Skip to main content ↑ ↓

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: Careless listening costs love of music, apparently.  (Read 4318 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Careless listening costs love of music, apparently.

I, for one, have gone that route aeons ago:

The Guardian: ‘There’s endless choice, but you’re not listening’: fans quitting Spotify to save their love of music.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/sep/27/theres-endless-choice-but-youre-not-listening-fans-quitting-spotify-to-save-their-love-of-music
• The older, the lossier
• Listen to the music, not the media it's on.
• "União e reconstrução"

Re: Careless listening costs love of music, apparently.

Reply #1 –
Yeah, I have never been a fan of streaming music as a general rule (I never used stuff like Spotify and the like beside maybe a once in a while song on say YouTube or something to that effect, especially if I can't find a proper copy elsewhere etc). I prefer CD/FLAC or MP3 and the like in general for pretty much all of the music I actually care about and go out of my way to listen to.

but I suspect some people just casually play music in the background without really listening, sort of like background noise, as if I go out of my way to play something, ill actually listen to it.

but they also mentioned records/tapes... I never really understood the appeal of those as I used tapes back-in-the-day when they where more common, which for me was pretty much early-to-mid 1990's or so, call it the 1990's. but after that (probably about late 1990's on forward(especially by the end area of the 1990's)) was basically CD's and never looked back as those are still easily the all-around best way to experience music in general (or equivalent like FLAC etc) even though I have not used CD's more regularly since probably the 2000's (mostly early-to-mid 2000's or so I think). but I still do occasionally play a burned CD-R on my Panasonic RX-DS620 (still the best standalone CD player I got and I had it basically 30+ years now) which has a mfg date of April 1991 on it and that's about when we got it as before I seen that date on the bottom of it not all that long ago now I kind of figured I got that in 1991-1992 (I was pretty much a teenager or a bit shy of it back then) as I knew it was no later than 1993 because I still have a tape with some stuff I recorded off the radio on that back then in Oct 1993 as one specific song on it I dated Oct 22nd 1993. but sadly, the tape player on it is pretty much shot as while I can still 'play' a tape on it not long ago (the one I mentioned from Oct 1993 a moment ago), I think if I press rewind, or maybe it was fast forward, the tape deck will get stuck and I had to take it apart to spin some sort of plastic gear inside of it to free the tape, so while it's not entirely shot, it mostly is. but most importantly the CD player on it still works well (even plays overburned CD-R's as I got some not long ago and it plays to at least 82min15sec(shows up as 82min12sec on the CD players display)) which is mainly what I am concerned with on it anyways as without the CD player function, the unit would be largely junk to me since I don't really care about basic radio station stuff in general.

anyways, I still have my old Sony CD Walkman (basically portable use), which has a mfg date of December 1999 (I probably got it sometime in the year 2000), a little here and there over the years since (I just use NiMh (say Eneloop) in it for occasion use), mostly for old times sake, but it's still a reliable way for me to play music since it plays CD-R's and can use two regular AA's, which makes it a bit more timeless (which is why I dislike a lot of modern tech which largely has switched over to rechargeable lithium but once the device get old you can't really find any replacement batteries for it and even if you do, they are generic junk which is why it's nice to have AAA or AA battery support since you can find quality NiMh replacement batteries and still have the option of using regular AA/AAA if needed on random devices). it's not my first couple of portable CD players I had, which those were power hogs and did not have skip protection as I don't know what happened to those as I want to say those were probably early 1990's tech and portable CD players came a long way in battery life/not skipping by the end of the 1990's.

but I do sort of agree with what was said in the article about sometimes some music grows on you a bit in that when you first hear it, it does not really stand out to you, but gets a bit better with hearing it here and there as time passes. but then again, I would say in general that if something is good it will grab my attention immediately.

but in regards to single songs vs albums... just over the years, the odds are against a whole album being good enough to listen to. which is why I tend to go through my stuff and mostly make custom stuff, basically trim-the-junk basically. this way you keep the quality of the songs playing quite a bit higher on average. like for example I got a hold of quite a bit of Ozzy Osbourne music and once I remove the bloat, which took quite a bit of time to sort through, I basically trimmed it down to two CD's at 80min-ish each tops that's worth going out of my way to listen to as this gets rid of the 'filler'.

