Neil Young’s Lonely Quest to Save Music — New York Times

[left channel]

Published today on the web. Will be in the 8/24 NYT Sunday Magazine with the headline "Sound and Fury".

 

Neil Young’s Lonely Quest to Save Music

He says low-quality streaming is hurting our songs and our brains. Is he right?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/20/magazine/neil-young-streaming-music.html

 

"When you hear real music, you get lost in it, he added, 'because it sounds like God.' Spotify doesn’t sound like God. No one thinks that. It sounds like a rotating electric fan that someone bought at a hardware store."

[Doak]

2 hours ago, left channel said:

"When you hear real music, you get lost in it, he added, 'because it sounds like God.' Spotify doesn’t sound like God. No one thinks that. It sounds like a rotating electric fan that someone bought at a hardware store."

Well put Uncle Neil. 

Whatever anyone may  think about the methods of his efforts, I am very glad there is at least one musical artist out there who cares about the sound quality that carries his art. 

[Ralf11]

define brain hurt

[fas42]

7 hours ago, left channel said:

 

 

"When you hear real music, you get lost in it, he added, 'because it sounds like God.' Spotify doesn’t sound like God. No one thinks that. It sounds like a rotating electric fan that someone bought at a hardware store."

 

Yes, Neil "gets" it ... nearly all audio replay has a level, a quantity of disturbing anomalies that come for the ride, which stop you being "immersed" in the energy - the goal is to eliminate all that unpleasant 'muck'.

 

There are all sorts of solutions - Neil tried some, but it didn't work out ... there's a very powerful method which I use, but unfortunately this requires a certain mindset, approach - most don't or can't tune into it ... c'est la vie.

[left channel]

6 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

define brain hurt

 

It's like butthurt, especially at less than 320 kpbs. Or not. 🙂

[johnwilk]

This is a beautifully written article, and the account of the author's cognitively disordered child being treated with Mozart/white noise in Toronto is moving and caps the discussion of music's physiological effects (and pushes back against the idea that Neil Young is just cranky). It's too late to save my brain, but I'll cue up some Neil Young feedback on Roon nonetheless.

[TubeLover]

Neil honestly does deeply care about the sound quality of music. And to still be fighting the good fight, at his age, and given all he has been through is remarkable, and only underlines how serious he is about it. Despite the many hits he took for his Pono project, by far the greatest portion  were not deserved.The Pono player was a exceptional music player in the one way that counted, sound quality. Pono was more or less derailed by Apple fueled (and probably funded) press that published ridiculous articles stating that people couldn't hear the difference between Hi Rez and the lowest grade of MP3. The company who operated the server farm utilized for Pono was also apparently sabotaged and undermined.  

 

And he is dead right to rail against Steve Jobs and Apple. They are to blame for the near absolute deterioration of the quality of available, recorded music. First for the ultimate evil that is iTunes, selling a generation of young listeners garbage audio quality music to make it fit into the pathetic storage capacity of their iPods. After all, profit is all that matters! They have further damaged the creation of music, globally, by creating a situation where the ADD addled generation  just buy any singles they want, forget any thought of purchasing an actual "album". The album being the key format that endless bands have slaved over, for five or more  decades. Their entire creative output has been intended to be listened to as a group of songs that make up an "album".

 

JC 

[wgscott]

Steve Jobs isn't alive anymore.  

[TubeLover]

Neither are many who were responsible for poor judgement, damaging great art and destroying things. But that doesn't overlook what they did in during their lifetime.

 

JC

[wgscott]

Think of all the books printed on inferior paper.  Won't someone think of the children, and burn them?

[firedog]

9 hours ago, TubeLover said:

 

 

And he is dead right to rail against Steve Jobs and Apple. They are to blame for the near absolute deterioration of the quality of available, recorded music. First for the ultimate evil that is iTunes, selling a generation of young listeners garbage audio quality music to make it fit into the pathetic storage capacity of their iPods. After all, profit is all that matters! They have further damaged the creation of music, globally, by creating a situation where the ADD addled generation  just buy any singles they want, forget any thought of purchasing an actual "album". The album being the key format that endless bands have slaved over, for five or more  decades. Their entire creative output has been intended to be listened to as a group of songs that make up an "album".

 

JC 

All of that damage was done by  Napster, et. al. before iTunes came along. The public didn't want' to pay $10 or more for a CD when they actually only wanted one or at most a few songs on the CD. Illegal downloading of 128k mp3's supplied the public with what it wanted. Albums? Before the late 60's, the music market had been a singles market. This was true for all forms of popular music, including Jazz, as until the LP, 78's ruled. Even when the LP arrived it took about 15 years for it to become as important as singles in the marketplace. So, since the 90's the pendulum just swung back to what had been before - from the 20's thru the 60's. And people got used to 128k mp3's on portable audio and on laptop/computer speaker audio as the standard for music listening.

