Music stars unite to seek control

Originally posted by drock905

What i always wondered was why don't Majors, if there so concerned with pirated music, just stop releasing albums digitally. Return to vinyl and then just having a computer wouldn't allow people to burn music. Not saying they should, but it seemed a reasonable solution.

I'm pretty sure the mark-up on a CD is much better than vinyl as they're easier and cheaper to make. Also, despite CDs being initially marketed as being pretty indestructible - I remember seeing some amazing claims in the very early 1980s - even when being careful, my own CDs don't seem to have fared as well as most of my vinyl. I also think there's much more rebuying of CDs than there was of vinyl, either through damage or things like theft due to the inherent portability of CDs (car break-ins and the like).

Most people wouldn't bother copying stuff in real time.

One of the factors with this is that, as it stands, most people wouldn't bother copying their CDs either in order to circulate them on a large scale. The issue with piracy is that all it takes is one person to make a copy of something and then upload it and then bam! it's in circulation. Already, on torrent sites I see a lot of vinyl rips from audiophiles.

The over compression of instruments is a huge problem and more engineers have started embracing older techniques and shunning "the volume wars" that have become the norm. Everybody wants to be louder because they think that means "radio quality" when its just ear fatiguing.

I've read some great articles on this over the years. I think I'm lucky that in not listening to a lot of modern mainstream music or rock/metal, this isn't as big an issue for me as it is for others.

With that approach comes unessecary prodction and it stops being a band playing together in room and becomes just a bunch of people overdubing to a click track.

I'm not too sure about this part though, unless you're advocating recording of purely 'live' takes, overdubbing is overdubbing. Whether you're playing to a click track or a track that a real drummer put down an hour ago in the room next door, it really amounts to the same thing.

reply to post by Merriman Weir


Good point about the piracy, it only takes one person to do the work and put it out there.


The idea of recording bands as a unit is more of a personel preference of mine. IMO i think that recording together with a band who is well rehearsed leads to a whole different vibe. To me it ends up sounding more real. In a properly tuned space with the right mic techniques it sounds better to me, you get musicans playing off of each other and having that dynamic that doesnt come across other ways even if there are mistakes. Bleed between tracks is also a good thing, as long as you get a good sound at the source you shouldn't have to fix anything in the mix.

You pretty much always overdub the vocals, and the flavor, but the meat and potatoes should be done live.

So many bands would rather work this way anyway but dont realize its even an option.

[edit on 6-10-2008 by drock905]