JSngry

Yeah. But jazz as part of The Industry is over for all but the marqueeiest of names, and even there it's pimpiusoutus maximus. All I'm saying is that there are new habits being formed, and that there is new infrastructure being built. We don't need The Industry, we just need A Industry. We'd best find a way to make it work, and wishing for more (and more expensive) product in a form that fewer people are going to be buying ain't the way. Quandry or Opportunity?

Yeah, the original liners and photos are all there. But they're small. As is the one CD vs all those 78s. It was a BIG sonofagun, big and weighty. Almost as big & weighty as the suit that Hawk was wearing... Things were bigger then, people had more room, physically & mentally. At least externally. It ain't like that now, is it (and if not everywhere, in enough places to matter). Now if you want space, you gotta find it inside. Thus the portabiulity factor, and thus the lessening importance of "objects" as means of delivering content. That's not to say that the industry ain't gonna look for a way to do its thing, but, contrary to what some might feel, this whole thing is not being industry-driven. The industry's in a pants-shitting freakazodial frenzy trying to get a grip on it, and they may be in over their head once and for all. We'll see.

Seconded. However, I still feel my emusic downloads "count" less than my purchased cds. I like having the artwork and manufactured cd like others. Do you feel that CD reissues of LPs "count" less than the actual LPs? Or that Chronological Classics CDs "count" less than having the original 78s? On the first point, I did up until recently. And on the second point, I never really grew up in a 78-centric time (although I had more than a few encounters with them as a little kid). But most of the music we're talking about here isn't "new" in any way shape or form. The need for the "object" lessens as time goes by, which is why hardly anbody today insists on having, for example, the contents of the Ellington RCA box on 78s & LPs. I've got almost all of the 60s stuff on original LPs, and you know what - it's the same music as is on the CDs! Shocking, I know... I keep those LPs because I enjoy having them, lots of memories there about when, where, & how I got some of them, but the music is the same whether its on CD, LP, 45, 78, flexi-disc, whatever. And if I was a young cat about 20 years from now, and if I wanted to hear me some Ellington in quantity, and if downloads were the dominant form of distribution, I very seriously doubt that I'd even bat an eye about it, because hell, I'm hearing some great music in the format of the time. I'm not going to feel that I'm "missing out" on something because of the format I get it in. All I'm missing out on is the object that the music got delivered in back in the day, and although that's not without it's considerable charm and historical relevance, it ain't got too much of a lot of anything to do with what I hear coming out of the speakers right now, dig? I've twice seen original copies of Norman Granz' The Jazz Scene in the hands of people I knew on a "regular" basis. One was a college buddy of mine, the otehr was an elderly lady in whose house I rented a room for a while. It's a breathtaking package, really it is. You gotta see it to believe it. I've got the CD reissue of it, and as nice a package as it is, it pales in comparison to the original, just as most CD reissues do in terms of packaging. If I had the chance to pick one up at a price I could afford, yeah, I propbably would, just to have the "object". Becuase, yes, I do dig objects. But I don't for one second feel that my CD "counts" less than the original 500 lb. 20 square mile bundle that the original 78s came in when it comes to the music. Becuase you can do a lot of things with packaging - touch it, smell it, roll joints in/on it, do lines off of it, use it as an instrument of sexual arousal, eat a sandwhich off of it, use it as a coaster, hell, the options are almost unlimited. But there's one thing you can't do with it - listen to it. And afaic, that "counts" more than anything else. Big time.

but that would be as illegal as dowloading is now (from illegal sites)... JB Such is the nature of all things Pandorian...

But then you won't own it.

Especially if you got a recording-capable soundcard & some good capturing software... Digital music - Pandora's Box indeed!

