Is streaming technology saving the music industry?

[JSngry]

Of course not. Neil Young is the All-Time Global Spokesperson For Clear Headed Logical And Linear Thinking.

But quite apart from that, yes, AM did its "it" better than streaming is doing its. For now. If not, nobody would be hand-writhing over the end of the music industry. It's not just a matter of having a captive audience, its a matter of branding them while you got 'em. AM, got it done. Streaming, still trying.

And truthfully, in terms of "sound quality" being as much a subjective environmental as/instead of an objective metric (key point), if I'm in my car wanting to hear American Popular Music from between, say, 1947-1972 (approximately), and if I have the choice between 45s being played on clear AM signal and a streaming whatever, I'm probably going with the AM.

Of course, I'm not going to get that choice, even if I did have a burning need for it.

People who grew up starting out on FM Pop radio might not get it, as might not people who only heard Top 40 AM from a long enough distance to get all teh static and shit at unfortunate levels (but even at that, that's one of those things that you don't really know is a negative until you have a viable alternative...WLS coming out of Chicago into Texas at midnight sounded completely different than did WLS coming into Sterling, Illinois at 3 PM) and fair enough. But even at that, if you ever stumble into a joint that has an old jukebox with those bigass speakers, a collection of 45s, and the volume turned up loud, go ahead and indulge yourself in some of the best "bad" sound available.

[Scott Dolan]

I don't know. Not that I will dispute what you're saying, but it strikes me as a bit of golden age fallacy. Ramblings that usually kick off with, "when I was your age...", with a, "but you kids these days" epilogue. 

AM radio was in mono, and for the most part sounded pretty bad. Streaming is in full stereo, and from what I've heard doesn't sound bad at all. And I haven't heard any of the paid services that stream in higher quality from 256-320kbps. 

If I wanted to listen to Coltrane's Live At Birdland, I could instantly stream it. Where will I find it on AM radio? 

There are positives and negatives involved with everything we undertake in this world. Was there a random diversity in AM radio? Sure. Did it "kick streaming's ass" sonically? Not even close. 

[JSngry]

Cool, AM Radio was in mono, and if you wanted to hear Coltrane on the radio, you'd have to live in an urban area. and maybe go to the FM band. Maybe, I thnk most jazz radio in America was AM, not sure, but pretty sure.

That's not exactly the "it" I was talking about, but if you and Neil Young to go at it, be my guest..

[Scott Dolan]

In Florida most of our Jazz on radio came via public stations low on the FM band. Usually between 88 and 92.

[JSngry]

In the 50s, 60s, and early 70s?

[Scott Dolan]

Since I wasn't alive for the 50's and 60's, and didn't start listening to Jazz until the mid 90's, I can't say. 

But, in the 90's (I didn't really pay attention to AM in the 70's and 80's), AM in Florida was pretty much all talk and Hispanic music/talk. With the exception of Friday night football games, and occasional Oldies programming, that was all there was. 

Our public station out of Fort Myers played classical during the day, and Jazz during the evening and overnight. 

Edited July 19, 2015 by Scott Dolan

[JSngry]

Just sayin' - the type of AM that Neil Young is talking about (and the kind that I grew up on, and I'm 10 years younger than him) was fundamentally different in the 50s/60s/early 70s than the kind you grew up with. Young might have been talking about "sound quality", but again, that means something other than just metrics to some people, and yes, the nostalgia factor is very high in driving the perception. But objectively, yes, AM did have its own "sound", and yes, people of the pre-Album Rock era DID master their singles to sound "good" within the boundaries of that "sound", just buy the 45s of the time, you can hear it very clearly, the same cut on the LP of the time did not sound like the single. More than one producer is known to have mixed/mastered their records on car speakers and or cheap home/hi-fi speakers, because they know that that was how most people would be listening to their records.

As I hope I've made clear by now, Neil Young is not somebody to whom I look for to get a clear analytical dissection of too much of anything. But his statement, "AM did it better", like I said, I felt some of that, because I know what he's talking about as far as he's talking about it.

I also think that the whole "shrinking industry" thing needs to be looked in precisely the terms of "captive audience" that made AM Top 40 such a powerful force when it was one. The industry had the power, literally, to have their songs heard by, in a major city, tens of thousands of people at the same exact time, no matter where they were. In the car, on the beach, on your job, sleeping, fucking, getting high, doing your homework, taking a shit, taking a bath, doesn't matter - you heard what your station's DJ played the same time as everybody else heard it. That's a captive audience, and that is something that streaming does not provide. Streaming allows to get to what you want to get to whenever you can get around to it. That used to be one of the reasons so why you bought a record, to have the freedom to hear your music that way (and anybody else my age, is your memories that girls bought more singles than albums, and guys were the other way about it?). Think about that - once the audience tuned into the station, the only control they had over what they were going to hear was to turn that station off. So yeah, captive audience in a way that streaming is inherently designed to prevent. Even a thing like Pandora, where they throw shit at you to see what sticks, you're hearing just what you're hearing, not what 50,00 other people are hearing the same time you are.

