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The title pretty well sums things up. How do you find new music? Friends? Last.fm or Pandora or similar service? Music (or other) blogs? Dumb luck?

I tend to discover new music through Pandora or friends, but every now and again I'm pleasantly surprised by various blogs; I discovered Sayde Price this week through an afternoon of blog hopping (in this case, to a friend of a friend of a friend's blog).

Also, what's the most recent band/artist you've discovered?

I spend an unhealthy, obsessive amount of time checking out new artists. The majority of my computer's hard-drive and back up external are filled to the brim with mp3s. For the most part, I use Last.fm, Spotify and various blogs (Pitchfork, Lambgoat. etc) Occasionally, I'll hear of a band through word of mouth or through a friend, or I'll go to a show and discover I like the opening acts or the other up-to-then unknown artists performing. Additionally, if you know of a particular artist that puts out a lot of remixes, standalone tracks or what have you, following them on their soundcloud pages can yield a lot of great material. There is a whole lot of music out there.

The most recent band I've discovered is VersaEmerge, a pop-rock, synth-heavy group that features a female singer. In terms of sound, they're somewhere between Paramore and Lights. I have a soft spot for bands with chick singers.

This post has been edited by Dragon_Fire on 8th August 2011 01:00

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Okay, but there was a goat!

Quote (Dragon_Fire @ 7th August 2011 18:31)

The most recent band I've discovered is VersaEmerge, a pop-rock, synth-heavy group that features a female singer. In terms of sound, they're somewhere between Paramore and Lights. I have a soft spot for bands with chick singers.

Paramore I could see, especially in reference to All We Know is Falling, but with Lights I don't see the similarities. Oh well, I'm just happy somebody else likes them.


On to topic! I hear about new artists by word of mouth, the radio, or youtube honestly. The last band I discovered that I really liked was Sleeping With Sirens. They're a rock, post-hardcore(?) band, I think. I've never been wonderful with genres, and the amount of genres seem to double every year. I guess the most similar band I know would be A Skylit Drive, if any of you have heard of them. I still have a alot to discover though, since I just obtained my friend's old iPod Touch. He found an iPhone 4 in a parking garage, so I got the Touch. He left almost his entire library on it, which is about 4x the size of mine, and I have about a thousand songs.

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-FFIII FFIV FFV FFVII FFVIII FFX FFXII FFXIII FF:Dissidia FFVII:CC FFVII:DoC
--KHI KHII KH:COM KH:BbS
---SO:FD SO:TTEOT SO:TLH
----DQIII DQVIII
-----DA:O DAII
------VP:S

Truth of the matter is that I just don't discover much new stuff any more. I don't really have the energy to take on Pandora or last.fm's spiderwebbing approach, as smart as both are. I don't really read my music forums any more, due to putting other stuff at higher priority. Used to be that we would share a lot of suggestions back and forth in chat, too, but that's one dynamic that has faltered a bit as some chat regulars have become less regular.

I also don't listen to as much independent radio as I did back in Boston because a) the coverage of the similar station in KC isn't great and I'm rarely going anywhere that I have a radio anyway for long enough to really get much out of it. That's a shame, too, because that's how I got introduced to a lot of new music once upon a time, as both of the places I lived before Kansas City (New York and Boston) had fantastic independent radio stations.

Last band I can think of to whom I was introduced that way was Sarah Borgess and the Broken Singles, who I really need to check out further at some point as I love alt-country girls.


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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

toally smiling that the b + end parenthesis is a face, haha.


I usually hear it through friends. If I end up liking the song and I hear it when I'm with them, then I think of them when I hear that song, which is a bonus.

The radios at work usually have a catchy enough selection too, so I'll pick stuff up from that. I got into Citizen Cope and Ingrid Michaelson that way, haha. The restaurant I worked at only had like, the Sideways album, some Ingrid Michaelson songs, Erika Badu, and an hour long song called London in the Rain on repeat for the entire six months I worked there.