Ok, let's look at this from a musician's standpoint, somewhere in the not too distant future. Let's say you do an album. You got your expenses for that already, no mattter what. You gotta do the mastering and all that, and ditto. Now, you gotta sell the thing. So...do you: A) Go ahead and spend $X on manufacturing CDs, replete with printing artwork and such? That's an additional expense on top of what you've already incurred, and it is not insignificant. To make that back on top of what you're already spent, you gotta sell the buggers. That means you got storage, postage, packaging, all that. And with the decline of brick & mortars, you're going to be pretty much dependent on mail-order of some sort and in-person sales. You're adding expense and slowing down, at least somewhatt, your efficiency of delivery. Or... B) Make the album (either as a whole or as individual cuts) available as a CD-quality download, replete with optional artwork & such, upload it to a server, get a spiffy website that's actually fun to visit, and make your money back that way. Of course, for the OldSkool Collector Fetishists, you can go ahead and offer CDs, but at a really exhorbatant price, just to teach them a lesson and make them feel special because now they "own the music". Really, which model makes more sense these days to deliver the same music to your audience - spending more or spending less? Having multiple copies of the same thing that you have to manually disperse, or having one centeral copy that can be dispersed faster, cheaper, and with more end-user options? Manufacturing costs are a bitch, make no mistake about it. They add significantly to where your break-even point is going to be. For unknown artists and/or "fringe" musics (of which jazz is one), it's going to be a helluva lot easier to offer the music without them, and it could/should lead to a decrease in retail cost per album, since your outlay is going to be less, and you don't necessarily have to sell an entire album to see some revenue from your "project" (I hate that word myself, but...). A lot of us know of (or might even be) artists that have recorded some pretty nifty stuff that's just sitting there gathering dust because there's no lable interest. And what does a label provide? Manufacturing, packaging, distribution, and sometimes promotion. Out of those, promotion is the only one that anybody will still need once downloads become a common method of delivery. That's 3 out of 4 significant economic hurdles to getting your music heard substantially reduced, and that ain't nothing to sneeze at. By no means is the issue of quality and such resolved. I'd not be surprised to see a whole new file format specifially for high-quality downloads appear at some point, just as I'd not be surprised to see the whole thing turn into a mess of low-quality bullshit at equally bullshit prices. It could go wither way doncha' know. But the potential is immense, and the potential impact is even immenser. This is the logical next phase of digital music, because once we left the analog realm behind, everything changed in a fundamental way (and I was a very late adapter to CD btw. I knew that once you went digital there was no turning back, and I kinda liked things analog-y, and not just sonically. But like the man said - adapt or die). The choices are to either confront the new and demand that it meet our needs in its own way or else just retreat, give up, and become a Grumpy Old Fart. Ain't too much in between.

Oh my!

Well, you know, Jim, it's the fault of you and me and thee... according to that very ticklish fellow Greg Maltz. Guilty as charged. And it makes me feel so...fuquitous...

And that, I think, is the real issue - having a sense of "ownership" of a "product". While I can respect that (hell, I've been there more than a little....), in the end, the whole "digital revolution" is forcing a redefinition of exactly what "product" is. Is it the content, or is it the medium of delivery? This was not an issue in the analog world. You bought an LP, and anything else, short of the original master tapes, was substandard. The medium of delivery and quality of product were intrisically interwoven. Not so with digital. 0s & 1s are 0s & 1s if you pay $17.95 for them in a fancy package or if you steal them off your next door neighbor's dog groomer's cousin's PC. All things being equal as far as bitrate & such goes, the "product" is now entirely the packaging. Don't think so? Well then, pop a burn of a CD into the player and listen. Can you tell that it's a burn? No. It's the same music in the same quality as the original. So what's missing, what differentiates this copy from the "real thing". The packaging, pure & simple. Ok, good, fine, but packaging costs money, which means that it has to be sold at a profit, which means that there has to be a combination of audience & delivery system that makes it a viable ongoing proposition. And that's a paradigm that is rapidly changing, like it or not. The end is in no way near, but at the same time, things ain't what they used to be, nor will they ever be again. Objectification of packaging is fine. We all do it (I'd not have a copy of the original Miles Ahead cover in my collection if it didn't "matter" to me at some basic level). But let's be honest with ourselves - it's in no way shape or form about the music. We're now seeing a redefinition of product that seperates music (content) & packaging (product) in such a way that creates two distinct, as opposed to intertwined, categories of product. In my opinion, it's exponentially more important to keep the music available than it is the packaging. Because as much as I enjoy the packaging (sometimes...), I need the music in a way that I don't need the packaging. Time marches on and shit changes. Gotta roll with it & keep what really matters in the mix.