And don't get me started on "regional hits"...that was part of the fun in scanning the AM dial after dark, to pull in those stations that were still up and on. Not all stations played the same hits, and even the ones they did play got emphasized differently in different markets. KLIF, WNOE, and WLS, you heard a lot of the same songs, but not ALL the same songs (and not even the same songs on the same stations all through the day). Hell, in Gladewater, deep in the heart of semi-rural East texas, KLUE in Longview & KTTB in Tyler...two different worlds, both played Top 40. Whole 'nother world then.

So, if Neil Young is seen as saying that AM had objectively better sound quality statistics, then yeah, he's full of shit. But if he meant more than just that, then i still know what he means. And if he has no idea what he meant and just blurred a bunch of incomplete thoughts together, then I sure hope that this was one of them.

Anyway, fuck Neil Young really, what has he done for me lately (and by lately, I mean, like in the last 40 or so years)? But still do not fuck AM radio, because the last time I headed south on 35, there was a little local Honky Tonk/Western Swing station coming out of Weatherford that just totally kicked ass. It seemed to have a solid signal radius of at best 25 miles, so..got about half an hour of that before it started breaking up. But you get something like that by surprise on your AM car radio when out on the road, it's still one of the greater musical pleasures to be had outside of the house, I think. But also, one of the rarest. Didn't used to be that way, but...oh well.

[Scott Dolan]

So, if Neil Young is seen as saying that AM had objectively better sound quality statistics, then yeah, he's full of shit. But if he meant more than just that, then i still know what he means. 

First sentence = The End

Second sentence = No, he didn't mean more than that.

You've made some excellent points, and I've enjoyed reading them. But, you'd be doing yourself a favor if you stopped trying to conflate your comments with his. 

His comments are deragotory concerning digital sound quality, your comments are based in historical cultural influence. 

Your comments make sense and have an almost educational quality to them. His comments are laughable nonsense. 

[JSngry]

I link my thoughts to none of Neil Young's in no way except to say that the phrase "AM did it better" stirs resonates with me in the ways I've delineated.

As to what degree, if any, Neil Young has any similar resonances, you really would be better off taking it up with him.

As a matter of principle, though, I will say that it is not infrequent that a simple statement that at first seems idiotic becomes less so when the context which spawned it comes into clearer focus. Other side of that is that people who go for soundbites should set the table before serving.

Bottom line, pivot long since pivoted, and fuck Neil Young, if you want to understand why streaming is still fucking with the entire industry, you have to look at where that industry is coming from, and in modern terms, that beings with AM Radio, specifically how radio itself shifted and survived the PostWar emergence and eventual domination of TV as the format of choice for program-based entertainment (extra fun in looking at how Hollywood handled the same transition). Then you go to the movement of R&B to R&R, again, AM radio is the crucial element, and then the sociological math of Top 40 radio (if you don't know who the name, Gordon McClendon, check him out), and then...then the advent of "underground" radio, which was really the first time FM had been used as a tool on anything resembling a small scale (hell, I don't think that I myself owned a car that had anything besides and AM radio until well into the 1970s, and even then it cost extra), and then from there (the apex of American Music Radio, afaic), uh-oh, here we go, "Album Rock" and the shift from AM to FM as Popular Radio Format Of Choice, and, but wait, there's more, the rise of programming consultants, and the slow decline into formats, which then led to market myopia, the segmentation of tastes, and then you start seeing things really going bad, listener curiosity no longer needed, just find what they already like and give them that, and, oh by the way, start getting militant about it if you can, REAL Rock, REAL Country, REAL Soul, all that bullshit. And then, Napster, cat out of bag, get and listen to ONLY hwat you want. Good or bad depends entirely on listener, but, definitely, DEFINITELY different as business and as social practices and norms.

Does anybody remember how avant-garde Sha-Na-Na was perceived when they had their first visibility? If you blinked, you missed it, but, still...looking back as a concept meant pulling out of the mainstream.

Top 40 AM, I swear to god, you could hear Frank Sinatra and then The Doors and then Bobby Goldsboro and then Steppenwolf and then a commercial or three, and then The Cowsills and then Cream and then Roy Clark and then Jimi Hendrix, all day long, because the product was plentiful, the outlets relatively few, and getting a broader audience instead of a targeted one was Good Business. It worked until it didn't, but when it did, jeezus leweesus, you had an industry, a pretty damn big industry, and did it spill over into jazz, hell yes it spilled over into jazz.

And now, not so much, any of it.

Is streaming technology saving the music industry?

Bottom line - THIS music industry, you don't have without radio, AM Radio in particular. What kind of an industry WILL you have with streaming, that's the question that everybody's still not yet able to answer.

That's "The End", at least for now...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-a6d0QVKD0

 

[GA Russell]

It occurs to me that for most people, the quality of their speakers in 2015 is going to be better than what they had in 1959.

[Scott Dolan]

It occurs to me that for most people, the quality of their speakers in 2015 is going to be better than what they had in 1959.

Audio technology, as a whole, has come a long way since 1959. Anyone with a smart phone and even the most modest set of earbuds are getting sound quality that is far better than anything ever delivered by cassette or 8 track. And those two delivered better sound quality than AM radio. 

