Thought Provoking Article: "The coming implosion of the record business…"

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

Here's another one. Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section. Recorded on January 19, 1957 and originally published by Contemporary Records: https://www.discogs.com/Art-Pepper-Meets-The-Rhythm-Section/master/221127

 

When you look for it on Qobuz, you get 14 different versions!

 

 

None of them show the recording date or location. Some of them contain the composer credits, but not all of them. Only two releases contain the  musician credits (though not the instruments played):

 

- Music Manager (the one with the blue pepper) 

- Original Jazz Sound (the last one with the ugliest cover, and terrible sound 

 

I doubt too many people are going to be listening to those versions, or purchasing them from Qobuz.

The recording quality of this album was very good, it would be a shame to listen to a crappy remaster.

 

 

 

Here the composer is simply "Porter" ! The main artist on the first track is Paul Chambers, for some unknown reason.

 

 

On a side note, the BNF version is the only one in Mono, which is too bad, as this album was mixed with excessive stereo: on the first track, for example, the piano is on one side, and the sax on the other. The BNF version, by the way, it is the only one in "hi resolution" on Qobuz but is probably a Vinyl rip (I did not listen to it on my stereo to check). There is actually a very good mono edition on CD, but it is not available on Qobuz: https://www.discogs.com/Art-Pepper-Meets-The-Rhythm-Section/release/9968614

It is worth getting if you like this album and are annoyed by the stereo mix - two are on sale on Discogs but the prices are high...

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

Slightly off topic, but I would be curious to know how the "Intuition" album is displayed in Roon. On AllMusic, the credits are defined for the album as a whole. There is a, good chance that Roon gets its metadata from Tivo (AllMusic parent company), especially since Musicbrainz does not have credits for this album:

 https://musicbrainz.org/release/f983bfa8-4bda-4476-8d33-439dc542d34e

 

 

Do the credits in Roon correctly distinguish between the Tristano and Marsh sessions?  Could someone using Roon look for this album and let me know? 

[Iving]

This whole business about the provenance of music is profoundly important.

 

1. On physical formats, it is more usual than not that at least some information is given regarding a recording's origins. Of course some booklets and liner notes are more replete with such contextual information than others. Classical CDs rarely omit Date and Venue if a non-Studio recording. I could go on about how outrageous it is that essential data such as Date and Country are sometimes omitted ... No respectable publisher of a book would consider such errors of omission acceptable.

 

2. Anyone who cares seriously about music wishes to know its provenance. Of course you can take anything at face value. If you met a person for the first time, you could take them as you find them. You could converse about the topics of the moment. Your experience of that person is in the here and now. And there's nothing wrong with that. But if that person opens up to you - and the more candidly the better - telling you where and when they born - about their parents and their upbringing - about their education, their occupation, their loves, their children, their passions and their prejudices - well then how much richer is your experience of that person both now, and later on recollection.

 

3. Everything is an eruption of history. Some may find Rockabilly trivial. I find it vital, even essential. I love to track its evolution from Boogie Woogie and Western Swing (to mention but two ancestral genres) through to Hillbilly and the "garage" indulgences of the early 1960s. A classical music afficionado will know not just which composers preceded others, but how the rendition of a given symphony evolved through a chronological lineage of conductors. How could any such tracking be possible without information regarding provenance being made available.

 

4. For a given recording, we audiophiles are very much aware of the difference between an original recording or master and subsequent reissues and remasters. Some are so much more musical and satisfying than others. According to one point of view anyway - anything but the first master is a corruption (and literally so if only produced for commercial vs. artistic reasons). On a vinyl record or CD, ℗ & © help us track from first issues through reissues and remasters. The dates of each are indispensable regards affording meaning to ℗ and ©.

 

5. In relation to mQa - what exactly is being "authenticated"? What is the exact assurance you are receiving? If you don't know - or don't know why knowing matters - you are a complete mug for buying into the "authenticated" aspect of mQa.

 

6. Every melomaniac is transported by music. If you have been to the Albert Hall - or Ronnie Scott's - and you know that the performance you are listening to right now was recording in that venue - how much easier it is to imagine yourself being there! With your spouse or your friends! Buying a drink at the bar! Settling down at your favourite table! You can almost smell the place. You are having a bedazzling proxy life experience.

 

7. If streaming services don't provide adequate data - how can you appreciate music even half as much as you can from physical formats. And this is leaving aside all the SQ advantages of local playback.

 

8. One presumes that royalties are paid via a contract paper trail. How else could allocations be made. If there is no evidence that a streaming service even knows itself what it is broadcasting, recompense via royalties must be an unholy mess. The first weapon of war is confusion. Potential beneficiaries must be up in arms - yet feel powerless at the same time. This looks like deep corruption to me. Bad dressed up as bad is honest even if objectionable. Bad dressed up as good is unconscionable world-upside-down. mQa depicts itself as good regards provenance - but it seems to me it veils more than it reveals.

 

9. If you are a conscientious person who uses streaming to evaluate music pre-purchase, how can you buy the right product if no provenance data are provided.