I'd think that if SACD & DVD-A were going to become a viable "format of the future", they'd have done so by now. Instead, they're....Betamax. Superior format, not enough customer support to make it an ongoing proposition.

That's a combination I've noticed in a fair amount of "local" tenor player of a certain age/environment over the years. It's really a "school" of its own. Was Mitchell a Newark-ite? Seems like there was a scene in Newark around thatt time that favored that approach. If you've ever heard the Buddy Terry Prestige material w/Woody Shaw, Larry Young, & Eddie Gladden, that's a good example.

Really?

Because there is massive market demand for high-res movies and (especially) video games, but there are very few audiophiles. People don't pay close attention to music as much as they used to; background listening is the norm and hence audio quality for music files is not a big issue. Movies and video games are activities that require one's full attention, so video quality is more important to the average consumer. An important point. MG sure, but not the complete story. If the focus was only on video, then the industry would never have develloped SACD or audio-DVD. JB or to be more precise, if they wouldn't think they couild make a lot of money with those systems, they wouldn't have develloped them.. JB And to be even more precise, have they? Will they? Can they?

Let me see if I got this right... When weighing the possibility (in theory, of course) of A) Having easy, legal, ongoing access to quality (in theory, of course) downloads of music that would otherwise maybe or maybe not be available due to "market forces" through a business model that would still make provisions for appropriate royalty payments, etc. (in theory, of course) against B) Having this same music go in and (mostly) out of print (and all that that entails) and/or being subject to Andorran-like exploitation (and all that that entails)... There are people who favor the latter scenario simply because of... ...perceived loss of potential resale value?

I would like to think that Concord will realize who their main audience for OJC-type material is, and offer a lossless option at a competitive price, as well simple higher bit-rate mp3s. That would be smart of them. And not necessarily just for the OJC-type stuff either. There's an audiophile market for almsot every genre. The beauty of downloads is that you can offer all these levels of quality w/o having to incur the expense of manufacturing hardcopies, and then putting them on the market to wait for them to sell (yeah, I know about wholesale, middle man, etc. but with the decline in brick & mortars, the wholesale level becomes all the more critical, I'd think). What could be a "safer" (from an investment/return standpoint) form of retail for any label than preparing a master, loading it onto a server, and then letting consumers obtain the material directly from the server? Talk about cutting out the middle man/men! Think back to when Bret Primack fielded complaints here about the bit-rate of the new Sonny Rollins side that was being offered for download. He upgraded it what, overnight? Or almost? How much expense do you think was involved in that? How much time & labor? I'm telling you, in theory, downloads could be a godsend for those of us interested in obsure (relative to the broader marketplace) material. No longer will we be dependent on somebody deciding that the market will support a manufacturing run and release. It can all be on servers, in excellent quality, and we can, at last, "have it all". That's in theory. The reality might well be something else. But any way you look at it, this is definitely the beginning of something new in the music industry, and it's in the beginning that consumers can have the most direct impact. Once a comfortable "consensus" has been reached, the industry will hunker down. So waht I say to those who resist the notion of downlaoding is this - now is the time to use your misgivings to your advantage. Participate in the process vocally & vigorously. Make some noise to let the companies know what you will or won't accept and spend some $$$ accordingly. Reward those who do it right and rip those who don't a new one. Do it while the window of opportunity is still open. It ain't going away, this downloading thing. You can't kill it, but you sure can decide how it goes. So speak now, or forever hold your peace.

Oh but we do have a choice. It's called burning (is a crackproof copy-protection scheme even possible? I think not...) & sharing, and if the industry doesn't offer a price that has the perception of being "fair" to a "reasonable person", then aquiesence is entirely voluntary, as is the screwing of the consumer that will ensue.

All the more reason to hold on to those LPs...

