02-01-2017, 02:07 PM
(02-01-2017, 01:15 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: I don't think it was compact disks that were the problem. I think it was portable music players and compressed formats that offered much lower fidelity than compact disks. Once the iPod and other portable music players became the rule, new generations could no longer hear the difference between different recordings of the same piece, so noone bought new recordings merely because they featured a different artist.
Interesting view. Maybe it is also the decision of music suppliers that pop music offers the one value that Big Business cherishes -- profit. Compression is loss in musical reproduction. For people who have been listening to music on iPod and other such schlock formats, vinyl is an unqualified improvement.
I am surprised that record companies have yet to push music on Blu-ray discs. I can think of a sales pitch for such recordings -- "Listen beyond the notes! Hear more!" Record companies could put more music, without loss, on one Blu-ray disc. They could also put such accompaniments as the scores of the music available as video.
Record companies would sell 'songs' that extol murdering one's family if such could outsell a recording of Schubert's Octet. Listening to a performance of that delightful, life-affirming, but psychologically-complex work turned me away from suicide at one desperate moment. I was that messed up a few months ago, and it wasn't on drugs or booze.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.