Topic: The Music Thread

@nessisonett Do you think you will listen to it any time soon? It's a great album ,I listened to it this morning, actually.

@TheBrandedSwordsman Yeah, probably at some point but I haven’t listened to much jazz recently.

I managed to snag a pre-order of Weatherday’s Come In on tape. I would have went for one of the 500 vinyl copies but my budget’s a bit tight at the moment and I’m just glad I’ll have a physical copy.

@nessisonett Congratulations on getting the album on tape, it's better than not having anything at all, I'm just streaming them on Youtube now, it's quite emotional music, no?

Not the sort of thing I would normally listen to, but I think it's great quality lo-fi rock, and I'm glad I tried them out.

@Jimmer-jammer might like him (Weatherday) as well.

@nessisonett How did you first hear about the Weatherday guy?

@TheBrandedSwordsman Sputnik, the artist behind Weatherday as a project is non binary and both the ‘male’ and ‘female’ voices on that album are performed by them with zero alteration due to the lo-fi limitations which I thought was honestly pretty impressive in showing their range. I heard of them through the original Reddit posting on the emo subreddit, which ended up blowing up weeks later leading to the album being critically acclaimed despite being an actual indie release as opposed to a lot of ‘indie’ artists who actually have a lot of money and resources behind them. In all honesty, it’s an album that leans into a lot of varied influences that are just right up my street, with emo such as The Brave Little Abacus and Death Cab meeting noise rock bands like Shinsei Kamattechan and even post-punk like The Cure and elements of Queercore at times. I could see it being thought of in the same vein as the original Twin Fantasy by Car Seat Headrest in a few years, I’ve already heard some soundalikes from fellow indie artists so it’s already proving quite influential.

@Kidfried @ralphdibny @RogerRoger (I had a comment to share over on MGS5 and started to hear the promptings of Tasuki whisper in my ear so I moved it over here 😜)
As far as Spotify, I’m a fan of the service and I do share a family sub with a couple family members so it makes good financial sense too. I do more TV and movie streaming than music, but even if I just use it once a week while I’m in the shower, it’s brilliant to have nearly an entire complete library of music at the ready any given moment, all at the touch of the hand. (Well… any given moment that the internet isn’t down). Not to disparage the practice of using and collecting physical media for music; it’s certainly all open to personal preference, but I have had good luck with Spotify, even in my spotty usage patterns. I think it’s delightful to have physical discs and vinyl for collectible reasons as well. I certainly have some. And I have a lot of physical movie discs (MCU and Star Wars for example) that I enjoy having, even if streaming them is easier.

It's so weird how much I reversed on Spotify. I was totally anti-streaming and all about the physical media. I had a pretty big music collection - roughly 2,500 CDs across many genres and artists and whatever. I had rare ones and ones by artists that barely anyone had ever heard of. Then one day I became sick of having loads of clutter and got rid of practically all of my physical media and now I live entirely online. So it's good for living a more minimalist life but not so good if anybody ever sets off an EMP.

@johncalmc Well, I’m not sure how EMP’s work, but I think the CD player goes down too. Unless you’ve got one that runs on a steam engine or fossil fuels or something.

EMP plans for entertainment:
Playing the guitar by the campfire while roasting supper and having neighborhood impromptu theater.

@Th3solution oh yeah you're right. Okay I have no worries about streaming now. Thanks!

@johncalmc Danggit, wait… I forgot about those crank-powered record players with the big cone speaker. I guess people’s vinyl collections will skyrocket in value during the apocalypse!

@RogerRoger Yeah, as far as predictive algorithms Spotify is decent. But I actually discover new things to add to my playlists mostly on my own accord.

It’s great for situations like — when you hear a song on TV or the radio or in a movie and it makes your ears perk up and you want to hear it again. So either using Shazam quickly or asking someone nearby “what’s the name of that song?” and then adding it to a playlist.

I'm a bit of a technology dinosaur, so my music was mostly copied from my own CDs. I used a Spotify premium trial years ago and liked it, but in recent years have taken advantage of the free trials of Amazon Music that they throw about like candy. I had three months free when I was in hospital a few years ago, which basically kept me sane. I now use Apple Music and for the most part am pretty happy with it.

@RogerRoger @Th3solution I don't use Spotify, but Apple Music is mostly terrible with its recommendations. After a song in my library finishes, it then auto plays something it thinks I'll like. And it never is! I'll listen to a classic rock song, or some '80's crap, and then it will decide to play country music, which is honestly one of my least favourite genres.

@Th3solution I wasn't sure if I was the only one who thought their predictive algorithm was just decent. Like, it's not horrible but I mostly get the same artists I know over and over and I usually have to make a concerted effort to find new stuff.

That said, Spotify is a life changer for me. I was constantly trying to organize and curate an ever growing music collection with thousands upon thousands of songs for an entire household and now I just pay a monthly fee and it's (mostly) all there and done for me (and my family). I could never go back.

