Getting Old...

[zaidstone]

Hi ya' all!

I'm a huge fan of Spotify - as a £10 a month subscriber I get full and constant access top a huge library of music via a 320Kbps Vorbis stream. Being an old geezer (I remember wax cylinders) am I missing something here, or is this the best 'frikkin time in human history to be a music enthusiast?

Now I know some of you will dismiss me out of hand as a cloth eared twit but I have a pretty capable turntable (SP10 with SME and Denon MC Cartridge.) Yes, yes, a 103 variant, wanna fight over it?.

Yet using a fairly prosaic PC music server and an external USB DAC I find the sound quality better than vinyl (no noise, even more detail) and far superior to CD (which from day one has always sounded harsh to me).

My real question is. as an old fart, or am I moving (slowly) towards the the 21st Century of music delivery? :P

Discuss...

[Welder]

Welcome to the real world ;)

Course, your a deaf owld git much like myself but hey........:lolsign:

[Tim]

Hi ya' all!

I'm a huge fan of Spotify - as a £10 a month subscriber I get full and constant access top a huge library of music via a 320Kbps Vorbis stream. Being an old geezer (I remember wax cylinders) am I missing something here, or is this the best 'frikkin time in human history to be a music enthusiast?
Discuss...

I cannot argue with that at all as another Spotify subscriber. Music has never been so accessible before. Plus (and this is purely a personal observation) bands seem to be performing live so much more. My view it's a result of file sharing and the price of CD's, they have to be a lot more creative to carve out a living and going on the road more often can bring in big bucks, but boy it's hard work for them?

I was cleaning some old LP's off the other day from the 70's, that still had price labels on..... 7.99, 8.99 ....11.00! That then was a kings ransom for me, now 4.99 ~ 8.99 is the range and that's pence compared to salaries in the 70's

Good times indeed for music fans :)

[zaidstone]

I was cleaning some old LP's off the other day from the 70's, that still had price labels on..... 7.99, 8.99 ....11.00! That then was a kings ransom for me,

£11 albums in the 70's? Jeepurs, I guess you and your mates never heard of TDK SA, cassette decks and piracy...

[zaidstone]

Welcome to the real world ;)

Course, your a deaf owld git much like myself but hey........:lolsign:

Ain't that the truth. Mind you, our failing HF hearing means we can finally listen to Yamaha NS-1000's without wincing...

[Ali Tait]

Yamies sound great with the right amp!

[Tim]

£11 albums in the 70's? Jeepurs, I guess you and your mates never heard of TDK SA, cassette decks and piracy...

Had both, but I've never been an advocate of music piracy and I always wanted the album anyway. Something quite special about getting up at 5 in the morning working at a bakery to earn cash to buy LP's! And that anticipation too......

and I make no further comment about music piracy, as a newbie here it has obviously been discussed before :)

[zaidstone]

Had both, but I've never been an advocate of music piracy and I always wanted the album anyway. Something quite special about getting up at 5 in the morning working at a bakery to earn cash to buy LP's! And that anticipation too......

and I make no further comment about music piracy, as a newbie here it has obviously been discussed before :)

Eeep! The comment was meant to be a joke, I'm not advocating piracy - back in the early 70's I worked 16 hours a day as a fuel jockey to get my music. 'Course, I was lucky enough to go home to my Dad's (then) ultimate Sansui/JBL system.

But yeah, we did sort of copy each others Blue Oyster Cult and Deep Purple albums back then. I beg forgiveness....

[Tim]

Eeep! The comment was meant to be a joke, I'm not advocating piracy - back in the early 70's I worked 16 hours a day as a fuel jockey to get my music. 'Course, I was lucky enough to go home to my Dad's (then) ultimate Sansui/JBL system.

But yeah, we did sort of copy each others Blue Oyster Cult and Deep Purple albums back then. I beg forgiveness....

No need to apologise at all, I'm not the piracy police ;) Touchy subject for me and I'm normally in the minority...... I did record all the time for my cassette walkman, gosh how nasty were they compared to what's going through my ears right now with my Caiman DAC (Bruckner 9 from 1966 with Karajan and the BPO).

But back then I thought they were a wonder..... don't you just love technology :)

[Alex_UK]

Touchy subject for me and I'm normally in the minority....