but I think with this push of a lot of modern things is a disposable mentality. but personally anything of any value to me, like say in terms of music/movies/video games, I want it in my possession so I can play it whenever I want and don't need a internet connection to use it.

but thanks for the article ;)

p.s. I would say for me ranking movies/music/video games in terms of all-around/general volume of each that it would rank for me like this overall 1)Movies 2)Music 3)Video Games. because there is only a fair small amount of video games ill go out of my way to replay from time-to-time as the years pass. music is higher here, but movies definitely take the top spot for me overall, especially if you were to compare movies to music with say one movie vs one album sort of thing as there are far more movies ill go out of my way to re-watch than there would be albums to re-listen to. like with movies, currently, there are 148 movies I consider enjoyable enough to consider them among my favorite movies with a additional 63 movies being a bit shy of that status and then there is roughly another few hundred I still mildly like and generally speaking anything I consider a favorite movie, or thereabouts, tends to see at least one re-watch every few years or so tops. with music on the other hand, even if you measure say '1 album' as roughly 60 minutes of music, I can't imagine there is anywhere near a couple hundred albums or so worth to compete with movies by this sort of standard. but I guess music can have it's advantages in you can get pretty good bang-for-the-buck in terms of little time spent for good enjoyment since you only need about 3-5min of time for a quality song where as say movies etc you typically need a couple of hours of ones time. but I would say back when I was younger (pretty much around the age of 25 and younger) video games as a whole were stronger for me. but once I got to around the age of 30 (more than 10 years ago now) I could tell they started to mostly fizzle out for me to where I got much more selective. but it could be partially due to that they mostly recycle the same ol' stuff and just have graphics improvements as time passes etc. because even the games I do replay tend to be series that go back probably around 10 years or further. then you got those types of games that are good for quick pick-up-and-play types, which are nice from time-to-time, but I mostly replay stuff with good characters/stories nowadays and so on... .
For music I suggest (using Foobar2000)... MP3 (LAME) @ V5 (130kbps). NOTE: using on AGPTEK-U3 as of Mar 18th 2021. I use 'fatsort' (on Linux) so MP3's are listed in proper order on AGPTEK-U3.

Re: Careless listening costs love of music, apparently.

Reply #2 –
Soz, TLDR.
• The older, the lossier
• Listen to the music, not the media it's on.
• "União e reconstrução"

Re: Careless listening costs love of music, apparently.

Reply #3 –
I would never and have never even thought of replacing or giving up my local collection (digital, or physical if I still had any of it) in regular files I can control and use whatever way I want, for a "service", much less a suscription based one, which requires internet access to function, relies on the operator existing and making decissions that don't harm me, etc...
I also don't use music as "background". I never really got that, to be honest. If I play some music, I listen to it.
From childhood it kinda bothered me when music would be playing and people would be just talking over it or worse. Why do you have the music on then? I'm also not into dancing, or the kind of shaking most people pass for dancing. So, again, if I'm not going to listen to it, what's the point?

It's kind of funny how these pointless services have ruined music for people using them. Kind of fitting.

Re: Careless listening costs love of music, apparently.

Reply #4 –
Quote from: radorn on
Why do you have the music on then?
I'm making the dishes in the kitchen; music is in the 2nd next room.

Quote
So, again, if I'm not going to listen to it, what's the point?
I am listening. And I have some skills in kitchen air conducting and/or singing. What I do is not "careless listening costing love of music". It is only "love of music".

I cannot tell about the level of love that young generations can have about certain pieces of music.

Re: Careless listening costs love of music, apparently.

Reply #5 –
Thats not the problem for most.

IMO the biggest is a lack of UI customisation and control over content
availability .  Theres nothing close to a keep it simple approach - like I
just want to see my playlists when starting the app(s) and nothing more.

Re: Careless listening costs love of music, apparently.

