The RIAA Armageddon has begun

I remember the prerecorded cassettes phase ('87-'94 for me) with fondness and then I turn one up in a drawer and I'm like what the hell am I supposed to do with this now and then I play it usually

I believe the last Terrastock was the last time I bought a new CD. I've bought a little bit of new vinyl since, but mostly if there is a code/coupon for electronic download versions.

aww you guys can totally picture baby ned with his first fisher price turntable right

That is in fact exactly what I had. (Early albums including something featuring Popeye, Peter and the Wolf/Sorcerer's Apprentice, several Sesame Street albums, Sing! and Free to Be...You And Me.)

Really should've kept the turntable, it played 78s.

Oh and also this amazing thing, which I did finally rip some years ago.

http://recordrobot.blogspot.com/2008/12/excuse-me-your-excused.html

(Someone else did this entry -- mp3s no longer working, sadly.)

Guy who did that was apparently the forgotten god of kiddie records in the mid-20th century:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luther

and who recorded 'happy the harmonica', which was covered by negativland, sworn enemies of the RIAA

full circle

Brilliant!

Actually having just relistened to ol' Frank there, I have some questions. Sample lyrics:

When we breathe in germs
From people who sneeze
When we get soaked
And wet to our knees

When we sit in drafts
Till we're chilled and cold
And we don't change our wet clothes
As soon as we're told

When we stay close to people
Who sneeze and cough
When we play out in the rain
With our rubbers off

That's how we can get a cold
That's how we can get a cold

When we feel hot
When we feel funny
When we sneeze and cough
And our nose gets runny

We remember what the doctor said
We take off our clothes and go to bed!

Keep in mind this is all being cheerily sung by a guy with big band backing.

is William & Mary really the place where intelligent grinder kids go

not grindr

I'm a fetishist for chronology, especially other people's, so I'd like to know when most of you stopped buying tapes and switched exclusively to CD's.

Bought my first record with my own money in 1986 (as opposed to being given Sesame St albums or asking for novelty song compilations or whatever) – first cassette later the same year.
We got a CD player in 1989 and I only bought one cassette after that: either Raw Like Sushi or 3 Feet High And Rising; first CD was What’s That Noise?
Last new pre-recorded cassette bought in any way was probably Fatboy Slim’s Beat Up The NME, on the cover of the Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space ish in 1997 - had to get an import copy over the odds for this, as tapes weren't included on sea-shipped copies.
Got a CD burner (external) in 2003.
Was probably still buying blank cassettes for a year or two after that, for taping interviews and DJ mixes and concerts and sessions off the radio.
2011 was, unless I’m forgetting something, the first year I’ve not bought a new vinyl record at all. (Haven’t had a turntable since September 2007, though – probably haven’t bought a second-hand record since 07 or even 06.)
Still buy new and second-hand CDs, but have been actively trying to cut down for several years now – I have unlistened ones going back to 2002.

I have unlistened ones going back to 2002.

i have unlistened-to vinyl dating back to '99 :( that was officially when i was buying way too many records

oh yeah I probably have unlistened 2nd-hand vinyl from around then, the local-est second-hand shop had a 6 for $10 floor and yer Shadows and Koalas and Vadims and whatnot would get taken there on digging trips

"I'm sure I'd like to listen to this some decade in the future, better buy it on this cumbersome format now"

I think the last new tape I bought was New Adventures In Hi-Fi

still dubbed stuff to tape well into 2002, 2003 though, 2004 is when I finally got a CD burner

i bought a new tape last week (6th this year) but that was the only way to get the download code

Like how can there possibly be a creative class if people have to pay $500 for herpes medication
― hot knives, wind was blowin' (Ówen P.), Tuesday, June 19, 2012

likely the most important, overlooked post on this whole thread

One noteworthy milestone for CD duping, imo, was OS X and its multitasking ability. It was a pain to assemble tracks or dupe CDs up through System 9, when you couldn't burn a disc in the background.