That's the Pandora's Box of digital. You don't have to pay anything to get a perfect copy. Once it's been done, it's out there for anybody & everybody. Ask the good folk in Andorra... So if downloads are priced at hardcopy levels, it ain't gonna work. There's not that many people whose personal ethics will take that much of a screwing indefinitely.

Hell, they might even make $3.99-$5.99 the download price. Who knows? But the point is that eventually you're not going to be able to buy all these CDs in hardcopy form, at least not readily. Concord won't keep low(est?) selling titles in print indefinitely, nor should they be expected to. All that "product" takes up realtime time/space & entails manufacturing expenses that downloads don't. What I really want to know is simply what is this "object" that is so prized, and (as a corollary) is it possible that some people are having "object fixation" about CDs the way that I and a lot of others did about vinyl? When you come right down to it, a CD is a CD is a CD is a CD is a CD is a CD is a CD is a CD is a CD, etc. You can make an infinite number of perfect copies of them and once they're inside the player, the "original" sounds just like a 250,000th generation burn. That's different from the analog days, when a taped copy of an LP could at best almost sound like the original. So what's this "object" business about CDs? It's gotta be either the packaging or some form of "object fixation", becuase it sure ain't that a downloaded CD is going to have to sound inferior to a storebought one. And if it's the packaging, wellsir, I got me a fair amount of old LPs, and a fair amount of CDs, and I've yet to see (as opposed to hear) a CD reissue of an LP that makes me want to get rid of the LP version. All I'm saying is, objectively, digital is digital, and that in the end, you can theoretically get the identical music in identical format via download as you do through storebought. And if the owners of the product find it more sensible to store it all on a server or three so you can get what you want when you want it instead of fighting a losing battle against space & the economics thereof, I just don't see what the fuss is about. It's a good way to keep the music (as opposed to the packaging, which I'm sure can still be made available in some form) available in a format that already exists. All that's changing is the method of delivery.

I'm just wondering what the "object" is with a CD that makes some resistant to the notion of downloaded digital music. It can't be the disc itself, because you can make one of those yourself after the download (assuming that the industry uses a format that makes that possible, which they'd be crazy not to not at least offer that as an option, which means that anything can happen...). Unless you're really into the "label" of a CD, one's just like the other, especially once it's inside the player. Surely it's not the jewel box itself. Jewel boxes suck. Digipacks are hipper, but less durable, and I've heard plenty of complaint about them here. It must be the artwork, the booklet & tray card, that constitutes the "object" that one feels is lost by downloading. Ok, I can buy that, even if, once again, for reissues of LPs they're usually a poor substitute for the originals. So, what if... You download (presumably in a high-quality format) an OJC for, say, $7.95 (or, hopefully, less), and pay an additional $2.95 to have the booklet & tray card mailed to you. (Adjust the proces of each to whatever might be more "realistic"). Then you can burn your download to a physical CD, assemble the artwork into a jewel box of your choosing, and voila, there's your object. Good enough? Or is that nifty yellow & black stuff on the CD face what really matters?

If quality downloadable music comes with quality downloadable artwork/liner notes/etc at an adjusted downloadable price that reflects the savings of the company gets from not having to physically replicate any of it, then I for one would be more than just tolerant of it. Hey - why pay $12.99 & up for something you could/should be able to download for 75% or less of that? You still get a CD out of the deal, and if you got a good printer and some good paper, original cover art at the very least. Shortest distance between two points and all that. Besides, a CD reissue of an LP in't an "original" anything. It's a copy of the orignal in a new format. Quality downloads (and that's still a big ? for me) are just another format to deliver that copy, and they should cost less (another big ? for me). For new issues, I'd think/hope that bands/labels would come up with innovative downloadable packages, just as they have/haven't with hardcopy packaging. Make it fun. It's not really anything but a change in delivery. If you want the old-style packaging, you should still be able to download it and assemble it yourself. Pain in the butt, sure, but the price should reflect that. And if all that packaging isn't that big of a deal after 6-7000 CDs, hey, less clutter. Win-Win. Anyway, jewel boxes suck.

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