool. Buy lots of discs with loops and you can be cool too. Oh no, people aren't dumb anymore. The drugs have become weak. They want proper music! What to do now? Lets blame something that has nothing to do with the actual problem. Yeah, lets blame cd's, mp3's, filesharing, technology, the kids of today, your mum, his mum etc...."

That sort of attitude is just too RIAA styles for my liking.


SORRY about the drunken rant guys. No more for me tonite ;)

oh man get drunk more often.

[GothamGrooves.com]

I saw plenty of peeps usng vinyl and/or dex with laptop. We gave out a lot f cd promos ourselves to fans. But we had plnety of vinyl to give away as well..

[SYMPTOM RECORDS]

There's no reason why a shop couldn't be setup strictly DIY either. It's just a question of looking into the economics to figure out how much you can charge for mp3 and how economical it would be. The costs would essentially be bandwidth, space, service charges for credit cards.

No there isn't a reason, but if you like to sleep at nights it could be wiser to make a non-exclusive deal with some existing smaller digimusic shop - there's probably more profit for the label in it than if trying to run it yourself when you calculate all the costs. First of all the amount of work when building a working and reliable (plus secure, it's peoples money we're dealing with here) digital music shop isn't a joke. For example, there were three of us working on our Foryourears.com and it took us about 6 months to put together the first version. Even PayPal payments aren't that easy when done properly (real-time payments).

Hosting (bandwidth, backups..) is going to cost you. You can distribute files, but that requires more technical solutions (how to make sure files cannot be downloaded without payments). Credit card payment option is probably going to cost you $$$ per year. Add paying taxes to the calculation and remember to pay GEMA or a similar copyright association so they won't have to shut you down.

The most hardest thing however is the support and maintenance. Something like this requires someone to look over the shop every day - the hosting company might have problems, a hard disc can break down, there could be a programming error, someone doesn't know how to download and is pissed if you don't reply in a couple of hours max. Adding new stuff and producing content takes time. The point being: if a customer pays money to download tracks, the thing must operate 100% reliable. And when it's people + computers, things are going to break down and need immediate actions, mostly every day.

[SYMPTOM RECORDS]

It's just a question of looking into the economics to figure out how much you can charge for mp3 and how economical it would be.

Forgot one point: there's going to be fixed costs even if you don't sell a single MP3. So it cannot be calculated quite that simply.

[TechMouse]

so .....
we need to decide on a standard cd player
so everyone cen get used to it
and we can introduce the skill factor again
because we will all need a benchmark that we understand.


true?

Is there actually anyone out there who can't get their head round a CDJ?

[tocsin]

No there isn't a reason, but if you like to sleep at nights it could be wiser to make a non-exclusive deal with some existing smaller digimusic shop - there's probably more profit for the label in it than if trying to run it yourself when you calculate all the costs. First of all the amount of work when building a working and reliable (plus secure, it's peoples money we're dealing with here) digital music shop isn't a joke. For example, there were three of us working on our Foryourears.com and it took us about 6 months to put together the first version. Even PayPal payments aren't that easy when done properly (real-time payments).
Hosting (bandwidth, backups..) is going to cost you. You can distribute files, but that requires more technical solutions (how to make sure files cannot be downloaded without payments). Credit card payment option is probably going to cost you $$$ per year. Add paying taxes to the calculation and remember to pay GEMA or a similar copyright association so they won't have to shut you down.

Well, I never implied it would be easy. But, that shouldn't be a factor. Regardless, I don't think it's quite as dificult either if you take advantage of what is already available. For example, I stumbled across a PHP script that creats links which both hide the true location of a file and expire. It can also be set up to e-mail such hidden links to a user witha time limit and IP address restriction once a successful Paypal transfer goes through. The files can be stored on any server. The script costs a whopping $24 as I recall. Pursuing the existig digital distribution is a good idea too. But, in the quick scan I did for them, most seem to want exclusive deals. For example, CDBaby.com will submit your work to a number of them. But, this costs $40-$50 initially and they take 9% of every sale made. So, the digital stores they supply must take less or they'd make no profit. I just haven't seen an exact number/percentage figure for what Itunes take out of a sale. The only problem I see with the paypal route is in a technical implementation to make it profitable and competitive. If someone buys one song for a buck and that's it, paypal is going to take $0.33 off that dollar. So, if you set something up along a points type system where the initial minimum payment was $5, and you charged $1 per track, Paypal would take $0.45 out of the transfer and, dividing the remaining cash by 5,you end up making $0.91 per track which is exactly the same range as you'd get through something like CDBaby without the larger startup fee. As fr distributing and hosting the files, how many people here have webspace they'd be willing to donate? I know I've got plenty.

The most hardest thing however is the support and maintenance. Something like this requires someone to look over the shop every day - the hosting company might have problems, a hard disc can break down, there could be a programming error, someone doesn't know how to download and is pissed if you don't reply in a couple of hours max. Adding new stuff and producing content takes time. The point being: if a customer pays money to download tracks, the thing must operate 100% reliable. And when it's people + computers, things are going to break down and need immediate actions, mostly every day.

It's still doable. It's just a matter of people putting their heads together and testing systems out. The nice thing is that, when it comes to e-commerce, lots of people have forged a path for it already and have made their code public. Nothing works 100% effective ever. But, even taking the negative into consideration, I just don't see how it's a losing situation.