"The 50's and 60's where music creative genius"

Oh yeah? According to my grandfather, all music DIED at the START of the 50's! Anything/one attached to an amp was just mindless noise with no talent or lyrical abilty. Welcome to the age of Dinosaurs DUP, when anything after your youth sucks, and the Good 'ol Days were sunny and bright...

This is why people listen to classical. They have hundreds of years of music to choose from rather than a few decades. Classical titles aren't overpriced and they're not compressed during recording. Furthermore, different people do different interpretations of the same work, so you get to choose which interpretation and/or performance you like best. Another thing is that classical music isn't all the same. It varies tremendously from period to period, so whereas you may not be too keen let's say on the "classical" period, you may actually like Baroque or Renaissance music or the Romantic period or modern. The musical world expands quite drastically when you allow yourself to look beyond modern popular music (I include rock and blues from the 40's in that generalization).

Another advantage to classical is the self-filtering that occurs. Most of the dreck didn't survive and is no longer played.

Unfortunately, some good stuff was lost also - but most currently played is of excellent quality.

Hey DUP. I wonder what you'd think of the new Black Keys album, Attack & Release. It's guitar-driven, bluesy, and very soulful. It sounds great, too. If you buy the vinyl, which comes packaged in a beautiful gatefold, you get the entire CD for free. You should check it out and let us know what you think.

I do agree that the prices of physical media should be lowered.

I buy used.

I guy CDs from BMG at an average of $6-$8 a pop.

"I do agree that the prices of physical media should be lowered."

There's NO question music albums have been over priced ever since the advent of the CD. The excuse at first was: "Hey! This is way technical stuff we got here, and it costs SO much to produce, and we only have 3 factories in the U.S., blah, blah, blah...So how about you pay $15 to help us out?"

$15 in 1984 was serious money for an album! According to an online inflation calculator, what cost $15 in 1984 would cost $30.84 in 2007. So move on 4 years later, many new factories, and the cost of a CD was down to $0.75 and you see how the greed just took hold. Shipping and inventory was lower all along. So this is the same industry that cried fowl when it's buyers saw MP3s as the ultimate payback for price fixing. I have no sympathy, even though I never have taken the crappy "free" mp3 route myself.

And yeah- a lot of stuff out there now IS garbage, but that would be true in ANY era. The 70's- remember Captain and Tennille? Abba? Late Zeppelin, Prog Rock?

The 50s and 60s had droves of cheesy pop radio groups every bit as lame as Hanna Montana, it's just they didn't quite have down to a science like today. That's progress I guess.

Me- I'm with Erik. I buy new, but there's a ton of good used out there for the picking at honest prices.

Not to mention that you usually couldn't try 'em before you bought 'em, then when they were lousy music, you couldn't return 'em. What happened to "satisfaction guaranteed?"

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Not to mention that you usually couldn't try 'em before you bought 'em, then when they were lousy music, you couldn't return 'em. What happened to "satisfaction guaranteed?"

Illegal ripping and file sharing.

Illegal ripping and file sharing, in the early '80s? No, they still justified their "have our cake and eat it too" attitude with home taping. Remember "Home Taping is Killing Music?" Music is still alive, last time I checked.

I misunderstood your earlier post. I thought you were bemoaning that you cannot currently buy a CD, listen to it, and return it if you hate the music.

Sorry about the misunderstanding. I should have quoted from dbowker's post. I would still like to be able to return a musically defective CD, however. It's not my fault the industry foisted a format upon us that anyone could copy perfectly. Hearing a song or two on the radio didn't insure the album was good. And low quality thirty second samples over the internet aren't enough either. They still want to have their cake, eat it too, and then sue the people who gave them the cake! Hmmm... Do I sound bitter?

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The 70's- remember Captain and Tennille? Abba? Late Zeppelin, Prog Rock?

Hey, Alan Parsons is good shit.

And now for something completely different.