Occasionally, I'll type in random words in Youtube and watch whatever music videos that word has, that way. Gives me a pretty unbiased selection. I got into Schwayze that way!

Honestly, I need more music. But I press the skip button on my mp3 player as it is, more music would just mean more skipping, but with different songs :s

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You're telling me that there's no hope.

I'm telling you you're wrong.

Quote (RelmArrowney @ 8th August 2011 16:54)

Occasionally, I'll type in random words in Youtube and watch whatever music videos that word has, that way. Gives me a pretty unbiased selection. I got into Schwayze that way!

Honestly, I need more music. But I press the skip button on my mp3 player as it is, more music would just mean more skipping, but with different songs :s

Typing summer yields some interesting selections: a couple pieces of classical music, "Summer of '69," music from Grease, Kid Rock, and LFO.

Your final comment is apropos because I noticed the same thing (again) this afternoon. I was going through my playlist--this one has about 200 songs on it--and I only queued about 50 of them. I occasionally come back to the other songs, but by and large I really don't.

Pandora, but not often. Most of my Pandora listening these days is children's music (for the kids), some of which is pretty good in its own right, though, gotta say...

Quote (RelmArrowney @ 8th August 2011 20:54)

toally smiling that the b + end parenthesis is a face, haha.

Lol, I've done that on here accidentally myself. Josh must've missed it

I'm afraid that I fall into the category of a non-discoverer. I used to try harder, but, like Josh mentioned, it's just gotten to be a bit more work than what I'm willing to do. Every now and then I'll follow a suggestion, but for the most part I listen pretty exclusively to stuff that's been on my ipod for the past two years. Sadly enough, the most new music I hear is actually classical, as I tend to play random symphonies when I'm studying. Aside from that, I've attached my interest to a couple bands (Wilco, OneRepublic) in order to keep me up to date with at least a little bit of what's going on in music I enjoy.

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Currently Playing : Final Fantasy V
Most Recently Beat : Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
Favorite Game : Final Fantasy X

The newest CoNcast is up! Have a listen!

Pandora and Last.fm for me. I'm kind of a closet hipster, so I constantly find new weird indie bands to listen to. My latest discovery was Foals, an alt-indie rock group from England, though I've been getting really into The Dears, Fleet Foxes, and Little Dragon lately. The Dears are a mix between The Smiths and Blur, Fleet Foxes have an Americana folky feel and Little Dragon is this chill electronica/R&B band from Sweden. It's fronted by the girl who sang on the song Empire Ants on Gorillaz's album Plastic Beach, if anyone heard that.

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Aujourdhui a commence avec toi.

I will generally luck into new music. For whatever reason, listening to new music stresses me out a whole bunch, so it either has to grab me REALLY quick or I'll lose interest. There is comfort in the familiar. Usually it will come on the recommendation of a friend - as long as it's quick to catch my attention - or possibly just a random song I happen to hear on the radio or in a youtube video. Other than that, I'm horribly non-adventurous.

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Hey, put the cellphone down for a while
In the night there is something wild
Can you hear it breathing?
And hey, put the laptop down for a while
In the night there is something wild
I feel it, it's leaving me

Pandora, friends, the radio playing in random places because I have an app on my phone that identifies songs, and also downloading free mp3's from amazon.com.

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Chewbekah ^_^

Currently Playing: Final Fantasy XIV: ARR, Attack of the Firday Monsters, Animal Crossing: A New Leaf, Lego City Undercover, Kingdom Hearts 1.5 Remix

Recently Finished: Fire Emblem: Awakening

Favorite Game: Suikoden III

Quote (dont chocobos rule? @ 9th August 2011 13:58)

Pandora and Last.fm for me. I'm kind of a closet hipster, so I constantly find new weird indie bands to listen to. My latest discovery was Foals, an alt-indie rock group from England, though I've been getting really into The Dears, Fleet Foxes, and Little Dragon lately. The Dears are a mix between The Smiths and Blur, Fleet Foxes have an Americana folky feel and Little Dragon is this chill electronica/R&B band from Sweden. It's fronted by the girl who sang on the song Empire Ants on Gorillaz's album Plastic Beach, if anyone heard that.

