The History Book Club discussion

This is a thread which focuses on streaming and digital music and recordings, music on CDs, as well as records, etc.

Here discussions can occur on the "history and future of recorded, streaming or digital music including the various mechanisms for transporting music to us like iTunes, MP3's, Spotify, Pandora, SoundCloud, Rhapsody, Amazon, iHeartRadio, music blogs, future of cd/record stores, vinyl etc and what the effects are upon the music industry and artists, etc.

Please, there is no self promotion on this thread and site.

Here is an interesting article from the Atlantic on just this topic:and since it is from 2015 - do you think that what it states is happening?

The Death of Music Sales
If CDs are "dead," so is iTunes.

by DEREK THOMPSON
JAN 25, 2015

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/...

Source: The Atlantic (which is a great publication by the way)

The New Analog: Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World

by Damon Krukowski (no photo)

Synopsis:

What John Berger did to ways of seeing, well-known indie musician Damon Krukowski does to ways of listening in this lively guide to the transition from analog to digital culture .

Having made his name in the late 1980s as a member of the indie band Galaxie 500, Damon Krukowski has watched cultural life lurch from analog to digital.

And as an artist who has weathered the transition, he has challenging, urgent questions for both creators and consumers about what we have thrown away in the process: Are our devices leaving us lost in our own headspace even as they pinpoint our location?

Does the long reach of digital communication come at the sacrifice of our ability to gauge social distance?

Do streaming media discourage us from listening closely?

Are we hearing each other fully in this new environment?

Rather than simply rejecting the digital disruption of cultural life, Krukowski uses the sound engineer’s distinction of signal and noise to reexamine what we have lost as a technological culture, looking carefully at what was valuable in the analog realm so we can hold on to it.

Taking a set of experiences from the production and consumption of music that have changed since the analog era—the disorientation of headphones, flattening of the voice, silence of media, loudness of mastering, and manipulation of time—as a basis for a broader exploration of contemporary culture, Krukowski gives us a brilliant meditation and guide to keeping our heads amid the digital flux.

Think of it as plugging in without tuning out.

Review:

"He’s basically talking about how we hear music now: the platforms, the equipment, the cultural environment. He’s a very unique thinker. He’s in a band called Damon & Naomi and was in the legendary indie-pop band Galaxie 500, so he’s writing as both a practitioner and as a theorist. Although it’s advanced, it’s very comprehensible. It’s one of those books that makes your brain fizz for a few days after you’ve read it.--Laura Snapes, deputy editor of music at The Guardian in an interview with FiveBooks

More:
https://fivebooks.com/best-books/the-...

Source: FiveBooks