Pandora is the best radio station on the internet!

When you get right down to it, music lost it's physical classiness when we got rid of vinyls, at this point we gotta accept the fact that neither cds or .mp3s, .wavs, or any of hte others are reeeeal nice and apreciate the music for hat it is.

Of course i coulda completely misinterpreted the question and should hide my head in shame.

Eh.

Interesting topic! I think both sides of the coin are valid.
When I love a song or an album, I have to have the physical CD, liner notes and artwork. (who are the backing singers on track 2?!)
I want the full experience, and I want the music to have a physical presence in my home. I often display CDs (and records) in my house. I absolutely appreciate it when musicians present their music in aesthetically pleasing packages.

However, for me, the music should be able to stand completely on its own. To me the visual art, the pictures of the musicians, and the words in the notes should mostly just be the icing on the cake.

Either way, having songs in digital format has changed the way I relate to songs, and I don't think there's anything that can be done about that. (the songs sometimes feel divorced from context when they're digital...and they can feel less weighty, less rooted.) I guess it's the price I pay for getting to carry hundreds of songs around in a tiny ipod instead of lugging CDs around.

I appreciate the Pandora solution, actually. Digital songs, but with the album art right there and the music info available.

I'd agree with Oliver, we lost a lot of tactile and visual impact of having music when vinyl was lost.

However the enduring quality of sound in digital is well worth the loss of the other trappings. Having someone accidentally bump your turntable when a record was playing or accidentally dropping a vinyl recording no longer ruin one or more tracks on an album. In addition I can keep my music collection in a much smaller space than it used to take up.

Yes, records were nice and I do miss 12" x 12" album art, but once again the trade off was well worth it.

Until I stepped into a small independent CD store the other day I was content to indulge in my ipod's shuffle, excited to see if the next song, of the thousands I've got on the player. It all changed when I remembered the thrill of listening to a CD in a store and realizing that I could bring that experience home with me. I know it's possible to do that with digital downloads, but I've found that I've been unable to sink into an album the way I did before my ipod became my best friend. Even though I cannot afford to buy as many albums on CD as I can digitally, there's something about the expense in itself that makes me listen to and absorb an album that much more. While I do enjoy exploring liner notes and CD artwork, that isn't the point as much as the time you spent at the store, deciding on a particular record, perhaps interacting with other customers and the cashier, and carving out the time to listen to the CD when you get home. This all is lost, for me, with the convenience of digital music. And even though I can try to recreate the experience - it isn't the same.

I also am a fan of vinyl, 2 my mind itz the best use of fossil fuels, no contest.

:o)

For me, recorded music is just a gateway to something bigger and better. The live show. The people behind the lyrics. The story of its creation. The physical CD never actually did anything for me... it was just overpriced cheap plastic. The digitized version takes nothing away. For me to get full satisfaction, I have to go read the artist's bio, usually on Pandora--which was never part of a CD anyway.

You are surely the only person I have ever answered in such a public situation, but the fact that you used the words 'aesthetic liability' makes it impossible for me not to be drawn in again. And yes, the most beautiful photographs of supermodels are usually taken without makeup. Its the icy perfection of the digital experience that makes vinyl feel more like an overwhelmingly warm fire. Its all kind of beautiful, isnt it?

So the beat goes on? Its funny, if the Sirius XM merger goes through, you will have more than a slam dunk of your grammer school principal on your hands. You will be able to pose the subversive question I believe Pandora has always been asking.

What is radio?

thanks for all the responses.

I've been pondering this all week, as I go about my business at work and doing music and such, and I guess I feel the need to confess: I think my question poses a false dichotomy (or at least it's far too specific). This post should have been a request for peoples' impressions of the pros and cons of digital music, rather than an either/or type of paradigm.

Everything is so different now than it was when all music was on analog media like vinyl, cassette, 8-track, etc. A change this considerable can't bring only good or only bad things.

For example, I generally prefer full audio versions of songs, as opposed to mp3s. I confess that I probably can't always hear the difference (sometimes it's pretty obvious, though), but I suspect that the cumulative effect of listening to 1/10th of the actual information that the artist created may in some way diminish the power of the work.

But in what particular way is this (possible) partial diminishment of the music comparable to the fact that, for example, I can easily go online and find and purchase any song I want?

In other words, can you weigh the "xerox" effect of compressed audio against the accessibility of so much catalog?

I don't know.

I love that if I'm talking to my friends about a band that they haven't heard, we can wirelessly be listening to that band in 15 seconds.

It may be that such ready access diminishes the fetish of the art, making everything less mysterious and therefore less potent. But for every drawback, there seems to be a convenience here.

Just some stray thoughts for the collective posse to consume...

The pros and cons of digital music....

The biggest pros are what's mentioned most often - availability, accessibility, affordability. Like all things digital, there is also an instant gratification factor. Someone can recommend an artist to me, I can look for them here or on MySpace or on their website, and I can download their music for a small fee, and listen to them all in less than 20 minutes.

There's also the communication connection. I can then send that recommendation and links to the artist's music to anyone I think might be interested in them, and in a day's time, one song of one artist might reach 50 people anywhere in the country simply by wending it's way through the digital highway.

That's a big deal.

The cons are the loss of quality of sound, quality of product, artist durability, and artistic expression.

Quality of sound - digital just doesn't cut it in a lot of cases; quality of product - not everyone who picks up a guitar or a microphone, should, and the overwhelming sea of accessible sound out there makes it even harder to pull out the genuine artist and harder for that artist to sustain a lasting connection (artist durability); artistic expression - live music is faltering. Rather than encouraging people to go see someone live, we remain tethered to our iPods because that is more convenient than paying $20 for tickets, not including parking, gas, drink, and possibly food.

I think we're losing the "art" of music to some degree.

Wow, Donna, I have to disagree with you entirely on that. I think the emergence of digital music has revived the art of it--through its sheer ability to connect people with the music that truly touches them. In my opinion, taste in music is extremely personal and corporate dominance could never satisfy everyone. The ease of finding music has made it possible for more people to find the stuff that makes them realize what its purpose is.

I am a musician and its becoming evident that niche artists that may never land themselves on corporate radio are having an easier time sustaining themselves and finding that critical mass of fans who, without digital music, would never have heard of them.

Live music is thriving as a result of ipods, its not dying by any means.

I think music industry is too old-fashioned to understand and use the new opportunities of digital life. Becouse file downloading is not an enemy, it's a great opportunity.
I hope RIAA and other dickheads can't stop you, and I can enjoy Pandora in the future too.

Well, the question wasn't digital music versus corporate dominance. The impact of the corporate structure on the music industry is an entirely separate issue altogether.

The question was solely about digital music as a medium for delivering and listening to music which, in my view, has had an impact on the live audience.

When I talk about live music, I'm not talking about the big venue shows featuring big name, signed artists. I'm talking about the local scene in any town and the surrounding region. In some ways, this has been helped by digital music. In other ways, I think there's been some detriment. It's not a hands-down good or bad, but I do think the impact has been noticeable.