I love Fleet Foxes.

As for the others, I'm going to have to check out Foals and The Dears: they sound right up my alley.

I try to luck into new music. I might dig around from time to time to see if I fall on anything up-and-coming I enjoy. Otherwise, I try to follow the acts that are still running that I know I still love, or just go back in time and continue to buff up my library from the bottom-up. A lot of times I just rediscover some stuff I had tucked away in my library, so things can get stagnant sometimes. I try to balance that with dramatic, day-long music gathering fests.

I'm not much of a music snob and I give most things a whirl... I have a feeling that a lot of my friends have kinda weak music taste, though, so I rarely get a great recommendation.

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I find your lack of faith disturbing...

Spotify and Musicovery. I don't know if it's a Last.fm rip off, it very well could be, but I tried Last.fm a few years ago and didn't really settle. Musicovery has a mood-setting playlist generator that I quite like. Again this could be a rip-off and I wouldn't know. Right now I'm listening to a middle calm:enegetic, dark, electro playlist which is exactly the kind of music I want to hear right now. Adblocker gets rid of all the adverts too so it's unconditionally free. I'm pretty happy with it.

Oh I completely forgot to say my latest discovery. A South African friend told me about Goldfish from SA. They make some pretty wonderful music.

This post has been edited by sweetdude on 10th August 2011 18:50

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Scepticism, that dry rot of the intellect, had not left one entire idea in his mind.

Me on the Starcraft.

Quote (Kane @ 10th August 2011 11:28)

Quote (dont chocobos rule? @ 9th August 2011 13:58)

Pandora and Last.fm for me. I'm kind of a closet hipster, so I constantly find new weird indie bands to listen to. My latest discovery was Foals, an alt-indie rock group from England, though I've been getting really into The Dears, Fleet Foxes, and Little Dragon lately. The Dears are a mix between The Smiths and Blur, Fleet Foxes have an Americana folky feel and Little Dragon is this chill electronica/R&B band from Sweden. It's fronted by the girl who sang on the song Empire Ants on Gorillaz's album Plastic Beach, if anyone heard that.

I love Fleet Foxes.

As for the others, I'm going to have to check out Foals and The Dears: they sound right up my alley.

Either album by Foals is great. Antidotes has a more punky feel to it while Total Life Forever is more spacey/alt. No Cities Left by The Dears is my favorite of theirs. The song Warm and Sunny Days has to be one of my top 5 songs.

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Aujourdhui a commence avec toi.

Friends generally. My best friend influenced a good amount of my musical interest, and often I may discover things on pure reccomendation or just hearing it somewhere and expanding on that interest.

Quote (Neal @ 9th August 2011 21:08)

I will generally luck into new music. For whatever reason, listening to new music stresses me out a whole bunch...

I second this emotion.

All of my musical taste thus far has seemed to be pure luck, with me finding a band that appeals to me somehow, then just running with it. My problem is that being a fan of a band is so much work. It isn't that I don't like a lot of music, but I find that if I like an artist, I want to really dig deep and find and listen to as much of their work as possible. Choking down an entire discography isn't always the easiest, and I tend to go gung-ho on one band at a time, listening to their works almost exclusively, at least when by myself, for months and years on end. What this results in is me having an extremely in-depth knowledge of five or six bands and only the most rudimentary of familiarity with most other artists. I figure by the time I die, I'll be an expert on at least twenty different artists!

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If you've been mod-o-fied,
It's an illusion, and you're in-between.
Don't you be tarot-fied,
It's just alot of nothing, so what can it mean?
~Frank Zappa

Sins exist only for people who are on the Way or approaching the Way

I actually spend more time discovering old music in record stores and (if necessary) YouTube. I don't like much of today's music because it is targeted for the lowest common denominator. I am not a part of the whole "iPod/Last.fm/Pandora/etc. generation" because these things are all just fads that will soon be replaced by "the next best thing."