Apple just figured out how to monetize what already existed on the black market. 

[tmtomh]

Many, many specific things Young claims are debatable or untrue.

 

Still, I think it's a fascinating article and I find much of what Young says to be interesting even if I don't agree with all of it and some of it is flat-out incorrect.

[Ralf11]

5 hours ago, wgscott said:

Think of all the books printed on inferior paper.  Won't someone think of the children, and burn them?

 

are you going to dessicate the children before burning or what?

[TubeLover]

5 hours ago, firedog said:

All of that damage was done by  Napster, et. al. before iTunes came along. The public didn't want' to pay $10 or more for a CD when they actually only wanted one or at most a few songs on the CD. Illegal downloading of 128k mp3's supplied the public with what it wanted. Albums? Before the late 60's, the music market had been a singles market. This was true for all forms of popular music, including Jazz, as until the LP, 78's ruled. Even when the LP arrived it took about 15 years for it to become as important as singles in the marketplace. So, since the 90's the pendulum just swung back to what had been before - from the 20's thru the 60's. And people got used to 128k mp3's on portable audio and on laptop/computer speaker audio as the standard for music listening.

Apple just figured out how to monetize what already existed on the black market. 

Well said, and very accurately so. But what Apple did expanded the scale massively, literally hundreds of millions of times. It made it legitimate, and so it was embraced by the general public. Napster was on the verge of being shutdown, to a significant degree, by record labels and the legal process and internet providers under pressure to do so. . 

 

Apple can also be blamed for staying with the garbage quality 128kb mp3's, and robbing the unknowing of nearly half the fidelity of a cd when they sold them music.They could have at least upgraded to 384k and been able to sleep at night!

 

JC

[wgscott]

256 kbps ACC, but don't let mere facts interfere with a good rant.

[firedog]

38 minutes ago, wgscott said:

256 kbps ACC, but don't let mere facts interfere with a good rant.

Not when they started. That was an upgrade.

[Ralf11]

1 hour ago, wgscott said:

256 kbps ACC, but don't let mere facts interfere with a good rant.

 

That reminds me...  Did the Nazis use lossy compression when they live-streamed their attack on Pearl Harbor?

[left channel]

33 minutes ago, firedog said:

Not when they started. That was an upgrade.

 

That's when their downloads started sounding much better than Rhapsody streams. Wow, wasn't that long ago but seems like the Dark Ages now.

[wgscott]

1 hour ago, firedog said:

Not when they started. That was an upgrade.

 

I understand.  But he doesn't:

 

2 hours ago, TubeLover said:

Apple can also be blamed for staying with the garbage quality 128kb mp3's,

 

[wgscott]

54 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

 

That reminds me...  Did the Nazis use lossy compression when they live-streamed their attack on Pearl Harbor?

 

Only when exerting mind-control over Fidel Castro's crocodiles.

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49418726

[Ralf11]

maybe he smelled like lutefisk?

[TubeLover]

7 hours ago, firedog said:

Not when they started. That was an upgrade.

Thank you for pointing this out. There are many confused people who seem unable to understand this. Apple started iTunes in 2003. It was literally not until 2015 that they began offering it in 256kps. Granted, thats only 4 years of intentionally choosing to offer a pathetic version of the music they sold. And twelve more where they offer only slightly less pathetic versions. 

 

"Music encoded as 256kbps AAC files first came to the iTunes Store in 2007 with the launch of Apple's iTunes Plus. "

 

JC

[firedog]

6 hours ago, wgscott said:

 

Only when exerting mind-control over Fidel Castro's crocodiles.

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49418726

 

 

6 hours ago, wgscott said:

That reminds me...  Did the Nazis use lossy compression when they live-streamed their attack on Pearl Harbor?

Yes, that's why all those WWII films are in black and white.....
It's too bad the technology didn't exist, or we could have video of the airports during the American Independence War, as a certain President alluded to...

 

[wgscott]

10 hours ago, firedog said:

 

 

Yes, that's why all those WWII films are in black and white.....
It's too bad the technology didn't exist, or we could have video of the airports during the American Independence War, as a certain President alluded to...

 

 

That was Ralf11 you were quoting, not me.  (How did that happen/).

[wgscott]

11 hours ago, TubeLover said:

Thank you for pointing this out. There are many confused people who seem unable to understand this. Apple started iTunes in 2003. It was literally not until 2015 that they began offering it in 256kps. Granted, thats only 4 years of intentionally choosing to offer a pathetic version of the music they sold. And twelve more where they offer only slightly less pathetic versions. 

 

"Music encoded as 256kbps AAC files first came to the iTunes Store in 2007 with the launch of Apple's iTunes Plus. "

 

JC

 

More fake news.

 

Here is one of the first things I purchased on iTunes, in 2009:

 

 

(I also since found a few from 2007.)