Honestly, why would anyone want forty thousand songs in their pocket?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Harvest Your Thoughts, Nov 17, 2014.

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  1. Harvest Your Thoughts

    Harvest Your Thoughts Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    On your screen
    I saw the pile of 10 or 12 CDs in my car the other day and thought I need to take a few out. I don't need that many! I only listen to 3 or 4 then swap them over. Thinking back to that mp3 player marketing slogan of the thread title I felt very confused.

    What does it achieve to have that much music so easily available? In my opinion, it devalues it not only for the artist, but for the listener. How can one invest anything into their listening experience when it is so easy to acquire and flip between songs, albums and artists? (Don't get me started with Spotify and algorithms!) The ease at which it's possible to receive music these days worries me.

    How are things going to be in a decade or two when this is completely ingrained into musical culture?
     
    Last edited: Nov 17, 2014
  2. Brian Hamilton-Smith

    Brian Hamilton-Smith Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    Have you got forty thousand songs in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?
     
  3. Harvest Your Thoughts

    Harvest Your Thoughts Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    On your screen
    That's just my demo tape. Want a listen?
     
  4. richard a

    richard a Forum Resident

    Location:
    borley, essex, uk
    That's my 12 inch...
     
  5. parisisburning

    parisisburning Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Paris
    Because my work van doesn't have a cd player, but bluetooth works perfectly. And I don't want to listen to music I don't like on the radio. Because when I walk around town I don't walk to carry around a disc man like it's 15 years ago.

    Don't get me wrong, I prefer listening to the quality of CD's, vinyl and flac files when I can. The quality of mp3's leaves a lot to be desired. But for me, good music transencends bad files and good music as a crappy file is better than no music at all.
     
  6. US Blues

    US Blues Undermining Consensus Reality

    40,000 singles, or 5 - 7 Grateful Dead concerts. :pineapple:
     
  7. Lucidae

    Lucidae AAD

    Location:
    Australia
    I don't have that many songs in my entire music library. :o
     
    Exotiki, hi_watt, Alan2 and 3 others like this.
  8. vinylphile

    vinylphile Forum Resident

    The iPod can play Apple Lossless or AIFF - both CD quality. Newer higher end portable players can even handle high res PCM and DSD. I see no downside vs. the old Walkman and Discman.
     
  9. EddieT

    EddieT Forum Resident

    Location:
    London UK
    Just in case
     
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  10. culabula

    culabula Unread author.

    Location:
    Belfast, Ireland
    I have over 60,000 tracks available to me anytime I want on a variety of devices, simply by streaming multiple libraries to myself, using Google Play.

    Reasons?

    I can take all my music with me to a house in France, without actually taking it either.

    A sometime radio presenter, I once forgot my sig tune. Never again.

    I animate a gastronomic bus tour musically, fortnightly (don't ask). People will always have requests.

    I like my music.


    So -why not?

    However, apart from practical reasons of convenience, I agree with a lot of points the OP made and have gone back to vinyl.
     
  11. quicksrt

    quicksrt Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    Because I like to let the player pick out 100 songs for me and I might prefer that I don't know any of them by name. I don't have time to worry about too much music. I'll let the industry worry about that end of it.
     
    CBC and Jack o' the Shadows like this.
  12. wolfram

    wolfram Slave to the rhythm

    Location:
    Berlin, Germany
    Why? Would you invest even more into your listening experience if you had to get every CD out of the basement before listening? I don't see the problem. I have all my music lossless on a hard drive and I like the convinience. I'm more likely to listen to artists I haven't listened to in a while like that, because it's easier to access their albums.

    I don't need to carry around all my music on my mp3 player, but having a broad selection is sure nice. What you have to keep in mind with modern mobile devices is that for many people it's their main listening device at home as well. So the question is not really if you need 40 thousand songs available on your way to work, but how big is your musical collection?
     
  13. quicksrt

    quicksrt Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    I like to listen to stuff not heard in ages. I'm currently listening to Joe Walsh - You Can't Argue - Recorded Live. This album I'd bet has never been mentioned on this fourm as a favorite live album. Or a worst live album. It has sunk completely out of sight and out of mind. But because I have 200,000 songs asking me to play them, I punched up this odd one. And I do like it kind of, great drummer in Andy Newmark, and the Eagles guesting on vocals.

