Tortured Artist
Posted by Philip Bryer on 25 September 2008 - 6:59pm.
I read an anti-iTunes rant by a member of a band who objects to people cherry-picking their favourite tracks as he says the band view each of their albums as marking a specific point in their development, their history, and should be treated with the requisite respect. I'm paraphrasing here as I'm unable to re-read the original article through tears of laughter. Thanks to Angus Young of AC/DC for proving that satire's not dead.
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All such arguments are tosh
What he's actually saying is "why don't we go back to the old system whereby you pay £14 for 12 tracks when you only wanted three?"
I agree up to a point
But don't you think that say "Astral Weeks" to take one you mentioned earlier is one piece of art and deserves to be listened that way.
So then one man's art is another's etc etc.....
Yes, yes ...
this is all very well. But by the same token, why should I pay 5.50 for 20 articles (or whatever) of your mag. when I only wanted 6.
Easy enough
I respect his art. But not gonna buy it because, frankly, I could never listen to a whole CD of AC/DC. Which would only make him cross. And I respect his art too much for that.
Link?
Surely Angus Young wouldn't talk this nonsense? I can scarce credit this at all...
He surely would...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/09/25/bmitunes...
I like this bit in particular:
"If we were on iTunes, we know a certain percentage of people would only download two or three songs from the album - and we don't think that represents us musically."
Great E.P.
Whole Lotta Rosie, Back In Black & Highway To Hell. That just about sums it up...
Surely the artist..
..is going to feel differently about his work than the consumer.
Having said that, I still buy complete albums from i tunes, because there still may be that track that only starts to make sense after a couple of years.
Using the cherry pick formula you'll never find it.
Who actually does this?
Maybe I'm on my own but I would never cherry pick tracks to download, I always get the whole album. It would irritate the hell out of me not knowing what I was missing. People also talk a lot about ripping CDs and only keeping your favourite tracks. I've never done this either, but again perhaps I'm in a minority.
Me
But the clue is in "to download" or "ripping". I-pods are for a different purpose than CDs, being mere listening posts. CDs are the source document, so to speak, and contain everything, including the (sometimes necessary) clunkers: Word Irregular Steve Turner has written earlier a brief treatise on why (seeing as he is mentioned below)RT "needs"a duff song or two on each release to confirm the grandeur of the others. I cherry pick for random listening pleasure,in the same way I can read an anthology, say, of poetry. I listen to a CD to get the whole story.
O, and ahead of an entry to Pseuds corner, the other rationale for cherry picking is the re-re-re-releases of "classic" (aka any old, old record), with odd additional content, for which I resent re-buying the whole article yet again. Unhelped, of course, by the increasing and cynical tendency for such tracks to be "album only" purchases.....
Picking cherries
Oh yes, of course, I never rip the extra tracks on those 30th anniversary rereleases.
The thing is I rarely listen to CDs anymore, unless I'm in the car or as something to sound nice during dinner. So when ripping CDs or downloading I can't be bothered to listen to every track to decide which songs are the cherries, I just stick the whole thing on he ipod and listen to it later.
I'm with you Niks
I have recently bought the new Conor Oberst CD. There are some tracks I prefer to others, some I will skip or not upload to my iPod. But how am I to know which songs I like by hearing 30 seconds of it on iTunes?
When this subject comes up on here, I say the same thing: CDs are so damned cheap these days! £6.99 a time usually. That's almost half the price of 10-15 years ago.
And another thing... Greatest Hits CDs (which is what you end up with if you cherry pick) are less enjoyable to listen to than normal studio albums. Why? All cream and no cake.
"How am I to know.........?"
Hint: listen in depth a few times, even thru' the medium of ripped i-poddery. Eventually you will know. Simple, then either keep or delete. Then you have room for something more worthy.Or even just likeable.
I have 95gigs
left on my relatively new ipod, space isn't really an issue.
It will be, it will be.........
Remind me of this point in 2 years.
Conor Oberst
Its a slowie but a growie.
Hold It!