As more and more people are duped into dumping their physical album collection in favor of paying $8-12 for every MP3 album (because "physical" is a bad word in the digital, awfully-loud-MP3-remasters world) I am heading off to thrift stores and picking up CDs/tapes/records for less than $2 each.

Completely random, usually through association with other media.

Let me see. Discounting music formally used for background tracks, here's a sample:

* Bee Gees, "Stayin' Alive": This is just well-known. First heard a cover of this on 3-2-1 Classroom Contact, many many years ago.
* Backstreet Boys, "Don't Wanna Lose You Now": From a Law & Order fan music video.
* 8-bit MSX-style arrangements of videogame music, by hackurl: From searching for 8-bit remixes of Castlevania's "Tower of Dolls" theme.
* Rie fu, "Life is Like a Boat": Listened to by a friend.
* Roger Stéphane's music: Heard on an internet radio station for modern classical music.
* Karol Szymanowski, Variations on a Polish Folk Song, Op. 10: Had to learn this for a piano competition.
* Within Temptation, "Aquarius": Sailor Moon AMV.
* S Club 7, "Bring It All Back": a domino-chaining video.
* Eagles, "Hotel California": first introduced by a friend in high school.
* Michael Sembello and Dennis Matkosky, "Maniac (She's a Maniac)": First notably heard badly sung in a flash sprite video on Newgrounds, later notably heard on Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series.
* Abba, "Money Money Money": One of my mom's favorite songs.
* Blue Öyster Cult, "I'm Burning for You": Circulated by schoolmate to mock a then-recent spate of dorm fire alarms.
* "Mojipittan" (from some Japanese scrabble-like videogame?): from That Really Well-Known Nico Nico Douga Medley
* Selah, "You Are My Hiding Place": Piano version heard played on a piano in some church, many, many years ago. A friend helped me actually figure out the name of this song years later.
* Seekers, "Georgy Girl": LP owned by my dad.
* Leon Lai, "Summer Love": First played a piano arrangement without knowing name of song. Liked and remembered melody; friends helped me figure out name of song years later. After I'd written my own song with largely the same refrain, actually.
* Ayaka Hirahara, "Hajimari no Kaze": Sky Girls AMV.
* Johannes Brahms, four Ballades Op. 10: Required repertoire for music exam.
* Franki Love, "Shadow": First, discovering Wild ARMs 4 trailer. Second, liking music and discovering singer Franki Love. Third, grabbing the free tracks she put on her website. This is one of them.
* William Walton, Symphony #1 in Bb minor: First found in a discount secondhand CD at a record store.
* Joseph Jongen, Trio for Violin, Viola, and Cello: Assigned by chamber music coach.
* savage genius, "Forever": found due to liking savage genius's work with Uta~Kata opening theme.

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey @ 19th August 2011 09:56)

* Backstreet Boys, "Don't Wanna Lose You Now": From a Law & Order fan music video.

I can't believe I forgot to include discovering it through other media. I discover a lot of music through the copious hours spent watching tv, for instance.

Quote (Allen Hunter @ 18th August 2011 03:45)

I actually spend more time discovering old music in record stores and (if necessary) YouTube. I don't like much of today's music because it is targeted for the lowest common denominator. I am not a part of the whole "iPod/Last.fm/Pandora/etc. generation" because these things are all just fads that will soon be replaced by "the next best thing."

As more and more people are duped into dumping their physical album collection in favor of paying $8-12 for every MP3 album (because "physical" is a bad word in the digital, awfully-loud-MP3-remasters world) I am heading off to thrift stores and picking up CDs/tapes/records for less than $2 each.