    So yes, I neeed all those obscure albums to sift through, every song song ever recorded will be fine.
     
    Randoms likes this.
  14. I don't need to listen to 40,000 songs, but some times I want to listen to a particular one of those 40,000 songs and I don't necessarily know ahead of time which one that will be. Even if I did, I don't want to reload my player every time I leave town.
     
  15. Sneaky Pete

    Sneaky Pete Flat the 5 and That’s No Jive

    Location:
    NYC USA
    I don't know why it is a negative to have greater capacity. That capacity could also be used to have fewer songs at higher resolution. 40,000 may be overkill but it is being used as a little sales hyperbole.

    I do know having about 9,000 songs in my pocket that are from my own music collection is amazing. I can stream them by Bluetooth in my car and have my own personal "radio station." I do listen to other sources but that resource is a great default.
     
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  16. Harvest Your Thoughts

    Harvest Your Thoughts Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    On your screen
    I guess I'm just not one of those people that finds instant gratification gratifying. :laugh:
     
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  17. rockclassics

    rockclassics Senior Member

    Location:
    Mainline Florida
    Why do I need 40,000 songs in my pocket?

    To entertain the 40,000 Headmen - of course. :winkgrin:
     
  18. Willowman

    Willowman Senior Member

    Location:
    London, UK
    I have 70,000+ tracks in my iTunes library, but only put 4-5 LPs on my iPhone at any one time. I realised I was starting to spend more time listening to the first 30 seconds of 50 songs rather than playing anything through from start to finish.

    So now, I try to listen to whole LPs several times, rather than bits of everything. I discovered I quite liked Dark Side Of The Moon that way - by making it the only LP on my iPhone and forcing myself to listen to it on repeat!
     
  19. sami

    sami Mono still rules

    Location:
    Down The Shore
    Everything on mine is in Apple Lossless, and I have around 15, 000 songs on there. Beats having to carry around CD's, and I have multiple genre options available at any time.

    Like you say, where's the downside?
     
  20. Peter_R

    Peter_R Maple Syrple Gort Staff

    Location:
    Montreal, Canada
    I'm often on the road, sometimes furlong stretches of time. I have an iPod Classic that has all my Beatles, George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Al Kooper, Jimi Hendrix, Nilsson, Randy Newman, Jellyfish & dozens of other artists.
    Music often has the same effect as comfort food (minus the calories).
    It's one thing to commute back & forth to work or around town where you can switch up a couple of CDs.

    It's quite another to me in the middle of nowhere, or on a long bus ride & wish you had that one song you don't have with you.

    Having all my favourite albums in Apple Lossless format + my Grado headphones = bliss.
     
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  21. Macman

    Macman Senior Member

    That's what I'm experiencing after just finishing ripping my CD library to flac and playing them through my Oppo 95. I seem to have lost all patience for listening to an entire album when it wasn't an issue before. I'm zipping around from one song to the next, sometimes not even playing the whole thing. Gotta stop that.
     
    Metralla and Willowman like this.
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  23. Groggy

    Groggy Forum Resident

    I actually agree with what you're saying.....
     
  24. analogy

    analogy Active Member

    Location:
    Holland
    That's really what brought me back to vinyl in the first place. I was a download-it-all, collect-it-all, flip-through-100's-of-songs-within-minutes-on-Spotify kinda guy. Couldnt keep my concentration on 1 album or song simply because there was too many of it. Vinyl brought me down to earth: it requires that you get up, select a record, put it on the turntable and just listen. After roughly 20 minutes, repeat proces. No track skipping, no album hopping, no artist surfing, just listen and connect to the music. A revelation at the time.

    I would like to think back to when I was younger and less financially equipped so to say, buying an album would require you to save up before buying, rushing to the record store, rushing back home and listen the HELL out of it because it was one in a few albums you would actually possess. I sort of miss those days, really.
     
  25. Josh C

    Josh C Forum Resident

    Location:
    Jacksonville, FL
    That is the best way to listen to DSOTM, from beginning to end and on repeat.
     
    spondres, Randoms, broshfab4 and 2 others like this.
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