I just won't stand for anyone disrespecting the DC on this site, if you want to go off and listen to Richard Thompson then that's your business but the DC are the greatest and there are no two ways about it.
Memo to self
Add "the" DC to shortlist of guaranteed wind-ups, along with "the" 'Tramp and Gilbert O'Shenanigans.
On the subject of which, did I miss any irony, intended or otherwise, in the contributor to best keyboard wizard recently, commanding due praise for Gilberts piano player? I do hope not, as I haven't laughed so much since Roger Hodgson was up for best vocalist. Or that recent picture of the aged antipodean beat group that circulated recently. Time to put on the long trousers, Angus? Please.
I believe you were referring to my ironic overkill with GOS
And now that I think of it maybe he was worthwhile after all. After all he is the keyboard wizard in the GOS Band.
Hey, Great!
We're back on The Durutti Column again ... oh, hold on a minute ...
Absolutely
In fact it's about time Daisy Chainsaw were on the cover of The Word.
They're scared of iTunes
AC/DC have never released a Best Of (except for an odds and sods soundtrack compilation which is like a randomly assembled Best Of). The reason I believe is not because their albums are complete cathedrals of artistic majesty that would be despoiled, raped and uglified beyond recognition if the albums were split up. The real reason is because no one but the most fanatical of fans really needs more than one good Best Of. Their music never progressed or changed. My advice is buy the 2CD live album and leave it at that. You get all the essential songs that way.
Each album has two or three killer songs. The rest is filler. And I include Back In Black etc.
Madness
Back In Black is one of the pinnacles of human achievement
Back in Black
Filler ? LOUDspeaker hang your head in shame. And your speaker from the nearest pole!
Albums over Songs
I almost always go for albums over songs. I occasionly make a compilation for myself and to keep the GLW happy in the car, but I just find the album format a more satisfying listen. If I have odd songs or b-sides by an artist, I tend to compile them on my Zen in such a way that I get a similar listen.
However, I totally appreciate that a lot of people don't listen this way. I think you could justify the ACDC stance if you had made a concept album, eg Greendale or something like that, but if you're willing to release singles then you haven't an appendage to place your weight on, as it were. Are they doing any singles?
I can't help but wonder, if people only buy half an album, how do they choose which songs? A good title?
Are they doing any singles?
You'd better believe it.
and that is
as good a slice of AC/DC as you can get. But I still can't manage a whole album in one sitting.
That is better...
than it has any right to be. Rock and roll with no fat, everything in the right place.
I love AC/DC.
if people only buy half an album,how do they choose which songs?
I was a member of eMusic. I rarely downloaded full albums. I had a simple system that was solid and worked for me. And if a great song got lost then so be it, I could live without it.
I simply listened to the full 30 second sample of each track. If it was up-temp and it didn't seem like complete crap then I downloaded it. If it was a slow down-tempo track then I skipped it unless a lyric really jumped out at me as being very clever or just really promising. I could easily fillet ten track singer-songwriter albums down to four killer tracks.
The system worked for me and I have no guilt over it. I have since bought proper CDs of some of the stuff I filleted, such as Maria McKee's latest album, some jazzy girl vocalled Rolling Stones covers etc. None of the tracks I had previously skipped were all that great.
Some albums you need every track such as L Cohen's first album. Unfortunately the majority of albums are caked in so-so songs that you just don't need. I wasn't going to pay extra for tracks I assumed were not that great.
See I use eMusic
to get whole albums. I rarely download single tracks (mainly ones off various artist compilations). But I kind of view the rough cost of £2.40 per album (working on an average of 12 tracks per album) allows me a few clunkers. I'll listen to a few tracks and if I like them (3 out of 4 would be a good hit rate) I click the download all button.
Yes but on eMusic you have a limited number of downloads
Why waste your set amount of monthly downloads on crap?
Its rarely crap
and I still consider myself as buying albums - so I find an album I like and then download it. Same approach as buying an album from Amazon. When I have a few downloads left, I buy a few odds and ends.
Then I spend the next month listening to them and then start again the next month.