I can actually respect your desire to keep with "older" media, but i think it's kind of weird to lump CDs in with analogue media - a CD is virtually no different than a FLAC or other lossless type of audio file. It's probably a good thing for you to know if you're going to talk about how much better physical media is; generalizing as much as you do might work in some scenarios but not with everyone who's part of the "whole iPod/Last.fm/Pandora/etc. generation." MP3s aren't all created equal!

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

It makes me feel incredibly old to think that CDs are lumped into the same category as cassette tapes in terms of 'old-schoolery'. I could bandwagon here and point out that the sample rate and the 2-channel bit encoding involved in storing the music onto your cherished 'physical' collection is inferior to the larger digital file pre-compression. I could also point out that, usually CDs are created from .wav or .mp3s, but you aren't really interested in that. You want to sound cool and impressive, and for a self-professed metal head like yourself, that's awfully hipster of you!

Also for the record, you can discover plenty of old music through new mediums. Pandora and Last.fm don't exclusively broadcast or suggest current music! Still, there's nothing wrong with physical albums and there are still plenty of people who discovered music listening to their parents vinyls or rummaging through discarded CD piles. It isn't so much a 'fad' as the technology behind recording and distributing music is getting simpler to use, easier to share and readily available. Why not take advantage?

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Okay, but there was a goat!

I get the physical collection thing. There is something to be said for looking through art booklets and reading the little blurbs in the CD/record. It's fun to listen to new CDs with headphones in and poring over the CD case. However, most of my CDs got lost and I pretty much get things exclusively digitally now.

I'm a weird case musically. There's definitely a gap in the music I like based on decades. I love old style ragtimey stuff from the 20s and on, as well as the jazziness of the 40s and on, but I really don't like the 70s and 80s style of music. The only stuff from that time period I like are The Smiths, Pixies, and some stuff by Queen. I appreciate everything the bands of those time periods did for music, I just don't listen to them. Late 90s - current is what I most listen to and it drives me up the wall when people say that there's no good music anymore. You just have to find the right bands and current music will take you over.

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Aujourdhui a commence avec toi.

I tried Pandora a few times in the past several years.

It never worked very well. This really puzzled me until I started asking myself what I actually enjoyed in the music I enjoyed.

Turns out that I don't pay as much attention to things like genre or instrumentation, as I do to harmony. Certain chord progressions are really notable examples of things that can get me interested in a song that I would otherwise have little interest in. A case in point is "Suddenly I See" by KT Tunstall, which is probably a song that I'd not really notice much except for two tiny passages, one in each verse, where the progression Gmaj Amaj F#min Bmin appears. For some reason that really, really got my attention when I first heard it on the radio.

(Okay, fine, the rhythm's also kinda catchy. But it alone would not have gotten me to like the song as much as I do.)

I haven't tried Pandora recently, but I doubt they'd have found ways to use these sorts of details as preference-determining criteria. Do they really have a criterion for, say, "uses authentic cadences over plagal cadences preferentially"?

Please let me know if they do.

This post has been edited by Glenn Magus Harvey on 26th August 2011 22:22

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

I got a wild hair today to check the firmware on my bluray player, and while I was doing that, I went ahead and set up a Pandora account to use it. I have to admit that when I set up a Go! Team station, I found at least one band that I want to check out further, Yelle, within about five minutes. Maybe Pandora could work for me after all if I'm not lazy about it.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Friends as always, generally speaking.
And quite literally all Japanese music, har har har.

Sorry, I haven't really been around to respond to you both. Here goes:

Quote

I can actually respect your desire to keep with "older" media, but i think it's kind of weird to lump CDs in with analogue media - a CD is virtually no different than a FLAC or other lossless type of audio file. It's probably a good thing for you to know if you're going to talk about how much better physical media is; generalizing as much as you do might work in some scenarios but not with everyone who's part of the "whole iPod/Last.fm/Pandora/etc. generation." MP3s aren't all created equal!

