There are definitely tons of issues with the whole reissue/comp scene and with how all media is distributed in our digital age of cultural overproduction. Compilations are pre-selected for you and can only ever offer you a shallower, but wider look at whatever they are compiling, be it a genre, a specific time and place or just a specific band.
did the medium become the message?
The medium has always been the message. In the broader picture there's barely a difference if you were to somehow find an old authentic vinyl in a record store of afrobeat from 70s ghana or just get a comp of the same music from bandcamp. The music is just as dead (or let's say non-alive) either way and the only time it truly was alive was in the 70s in ghana when they were playing it, when there was even a tiny chance of it being more than just a commodity.
I guess one of the paradoxes is I want music to listen to offline but all methods require being yet more online.
I've recently downloaded a whole bunch of my spotify library with the intent to delete my account there. My problem with spotify isn't that it is bad (its algorithm has actually been fantastic at recommending old and new and often obscure music to me and it is obviously very convenient) or that it is bad for the artists (my alternative is piracy not buying albums, i don't have any money), but there is just something about it that cheapens the whole thing, that takes the soul out of it. Having every album ever (or at least a pretty large amount of them) right next to each other just do them justice at all.
But obviously downloading music doesn't magically put the soul back into the music either. Like recently I've kinda gotten into Miles Davis. And he's got a giant discography full of fantastic records. And there's probably very rarely been an artist that had as long and as interesting an artistic development than him, starting in the early 50s and ending in the late 70s. And how much of that gets lost when you just have all the albums as mp3s on your computer, the little icons right next to each other? You cannot possibly give any of these albums the time and attention they deserve and that they got back in the day.
I dunno. I might do a longer post on this, but I really feel like there's something deeply wrong with music as a medium today and spotify and the internet are certainly only a part of it.
There are definitely tons of issues with the whole reissue/comp scene and with how all media is distributed in our digital age of cultural overproduction. Compilations are pre-selected for you and can only ever offer you a shallower, but wider look at whatever they are compiling, be it a genre, a specific time and place or just a specific band.
The medium has always been the message. In the broader picture there's barely a difference if you were to somehow find an old authentic vinyl in a record store of afrobeat from 70s ghana or just get a comp of the same music from bandcamp. The music is just as dead (or let's say non-alive) either way and the only time it truly was alive was in the 70s in ghana when they were playing it, when there was even a tiny chance of it being more than just a commodity.
I've recently downloaded a whole bunch of my spotify library with the intent to delete my account there. My problem with spotify isn't that it is bad (its algorithm has actually been fantastic at recommending old and new and often obscure music to me and it is obviously very convenient) or that it is bad for the artists (my alternative is piracy not buying albums, i don't have any money), but there is just something about it that cheapens the whole thing, that takes the soul out of it. Having every album ever (or at least a pretty large amount of them) right next to each other just do them justice at all.
But obviously downloading music doesn't magically put the soul back into the music either. Like recently I've kinda gotten into Miles Davis. And he's got a giant discography full of fantastic records. And there's probably very rarely been an artist that had as long and as interesting an artistic development than him, starting in the early 50s and ending in the late 70s. And how much of that gets lost when you just have all the albums as mp3s on your computer, the little icons right next to each other? You cannot possibly give any of these albums the time and attention they deserve and that they got back in the day.
I dunno. I might do a longer post on this, but I really feel like there's something deeply wrong with music as a medium today and spotify and the internet are certainly only a part of it.