Lights Off

There was a time when folks lined up at the motion picture theaters just to see the latest flicks. Sometimes these were very long lines. What happened?

There was also a time when many people bought lots of albums, whether from their favorite artist or some unknown whose music they might have heard on the radio.

Times have changed, we all agree. Since the early days of Napster, when downloading free music became sort of like a staple which saw the rise of downloading movies and other media. I am not however blaming everything on Napster (it’s not entirely their fault), there are many factors which contribute to the decline of CD sales, as well as to the decline of box office sales.

First and foremost I would say pricing has a lot to do with it. The economy is such today that paying twelve to fifteen bucks for a CD, where there may only be one or two songs amongst the compilation that you actually like, is a bit steep. That’s breaking a hard earned twenty dollar bill and leaving just enough change for a couple of cups of coffee at Starbucks, but surely not enough to put any significant amount of gas in your car. What do you get for your ‘investment’? A very loud (sometimes overbearingly so) piece of work that screams at you from your car stereo system. Hell, it’s even loud when you turn down the volume. I guess this would be alright if everyone were the kind of person who loves his music loud to the point where their speakers rattle, and someone on the next block can hear them coming.

But making a loud piece of music does not make a good piece of music. Maybe I’m getting old or something, but back in the 1970’s, when I first heard Hendrix’s ‘Electric Ladyland’ album, where Hendrix experimented with four dimensional stereophonic sound and a much wider sound-field, I was impressed. At least it was not recorded at super high volumes, and I could choose to turn the volume up or down for my desired effect. Problem with many new recordings today is you can’t. Some of the music being passed off is so loud that it is distorted, and sounds even so at lower volumes.

I love all kinds of music, but am especially drawn to classical and ambient music. As a radio programmer of these genres I have noticed that even these type of releases have been increasingly loud as well. It’s almost inconceivable why anyone would want to produce a disturbingly loud classical or ambient CD, but they do. Insiders say it’s because they (the artists) want to stand out when and if they’re played on the radio. This, despite the fact that many radio programmers use limiters in their broadcast studios to make each track play at a somewhat ‘equal volume’. So what happens is when you get one track by one artist that plays quite soft and clearly (having been mastered by a reputable engineer not involved in the ‘volume wars’) , and that track is followed by a harsh piece of work that, well…starts dropping listeners in a heartbeat because they are offended by the sudden jump in volume (it disturbs many people’s moods and sensibilities at such a sudden change in sound environment) , unless of course the listener happened to be hyped up on some type of drugs. Conversely, the same thing would occur if the track were recorded too low that even the limiter could not make level enough to please most listeners.

Sure there are kids out there who still buy CD’s ( I use to work at a chain store in the media department), but many times there were kids who pilfered the CD’s. It got pretty bad at one point that people you would hardly suspect of shoplifting would take a CD. Anything to hold on to that twenty dollar bill. Still, the economy has effected even the highest paid, and well known music artists, some of whom have begun ‘discounting’ their music releases. But will discounting help? Maybe not. The music market has become flooded with self producing, home studio music artists (at least in the area of independent releases) whereby it’s becoming a vast field of music listening opportunities as some of this music is actually quite good. So good in fact that when you approach an established well known artist’s new piece of work you feel like they sound as if they are ‘repeating themselves’ in terms of composition. The freshness of many new independent artists is ultimately more appealing in some cases. The average new independent artist is not going to charge as much for their CD releases either.

In my next blog I will discuss the MP3 downloading and ability to audition each CD’s tracks online (which is a great idea) in order to decide whether to buy a particular release or not. As an online radio programmer, I often ‘go on the hunt’ for new music to broadcast, and most often than not I will purchase individual tracks from the artist for that purpose. I will discuss what I’ve heard in terms of the quality of music that I have encountered in the past year, and possibly make suggestions derived from what really caught my ears and how it was presented.

Please keep posted.

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