Actually, I never said that CDs were an analog format; I only intended to separate them from the rest of the digital formats because at least CDs are a physical medium (and most of the older CDs from the '80s and early '90s aren't "loud" unlike much of today's music). I agree that it is not a good idea to generalize others, but my post was written in perspective of how I see most people (the ones who aren't as passionate about the music or don't really care about how it sounds as long as it's convenient) in today's digital age, that's all. I am somewhat of an audiophile who really just wants to hear proper remasters and not something that has been completely brickwalled and/or edited. And yes, MP3s that are sampled at 320kbps are just right for me. Anything below 128kbps I usually discard unless it's a rare demotape or something.

Quote

It makes me feel incredibly old to think that CDs are lumped into the same category as cassette tapes in terms of 'old-schoolery'. I could bandwagon here and point out that the sample rate and the 2-channel bit encoding involved in storing the music onto your cherished 'physical' collection is inferior to the larger digital file pre-compression. I could also point out that, usually CDs are created from .wav or .mp3s, but you aren't really interested in that. You want to sound cool and impressive, and for a self-professed metal head like yourself, that's awfully hipster of you!

Also for the record, you can discover plenty of old music through new mediums. Pandora and Last.fm don't exclusively broadcast or suggest current music! Still, there's nothing wrong with physical albums and there are still plenty of people who discovered music listening to their parents vinyls or rummaging through discarded CD piles. It isn't so much a 'fad' as the technology behind recording and distributing music is getting simpler to use, easier to share and readily available. Why not take advantage?

CDs have been with us since 1982 so that's almost 30 years in existence. Even MP3s are old computer file formats (they were first introduced back in the early '90s and eventually the type of file format used commonly via filesharing). The thing with CDs nowadays is that engineers just keep cranking up the sound waves (which causes clipping to sound quality) to compete with other releases. It's really the curse that's been with CDs since the early '90s.

And as far as CDs being created from .wav or mp3 files goes, like I said, most of my CDs are original pressings. But .wav is an excellent file format for digital audio. That is what a friend of mine uses to create masters of his recordings. And not really, I'm not trying to "look cool and impressive." I just like what I like. I've always listened to CDs since I was a kid anyway. I embrace my music on various physical formats.

Also, I made it clear that I do use YouTube to discover newer bands. Sometimes I will look around MySpace or Facebook to look up some interesting bands that I can't usually find elsewhere on the Internet. Last.fm is just too much of a hassle for me and I really like publicizing my music tastes for the world to see. It is getting easier to share music, I know. I'm really glad that people are ditching their physical albums in favor of MP3s. Let them have their fun. My dual cassette deck is from 1987 and it STILL works just fine! I bet most iPods won't work 10 years from now, now will they? Just a thought...

I get my new music almost exclusively by word of mouth recommendations. I have a lot of friends who are musicians or who are serious listeners. I don't watch TV and I don't get my news from mainstream media, so I'm not constantly barraged with the latest and greatest in manufactured pop. I tried Pandora for awhile but it started giving me the same stuff over and over again. This was several years ago. The best thing I have heard recently (actually months ago now) has been Kashiwa Daisuke. More recently than that, actually, I heard Godspeed You Black Emperor for the first time and they're alright.

I'll take basically any album recommendation and listen to the whole album. There was a thread here devoted to favorite albums not too long ago and I listened to a lot of those. I think being able to listen to an album's worth of music is important to anyone who wants to appreciate what they're listening to, but there's a pretty strong mentality against that. Plenty of people want to tap their dumb fat feet to a repetitive beat over the same four chords for two and a half minutes, and they think classical music is "boring" and that "you have to be on drugs" to be able to listen to a twenty minute long prog rock song because twenty whole minutes of music is just too much for a sober mind or something.

So there's my rant about listening to albums.