 

10. How can streaming services justify their charges when the metadata you are given – assuming you are given any at all – cannot be relied upon for factual, grammatical or syntactical accuracy.

 

These considerations are but just a few behind my rationale for never, ever downloading or streaming music from the internet.

[DuckToller]

42 minutes ago, hopkins said:

Do the credits in Roon correctly distinguish between the Tristano and Marsh sessions?

here you go ...
Marsh Tristano Intuition on ROON.docx

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

1 hour ago, DuckToller said:

here you go ...
Marsh Tristano Intuition on ROON.docx

 

Thanks. It looks like the composers are correctly identified track by track, but that the performers are not. Lennie Tristano plays piano on all tracks. This is a bit "off topic", but it is worth noting the paradox - Roon chooses not to get the data from the streaming service (Qobuz) and obtains it from Tivo (what is displayed in AllMusic), but AllMusic gets it wrong (as the credits are at the "album" level, not the track level), and Qobuz may get it right. Roon's approach is perfectly understandable, given that for some albums there are many releases - as we saw with the ArtPepper album. 

 

Metadata is complicated !

[alexrentier]

I was particularly struck by the quotation from the article:

Here are the three economies: 1) The kingdom of the major label. In this realm, the streaming rules we are currently playing by will rule. 2) Purgatory. 3) The rebellion My point of view is the laws of the market of unification and conglomeration! Albeit with its drawbacks, this is the nature of the markets! And there is nothing wrong with that!

[Iving]

3 minutes ago, hopkins said:

Metadata is complicated !

 

It is.

 

But it needn't be.

 

Even on physical formats, I am constantly surprised at errors - both gross (pure factual - wrong info) and trivial. Worse on CDs than vinyl records. Worse on Pop than Classical. It's a question of the standards of publishers of retail products. They care or they don't care. And consumers likewise - they/we notice or they/we don't notice.

 

Unless streaming providers are conscientious - seeing accurate metadata as a pre-requisite-corollary of selling music - the fog will only worsen - because the distance and # relays from primary sources only increase.

 

Very history is like this. The proportion of all historical data which is primary is miniscule. Everything else is speculation no matter how well argued. Distortions only multiply with time. History is written by the victor / the powerful - whose motives reign disguised unless corrected.

 

If we care about music, we care about its provenance. And yes - metadata are a primary medium in which we know provenance. Metadata matter. It's just that people don't care enough to safeguard primary data.

 

Expediency is the name of the game ... in music and in history.

 

Of course - I am the perfect exception. I joke - but I argue as well as I can for accurate metadata. My own Library has become an interesting resource in its own right (well I would say that). I have submitted perfect metadata on thousands of CDs via EAC for years.

 

I don't know what we can do to progress the cause. Except that we are what we talk about. Just like metadata - what we prioritise can change over time.

 

Probably it is fair to say that if a physical format is produced, there is more leverage for accuracy. It's a harder record.

 

In the end - if we consumers don't care about provenance it will cease to exist. To me that would be musical sacrilege.

[DuckToller]

in case you missed it ... ;-)

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/oct/02/odds-are-against-you-the-problem-with-the-music-streaming-boom

[Smaug1]

Thinking outside the box a bit, why can't an artist rent studio time, make their own recordings and manage them? 

 

Hell, once the master recording is done and edited, they can just burn their own CDs at home or make protected high-quality MP3s or lossless digital recordings or something.

 

It may involve them learning a bit about mixing and producing or split profits with the studio that did that work. It just seems like an existing business model has run its course. Might be time for a new one, or to go back to an old one. How about only making records? or records and protected CDs?

[GregWormald]

That's already being done by some artists. A friend was the local record company contact for an artist who kept the distribution rights to their music in their country of origin. The music was sold on their website and in shops to significant success.

[The Computer Audiophile]

Not many artists want the hassle of handling everything that come with running a business. If they can outsource much of it, and focus on being an artist, many of them opt for this route. 

[Foggie]

On 10/2/2021 at 11:33 AM, DuckToller said:

in case you missed it ... ;-)

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/oct/02/odds-are-against-you-the-problem-with-the-music-streaming-boom

Reading that is a bit depressing.  It's like nothing has changed from the "old" days where the big labels take advantage of up and coming artists who end up signing their rights away and the labels get massively rich.  Now that's sort of a generalization, but you get the gist. 

 

Streaming is hyped and its in everything we do and yet unless you are the one per-center's getting billions of streams you still cannot make a living due to the shitty payment distribution.  It almost seems like the Drake's and Taylor's and those of that ilk, should drop the labels and do their own thing (many prob do at this point).  No need to get labels richer if this new system isn't fair to the artist creators?

 

The reality is, artists nowadays don't need labels and can do much of it on their own.  Again, not all labels are greedy and out to screw the artists, but the present technology available provides an option for many artists to avoid the potential pitfalls of the old ways.

 

 

 

 

[fas42]

Things like this won't help, either ...

 

 

[alexrentier]

A good artist will always earn his LIFE!