I doubt you are here, and certainly not in my (red)book anyway - I know record companies rip off musicians, but that's no excuse for us to follow suit!

I am also a Spotify Premium subscriber, and bang on long and hard on here how good it is for a paltry £10 per month (it saves me that in a day compared to how many CDs I would otherwise have bought!) but I do worry how sustainable the business model is - artists get less that bugger all from it I gather, although that is at least slightly more than if you steal their work via Bit Torrent etc... I shall say no more!

[MartinT]

Bruckner 9 from 1966 with Karajan and the BPO

Have you tried the Eugen Jochum recording with the BPO in 1966 on DG? Bloody fantastic, that performance!

[Tim]

Have you tried the Eugen Jochum recording with the BPO in 1966 on DG? Bloody fantastic, that performance!

See, there you buggers go again, costing me more money......... I have 6 Bruckner 9's, but not that one...lol!

Oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound...... ;) I do like the drama of Karajan's 66 performance, but I'm a Karajan and BPO fan.

http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w63/greatgig/bruckner9.jpg

And Alex, yes I'm totally with you there about Spotify too. I held off for quite awhile before subscribing, thinking it would fold..... but it's still there :) I would be devastated if it did go, it's my # 1 source of reference now.

I read somewhere the artists get around 0.001p per play. But if it helps reduce piracy, it's got to be a good thing and I certainly buy more CD's as a result of using it. How refreshing too to be on a music forum where I don't feel like a leper for arguing against it.

[zaidstone]

Yamies sound great with the right amp!

What amp? A 200 watt high current design to get the woofers moving but voiced with a severely drooping top end to make them listenable? :lol:

[zaidstone]

artists get less that bugger all from it I gather, although that is at least slightly more than if you steal their work via Bit Torrent etc... I shall say no more!

But surely that’s only a factor of the transition from one business model to another?

OK, with providers like Spotify only having around three quarters of a million paying subscribers (compared to ten million registered users of the 'free' service) the musicians get very little royalties now, but when (if?) the bulk of home music delivery moves to web based 'music on demand' the 0.001p royalty payment will be more significant?

Besides, Musicians are supposed to suffer for their art. They should be happy with the 10p we drop in their hat as we pass them... :)

[zaidstone]

Welcome to the real world ;)

Course, your a deaf owld git much like myself but hey........:lolsign:

Ain't that the truth! :lolsign:

[Ali Tait]

What amp? A 200 watt high current design to get the woofers moving but voiced with a severely drooping top end to make them listenable? :lol:

Nope. A very good valve amp, such as a WAD 300b PP. I have heard this combination and it sounds glorious. I have also heard a pair with some SS amps and it sounded as you describe, but you can hardly blame the speakers for being transparent to what is played through them! Use a decent amp and they are great.

[lurcher]

Like you, I also send Spotify £10 a month and think its a great service. I turns my phone into a huge ipod, I use it all the time at work.


I read somewhere the artists get around 0.001p per play

But I suppose that 0.001p is more than they would have got without the existence of Spotify. And also like you, it often leads me to further purchases,

[John]

I like spotify but I still want to have the rights to the music

[MartinT]

See, there you buggers go again, costing me more money......... I have 6 Bruckner 9's, but not that one...lol!

Sorry about that. I'm fairly sure I have at least five, I do like the Gunter Wand performance a lot, too :)

[Tim]

Have you tried the Eugen Jochum recording with the BPO in 1966 on DG? Bloody fantastic, that performance!

Just ordered it from Amazon Marketplace - hope it's the right one, as the seller had very little information on the listing. But it's DG and all the DG ones I have identified from his discography are the earlier recording, fingers crossed.

I see it's been recorded twice by him with the BPO, have you got the 77 one too?

[MartinT]

No. I have the following:

Jochum/BPO/DG (1966)
Jochum/Dresden/EMI (1982) CD & vinyl
Tintner/RSNO/Naxos (1997)
Skrowaczewski/Minnesota/RR (1997)
Sinopoli/Dresden/DG (1999)
Wand/BPO/RCA (1999)
Harnoncourt/Vienna/RCA (2002)

Hmm, more than I realised.

[dave2010]

Don't you just love it when all the forums you've ever subscribed to remind you it's your birthday? [Comment on the original thread title.]