First CD I bought was Fear of a Black Planet

Converted to cds then, though did keep buying tapes, mostly radio stuff, because my car stereo was tapes

Been considering tracking down a cassette deck because of all this underground shit that comes out on tape now

First tape I recorded at a friend's house (from her records): C-90-A Thriller, C-90-B 1984
First 45 I bought: El DeBarge "Who's Johnny"
First tape I bought: Heart - s/t
First cd(s) I bought: Curve - Doppelganger, Cowboy Junkies - The Trinity Session, Shakespear's Sister - Hormonally Yours (all at the same time)

I see ivy league college students trying to stroll into warehouse shows without paying the cover, or folks who "love this band" but spend more on their beer tab than they do at the merch table cuz they'll just download that shit later. that's not to say those ppl are disgusting savages, but maybe they just don't get the connection between that $5 cover or $10 CD and the $100 in gas the band needs to get to the next show. explaining those dependencies can sound patronizing or badgering, but it's as much of a reality as "tip your bartender"

seriously otm - i spent years dealing with this - i can't count how many nights i had variants of this conversation:

hat-wearing bearded guy: uh, hey, this is where (band name) is playing?
me: yeah, we're asking a 5 dollar cover
hat-wearing bearded guy: oh. uh, i don't have any money
me: *looks at beer HWBG has in plastic bag from liquor store* Oh?
HWBG: Yeah, I don't have any money.
me: You have no money? None?
HWBG: Well, uh, I have 3 bucks?
me: I'll let you in for 3 bucks.

and it's not just the bands that this negatively affects but the greater economy that supports bands: venues, independent distros and labels, sound engineers, designers, promo people, etc.

One underground act that has been around for well over a decade and doing diy tours for that long is considering quitting doing tours longer than a few days because even performing live isn't making enough to recoup the basic costs of touring, let alone the touring-income-making-up-for-lost-record-sales-income thing that was supposedly "the new reality."

It's like any 'where the money is' meme.

It gets over-run like a pack of twenty geese towards one guy with a few slices of bread in a bag. Yesterday. And some Swans.

kenny g talking about stealing music

http://www.thewire.co.uk/articles/6445/

lol i was gonna say

To which there was a long response by Chris Cutler which is what the Lowery piece reminded me of a lot

http://www.thewire.co.uk/articles/6715/

oh yeah, I remember that Cutler piece - similar in tone too iirc

cranky old man you mean? not that I disagree with him though

there's no way Sparklehorse fans are your traditional file-sharers imo, most Sparklehorse type fans i know are very much your always-buy-a-physical-copy types. and the likes of Spotify would only ADD to that fanbase.

just because you don't know people who've downloaded sparklehorse doesn't mean they don't exist.

oh i'm absolutely certain they do. hence the word 'most..' in the preceeding post.

I read that post as meaning "Attention Deficit Disorder" for some reason.

what is the ratio of sparklehorse album downloads to phsyical purchases? how many of those downloads would have been purchases if there were no alternative? who knows ¯\(º_o)/¯ ?!?! but if albini is correct in saying these bands often thrived due to major label largesse then the point is moot anyway, downloading culture hurts everyone.

Epiphany No 2: One of the first things that struck me about Napster was how damn impure (read: eclectic) people’s tastes were. While browsing another user’s files, I was stunned to find John Cage MP3s alphabetically snuggled up next to, say, Mariah Carey files in the same directory. Everyone has guilty pleasures; however, never before had they been so exposed – and celebrated – so publicly.

dude go fuck yourself

you're offending a lot of people by dismissing Cage as a "guilty pleasure"

I dunno, I often dance along in secret to the etc...

Keep in mind: when a friend burned a Bob Marley album for another in early '99 I had no idea what "burned" meant or how he got this technology.

I kind of hope the Marley album in question was Burnin'.

I saved up for my first CD player in 1993 (first CD album bought: Now! 23) but carried on buying tapes alongside for the next few years as they usually worked out cheaper. Carried on listening to copied tapes for even longer - I had a big shelf of these while I was at university (through to 2002), ended up buying most of them on CD when I had enough money.