[BillF]

It occurs to me that for most people, the quality of their speakers in 2015 is going to be better than what they had in 1959.

Audio technology, as a whole, has come a long way since 1959. Anyone with a smart phone and even the most modest set of earbuds are getting sound quality that is far better than anything ever delivered by cassette or 8 track. 

That is my experience. 

[Balladeer]

Maybe not the correct thread, nevertheless interesting aspects

https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2016/sep/16/ride-the-spotify-wave-playlist-jazz-hits-neil-cowley-trio-jazz

[A Lark Ascending]

Music streaming hailed as industry's saviour as labels enjoy profit surge

Very different from the articles we were getting a couple of years back.

I liked this:

“You don’t even have to be a hardcore music fan for it (legal streaming) to seem like good value. People who previously thought they weren’t that into music, or didn’t like artists enough to buy entire albums, are now discovering they are far more interested in music than they thought. I think streaming has woken people up to how music can really find its place in your life.”

[Dissenting views towards end of article]

[Scott Dolan]

Interesting. So perhaps this was just a blip that needed market correction, along the lines of what happened when Napster became a huge hit. 

Interesting. So perhaps this was just a blip that needed market correction, along the lines of what happened when Napster became a huge hit. 

[David Ayers]

I was hoping we had said goodbye to the recorded music "industry", but back they come, with their "albums" and "hits"...

[rostasi]

 

[Scott Dolan]

And I was the last person to buy a compact disc player 10 years later. 

Edited February 13, 2017 by Scott Dolan

[ArtSalt]

I didn't know anyone who had a CD player when they first came out in '83. A mucca had one in 1986 that was the earliest I knew of anyone personally owning one.

[Dmitry]

I play soccer with a bunch of people in their 20s. One is a musician who just released an album. When I asked to buy his cd, him and a couple of others looked at me like I was asking to buy a wax cylinder. I then asked if any of them buy music on cds. CDs?! WTF?!

[Scott Dolan]

4 hours ago, ArtSalt said:

I didn't know anyone who had a CD player when they first came out in '83. A mucca had one in 1986 that was the earliest I knew of anyone personally owning one.

A buddy's older brother bought one in 1984 or 1985. That was my first experience with one. And the ONLY one for several years after that. 

2 hours ago, Dmitry said:

I play soccer with a bunch of people in their 20s. One is a musician who just released an album. When I asked to buy his cd, him and a couple of others looked at me like I was asking to buy a wax cylinder. I then asked if any of them buy music on cds. CDs?! WTF?!

Hell, most folks that age don't buy music in any format. They're all about streaming. 

[rostasi]

Recently, I rented a car. Bringing along a collection of 10 discs with random tracks, I was all ready ...
until I realised that there was no CD player to be found (?!) Luckily, I had my wife's old iPod Touch
with tunes that I had put on there years ago for her enjoyment. When I returned the car,
the young girl who was at the check-in heard my story. She had this look of
"CD player? Why would you expect an old relic like that?"

I still have both a built-in 6-disc changer and a cassette player in the car.
There's also the option of using an iPod, but I have to use one
of those cassettes that plugs into the Pod.
...and making those CDs for favorite restaurants, 
that's going by the wayside too. Change!

The first CD I can remember getting - in 1984:



The first one my wife got in 1988:

[Dmitry]

1 hour ago, Scott Dolan said:

Hell, most folks that age don't buy music in any format. They're all about streaming. 

Streaming is also formatted, right? And streaming isn't always free. That's as much as I know 'bout it.

 

57 minutes ago, rostasi said:

...and making those CDs for favorite restaurants, 
that's going by the wayside too. Change!

 

You make cds for restaurant play? You bring them with you when you go out to eat, or they already know what to play when you walk through the door?

[catesta]

58 minutes ago, rostasi said:

Recently, I rented a car. Bringing along a collection of 10 discs with random tracks, I was all ready ...
until I realised that there was no CD player to be found (?!) Luckily, I had my wife's old iPod Touch
with tunes that I had put on there years ago for her enjoyment. When I returned the car,
the young girl who was at the check-in heard my story. She had this look of
"CD player? Why would you expect an old relic like that?"

I still have both a built-in 6-disc changer and a cassette player in the car.
There's also the option of using an iPod, but I have to use one
of those cassettes that plugs into the Pod.
...and making those CDs for favorite restaurants, 
that's going by the wayside too. Change!

The first CD I can remember getting - in 1984:



The first one my wife got in 1988:

Word. I just recently replaced a vehicle and it has the upgraded audio system so I was shocked to find it did not have a cd player. That really bummed me out.

[Scott Dolan]

43 minutes ago, Dmitry said:

Streaming is also formatted, right? And streaming isn't always free. 

I don't understand your question, but no it isn't always free. I think most who use it only USE the free service, but I can't say for sure. I can count on one hand the number of times I've used a streaming service. 

Even though I gave up on physical media many years ago, I still prefer buying albums rather than listening to them on a streaming service.