Reply #6 –
I listen to whole albums when travelling to work and back. And compilations. Just press play and listen.
For me, problem with streaming services for listeners is non-existent - they offer their catalog for subscribers without need to buy each CD or find it online on pirate sites. People will always go into two categories, one that listens casually and don't really care about instrument placements, masterings, releases; and those which will listen specific album with care. Streaming services just accelerated weeding out those who really don't want to invest themselves into listening to music (like my wife, for example).
I see this text as old man rant, one which we all heard when CDs replaced Vinyls, the Big Analog vs Digital battle - warmth, investment into getting record out of it's pouch, cleanig the dust and putting it on player, sitting back with scotch or something, looking at that enormous sleeve and "enjoy music as it is intended to" crap. Now it's streaming vs local digital collection. Few years from now will be something else.
Only thing I dislike about streaming services is copyrights and that they really don't host all music that I like. I should, I don't know, pay for at least five of them to get it, and even then I will be unpleasantly surprised as I was few years ago; I wanted to listen to B-52s album "Good Stuff" on Deezer, only to find that 3 songs from the album "aren't available in my country due to copyright". Funny thing, I've bought that same CD some years ago in the same country in legal CD shop of one of largest music production and distribution houses. Screw that shit.
TAPE LOADING ERROR

Re: Careless listening costs love of music, apparently.

Reply #7 –
I might have painted it with too broad a brush here.
Personally, I don't usually play music in the background while doing something else, but I can see how having something playing while driving or doing some menial task could make things more pleasing.
But it seems some people just can't live without having music playing all the time, often loud, no matter what they are doing.
They can't even turn if off while having a conversation. Everything has to have a musical soundtrack, it seems.
It seems to be a compulsion, an addiction, and it becomes distracting and annoying.
I guess that was what I was thinking about when I said that.
 

Re: Careless listening costs love of music, apparently.

Reply #8 –
Although as the OP, it may have sounded like I agreed with the article as a whole (not that anyone's insinuated it), I concur only in part with its claims, as I don't particularly think background music listening is detrimental to our appreciation of music. On the contrary:

At a very personal level, just my recollections of those crazy early post-Project-Mayhem* years in the noughties (2002-03), when working in a busy kitchen in trendy London's Turnham Green area, the habit of listening to music while at work, has caused me to, even in a hectic Friday or Saturday evening, find the time to wanting to find out more about whatever artist's unknown tune played in the radio in the kitchen tuned in to London's Virgin (now Absolute) Radio, mostly, and usually very loud (courtesy of a Romanian kitchen porter's, who carried a lot of clout with the head chef).

I can therefore say that habit has made me then use music discovery as a way to alleviate the inherent pressure of such  job - even more so at said peak hours.

So, today, even in a totally different field and the quietness of my home office, I still find the time to, while at work, keep on discovering new artists, albums or B-sides while, as my sig insinuates, still 'enjoying the music' in the process.


* veterans over here will get it ;-)
• The older, the lossier
• Listen to the music, not the media it's on.
• "União e reconstrução"

Re: Careless listening costs love of music, apparently.

Reply #9 –
The Guardian article is anecdotal and not much more, but I have found that the favourites-growing-on-me point in some way works quite in the opposite direction for me on Spotify.
It is likely due to me picking albums on Spotify, even for "careless" listening at "hm what is this" level. When done with it, Spotify picks something it thinks I like, based on my history. (Anti privacy hell, I know.)
And next time I pick an album to check out, and Spotify is done with it, it again picks something of its own suggestion. Often I get the same song recommended many days in a row. And I would again glance at "what is this playing again?" and sometimes I will have done some initial spins in the background and can start digging deeper into that album.

That said, Spotify has a habit of finding things I already know very well.

Re: Careless listening costs love of music, apparently.

Reply #10 –
Yeah, I take the article should be taken at face value.

Quote from: Porcus on
That said, Spotify has a habit of finding things I already know very well.
YT Music, by its turn, and during my trial period at the height of the pandemic, would assume repeating a bunch of songs over the course of weeks somehow counted as helping me discover new music <sigh!>.

Suffice to say I'd given up for good on such shoddy, LQ-audio service by the time the second COVID booster shot was already on its way...
• The older, the lossier
• Listen to the music, not the media it's on.
• "União e reconstrução"

Re: Careless listening costs love of music, apparently.

Reply #11 –
If you want a more in-depth way to experience new music, that is with reviews and organic customer feedback, in a way that is not pointlessly online, you should try out Hype Machine. I found it out when surveying the state of music distribution a while back. Also bandcamp, if you flip through songs that artists themselves recommend. Definitely resonate with the muzakificiation of music phenomenon. Boils down to the challenge averse filter bubble mentality.