Quote (Allen Hunter)

Actually, I never said that CDs were an analog format; I only intended to separate them from the rest of the digital formats because at least CDs are a physical medium (and most of the older CDs from the '80s and early '90s aren't "loud" unlike much of today's music). I agree that it is not a good idea to generalize others, but my post was written in perspective of how I see most people (the ones who aren't as passionate about the music or don't really care about how it sounds as long as it's convenient) in today's digital age, that's all. I am somewhat of an audiophile who really just wants to hear proper remasters and not something that has been completely brickwalled and/or edited. And yes, MP3s that are sampled at 320kbps are just right for me. Anything below 128kbps I usually discard unless it's a rare demotape or something.

While I'm ranting, you've made a couple of good points about things that really annoy me, and I think they could be explained more:

1) You don't need to listen to lossless audio. I have friends who get all elitist about lossless audio (wav, flac, or god forbid alac). I have to explain to them that humans can't hear a difference between a high quality mp3 (or ogg or what-have-you) and flac.

Not "I personally can't hear a difference." Not "some people can't hear a difference." As a homo sapiens, your ears cannot detect a difference. They are not even close to good enough. It doesn't matter how good your speakers are. Having good speakers will not make you able to hear things that you can't hear. Mp3@256 or 320kbps is strictly good enough for everyone. But it seems to be impossible to explain this to some people.

2) The overly-loud mastering you mentioned is horrible. It is a plague upon the music industry and completely ruins albums that would otherwise be fine. What they do is record every instrument individually, and do all their cutting and editing and re-takes etc etc. Then they mix it so that you can hear every instrument clearly in the mix. Then, at the very final step of the recording process, they use a compressor on the entire mix. "What's a compressor?" some readers ask.

A compressor does what it sounds like. It compresses the waveform. Now, a wave's height (or amplitude, if you want to waste keystrokes) is what determines its volume. Compressing the waveform makes everything quieter -- not louder -- but more importantly it makes everything closer to the same volume. So after the compression, the big, quiet, all-the-same-volume waveform is amplified. It becomes loud and all the same volume. Often, the guy who masters the album is not part of the band. Often, he is not even part of the studio. Record labels consider the mixing and mastering process to be extremely important, and they often have contracts that allow them to call in some other guy to master a Flaming Lips, Metallica, or Bob Dylan album (to name a few), and effectively ruin it by removing all the dynamic contrast.

So yeah, a pretty real concern. And as you pointed out, this "loudness war" (as it is sometimes called) has nothing to do with the format on which an album is released. The late 80s or early 90s brought about changes in mastering techniques that made this possible after CDs had been around for a few years.

And I like hard copies as well, especially vinyl. But I'm happy with my vinyl rips too!

Quote

Also, I made it clear that I do use YouTube to discover newer bands. Sometimes I will look around MySpace or Facebook to look up some interesting bands that I can't usually find elsewhere on the Internet.

This is very, very true. If I find out about an artist whose music might interest me, the first thing I'm likely to do is to go to Youtube and search for the song that captured my attention in the first place. If I like it, then I go and check out some other songs by the same artist.

One can argue that these uploads are illegal and violate copyright, but one can also argue that these uploads speed up the process by which potential new customers will patronize the artists. Which is why I think that the less market saturation a work or artist has had, the more it would benefit from such uploads.

Quote

Compressing the waveform makes everything quieter -- not louder -- but more importantly it makes everything closer to the same volume. So after the compression, the big, quiet, all-the-same-volume waveform is amplified. It becomes loud and all the same volume.

This is kinda tangential, but for what it's worth, I've noticed that of all the different genres of music, classical music seems to make the most use of dynamics, while most music technological development hasn't been centered around non-classical genres.

This post has been edited by Glenn Magus Harvey on 31st October 2011 03:44

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

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Being a DJ with RadioPSI (ahem, a bit of self-pimping, RadioPSI hosted by Starmen.net ) I constantly am having to stay up on new things. I'm not necessarily going out there and finding all the Top 40 hits but people say "hey, this guy/band/remix/whatever is pretty cool". A lot of good indie bands and projects are out there. There's a whole world of good music that I wouldn't have necessarily found if not pointed toward it by fans, friends and listeners.

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