Last tape I bought was probably Pussy Galore's Right Now! in around 1988 cos I couldn't find it anywhere on vinyl. Hated buying pre-recorded tapes and think I only ever bought about 5 of them up until that point. Didn't buy a CD until Bob Mould's Workbook came out in 1989. Again, I couldn't find it on vinyl anywhere. Didn't have a CD player, I had to tape it on my dad's stereo. Somehow my purchases of new vinyl really slid off in the 90s and I totally switched over to CD. I can't really remember what the last new vinyl I bought was... Tortoise or Jim O'Rourke or some bullshit.

when was the last time anyone actually bought a dismemberment plan or cracker cd in a store? 2001? since then there have probably been 20 million illegal dismemberment plan downloads and at least 7600 cracker downloads. you would feel like such a dork if you paid for a cracker song on itunes, wouldn't you?

i will never get over the fact that someone named Johnny Hickman was in a band called Cracker. hated that guy.

i remember him mugging pretty atrociously on 120 Minutes, circa 1996.

ugh yeah i was reminded of that yesterday via facebook. i can't believe you can't watch the skinheads bowling video on youtube. my only use for david lowery. you can watch a reunited CVB perform the song in some weird park in front of four people in 2008 but you can't watch the video.

wonder how rich travis would be if everyone that downloaded 'emergency and i' had actually bought a copy

1979/1980, first album: a TV-advertised comp called "Goofy Gold" that I convinced my parents to buy me, with a bonus side of haunted house sounds. (http://www.madmusic.com/album_details.aspx?AlbumID=7227)

1983, first album with my own money: "Thriller," bought at the local supermarket

Lots of taping off the radio in between, both on cassette and also my dad's giant 8-track reel-to-reel player.

First 45: Don't remember when, but it may have been J. Geils' "Freeze Frame/Flamethrower."

1986, first cassette: "Raising Hell," bought at the local department store.

Copied things from friends like crazy at this point. I had a cassette with Eddie Murphy's first comedy album on one side, and Zeppelin on the other. Had another fave with "Invisible Touch" on one side, and something incongruous on the other.

1987 first CD: "Momentary Lapse of Reason," gifted.

Thousands of LPs, cassettes and CDs later, I'm still struggling to divest myself, knowing that they are virtually worthless.

Loved the Napster era, when finding anything was a fun struggle. And I do remember, in search of Bjork or Aaliyah or "Kid A" or whatever, coming across folders with all three of those things, but also, you know, Limp Bizkit or whatever, and thinking, huh. But then I realized there were people who hoarded MP3s.

"Loved the Napster era, when finding anything was a fun struggle."

yay, fun. struggle.

i'll never forget those wild and wonderful days of soulseek. it was like living in a gold mining town in 1840. oh the times we had searching for gorillaz b-sides...kids today just can't understand how hard we struggled for our music.

It took a lot of time and effort, dude. It wasn't like now, where you could find anything in a second. Which may in turn have cut down on the amount of downloading people did. If I wanted, I dunno, Gorillaz b-sides (hypothetically), it was search them out via Napster or literally never hear them short of shelling out for several import CD singles, if that was even possible.

But then, I've always been a collector, and especially back then viewed the stuff I could find online strictly as last-recourse supplement.

Also, I went to Albania once, back in ... 1998, maybe? 1997? I was wearing a promotional Napster t-shirt one day, and I had so many people come up to me and spontaneously praise Napster, talking about how much of a music desert it was there otherwise, with literally no distribution. I took a tour of a I guess college radio station, and they were so elated to finally have access to stuff to play.

The moral of 100% of "ALL MUSIC IS FREE, MAN" and "YOU NEED TO PAY THE ARTIST EVERY TIME, BRUH" arguments is "I'm a sanctimonious asshole"

Like the ethical/practical reality exists somewhere in the gray area between purchasing and stealing, but that's not gonna get HUFFPO FRONT PAEG