@mookysam I wanted to try Apple Music (because though I like the idea of what Spotify is I whole-heartedly believe someone could do it better) but for a family account I needed an apple device to register for an iCloud account or something and I've never owned any Apple stuff so we found ourselves at a bit of a standstill, Apple and I. Bummer.

@zupertramp @mookysam @RogerRoger Amazingly I’ve not found Apple nor Amazon’s music streaming to be superior to Spotify. Like you say, it’s remarkable that no one’s done it better yet, but it’s great for instant access to the music library and experimentation with random songs. Interestingly I found Pandora to be better at predicting my tastes, but it wasn’t very good otherwise and didn’t have near the depth of library or breadth of options.

In Spotify, another issue which is challenging is searching for songs is sometimes an adventure because a song may have a dozen versions of it out there as well as cover versions, acoustic versions, radio edits, live versions, etc and sometimes it’s not very clear which is the version you want.

Also, I don’t know what the overall experience is for the audiophiles, but the compressed streaming might not sound up to snuff for those who like playing from CD and vinyl. For me though, it’s perfectly clear and I can’t tell the difference in my phone or Bluetooth speakers.

@zupertramp @Th3solution Gosh, it's annoying that they make you own one of their products to get the family subscription, but they seem to want everything in their own ecosystem. I use the Android app on my phone, which isn't amazing, but gets the job done, and it does sync well with my other devices. The Apple Music apps on their own products could use some improvements, and I know this is an area competitors are better at. Apple Music is generally good value, particularly with their Apple One subscription that also gives you cloud storage, TV and Arcade for £6 cheaper than it would be separately.

They recently introduced HD streaming Sol, which is quite a nice upgrade as almost everything is now CD quality or better. Amazon charged extra for better quality streaming (I don't know if they still do), but again I found it a noticeable improvement. It's definitely perceptible with good quality headphones. Hopefully Spotify will do something similar.

@Th3solution @mookysam I think I recall Spotify offering a lossless subscription tier in some particular market as a test. I have quite a lot of lossless in my digital collection but honestly never had the equipment to take advantage of it so lossy is fine by me.

@zupertramp Ah, lossless was the word I couldn't think of to describe it! It sounds like an utter rigmarole to take advantage of the highest quality setting (192kHz?), as I think you need some sort of digital-to-analogue converter and a pretty expensive rig. I'm just amazed I can notice the difference at all with headphones, because I'm partially deaf in one ear and get a lot of tinnitus! I'm better with certain frequencies than others, so maybe that's why. I'm finally getting my hearing aid next week, which I'm really looking forward to.

@Th3solution @mookysam @zupertramp Before I started using Spotify’s ‘Extreme’ setting for quality, there was a noticeable layer of compression using a decent pair of headphones. Now, it’s honestly as good as streaming can get for now. Barely noticeable at all!

@Th3solution you might say you have a spotty-fy usage history 😅. The shower is a good shout actually, I sort of remember these waterproof radios when I was younger but for the life of me couldn't work out why I'd want to listen to the radio in the shower. Especially when I do my own singing 😂. Maybe listening to some good songs might help instead of disc jockeys discussing what they had for breakfast and laughing hysterically about a piece of toast -_- lol.

I think it's just a matter of practical application for me. I already use my phone for a lot of things such as e mail, WhatsApp, Playstation/Xbox apps, MS Office for various things, YouTube, Photoshop, the internet is obviously a big thing. I duno, streaming has rarely been on my radar, especially on mobile data though to be fair, my data cap has slowly risen to like 9gb/month and I barely get through more than 3 gigs of it.

And this is to @RogerRoger too as a quasi reply to the MGS thread (I guess we will let it die for a while until one of us finds something cool on YouTube to share 😅).

I think I'd want a dedicated music gadget for the amount of music I'd want to put on there, which would be everything I own. I really do need and probably will look into both a home music system and portable system when my cashflow is less tight. Seems like a worthwhile thing to spend some money on, at least once!

Regardless of how lame I think Apple is, there is something inherently cool about an iPod. I really loved mine. It was black, had a colour screen, had tons of music on it. It even had a game made by Harmonix called Phase or something that like made guitar hero tracks out of your mp3s and you'd have to press 3 of the face buttons in time to a guitar hero-esque rhythm game. But yeah, it broke in 2007/08 I think and I never replaced it 😭. I've been back on the CDs ever since 😅.

It probably sounds like I'm making excuses to not get Spotify but I think I'm just a bit too picky in terms of music I like so CDs are a better option for me! This seems less true for other people but I seem to be stuck in an era with music. It's quite a large era but it ends at about 2011.

I mean, I do have game pass and I do have Disney+ and if a cheap and extensive music streaming service comes around then maybe I will make the jump instead of just paddling my feet!

Also to Rog, in terms of remixes. I love that Smooth McGrooves guy who does the acapella versions of songs. They are awesome!