I mean no offense to Elk and those who feel similarly about ripping and file sharing. However, I think people can sometimes be a bit uptight about such things. I don't condone illegal downloading in all situations, but I also don't universally condemn it. It's different for audiophiles. Since the vast majority of available files are MP3's, most downloads are not even equivalent to purchasing the CD. I see MP3 files as a kind of modern "radio", which allows me to listen to music and decide if it's worth purchasing. If it's not worth purchasing, it's generally likewise not worth having, so I don't keep it. FLAC files are the exception, but most of the lossless albums I've downloaded are from artists whom I support with music purchases, and I'm simply augmenting or completing an existing collection. I'm not saying that I'm entitled to music for which I haven't paid, only that I've been paying exorbitant prices for years (and continue to do so), so I don't feel much remorse when I take a couple extra cookies from the jar.

For the record, I've never uploaded. (Is that like "I smoked, but I never inhaled"?). Who knows, maybe I've lost my perspective on criminality. Did you know marijuana possession is a civil infraction in Ann Arbor? I think it's a $25 fine. My next door neighbors smoke all the time, and the hallway always smells like reefer.

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"I do agree that the prices of physical media should be lowered."

There's NO question music albums have been over priced ever since the advent of the CD.

With respect, this isn't true, except for bestselling albums from mainstream artists. For a typical classical or jazz CD, neither the record company nor the artist is making much money on a disc that sells for $16 at retail. I wrote about this misperception 6 years ago: see www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/578.

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many new factories, and the cost of a CD was down to $0.75 and you see how the greed just took hold.

Again with respect, the FOB price of a CD (on a spindle) being less than $1 has very little to do with the ultimate retail price. There are many other costs that need to be factored in, almost all of which are considerably greater than the manufacturing cost of the raw CD. Especially when you consider that with a typical release from an indie selling way less than 20,000, that means all the upfront costs have to recovered from those limited sales. As I wrote in the linked essay, economies of scale in production mean that there is a break point at about 200,000 in sales. Below that point CDs are priced fairly at $15-$16 retail; above that point, yes, CDs are overpriced at that price. But if you want all CDs to be priced at $6-$8, then as a corollary, you need to accept that the only music you will be able to buy will be of Britney Spears, John Mayer, and the Simpson Sisters.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

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the only music you will be able to buy will be of Britney Spears, John Mayer, and the Simpson Sisters.

GASP

You need to say that beside a campfire, with your face lit from below with a flashlight. Follow it with an evil laugh.

But John- I was referring to 1984, when LPs were still going for $9.99! The up-charge of CDs was a big industry swindle. "Here's this great new technology we insist you adopt AND pay the R&D for!" Also- the drop in manufacturing cost I cited was not about CD-ROM cost or anything, it was from an article in 1989 and about music factory CDs.

The point in that article (Newsweek I think it was) was that the rationale for the higher cost of CDs (as explained by the industry at the time) was that the actual physical manufacturing was so much more expensive they had to jack it up- but then the price dropped way down, to LESS than LPs, especially when you factored in shipping and storage.

The prices just stayed high, and when you factor in how many people went out and paid top dollar for just replacing the albums they already had, I can't believe some music execs weren't laughing all the way to the bank...

DUP- I'm not arguing the 50s-70s didn't have a lot of great music. They DID! But my point is that so do we now from the 80s-2008, it's just you haven't been listening o it, and it's not mostly on the radio. REM, The Cure, U2, Dave Mathews, Jullianna Hatfield, Aimee Mann, Elvis Costello, The Clash, Lyle Lovett, Joe Jackson, Sheryl Crow, Tori Amos----- go hear some real music dude made in the last 30 years. It's there.

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I am still catching up on all the stuff I missed from teh 50's and 60's....

Man, wait until you get to the 70s.

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Now i see why ELK has some bizzare outlooks, you are getting too much second hand SMOKE........

How did I get dragged into this?

Besides, I was always smart enough to understand that the whole point was to inhale.

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Now i see why ELK has some bizzare outlooks, you are getting too much second hand SMOKE........

How did I get dragged into this?

Besides, I was always smart enough to understand that the whole point was to inhale.

...and hold it in...and don't Bogart that mo-fo, bro!!