medium of releases

[XXX]

something i think about probably far more than one should (often waking up in a cold sweat) is what format to release my "music" on. of course each format has it's pros & cons. biggest con now a days seems to be lack of access to a player by the average listener! but i digress.
so what are your feelings? do you think vinyl is king? maybe you miss the days of low bit rate net labels? biz card 3" cdrs? poorly dubbed over goodwill tapes ala rrrecycled?

[33033]

I used to be a vinyl purist to some degree but I'm past it now. Any format is good amidst CD/vinyl/tape. I just like having a definitive physical piece of media. Net labels I don't get the point of, but no hate, they're happy with what they're doing. Not against digital only releases here and there.

[-NRRRRK-]

For everything non-noise, vinyl is king. I want to buy music on vinyl and I want to release my music on vinyl, if that is possible.

When it comes to noise, however, tape and cd seem a lot more fitting. I cannot explain the how and why, but I really enjoy putting on a noise-cd and listen to it, while I am not that fond of playing some guitar driven music from cd.

[Residual / RT]

Tape and digital for noise, vinyl and digital for other stuff. I don't mind cd's I guess, if there's no alternative.

[Brian O'Blivion]

I collected vinyl obsessively for about 15 years until I had to sell my entire collection to fund a move to Montreal. Also, it's hard not to become a bit soured with vinyl as a medium now due to its appropriation by the mainstream.

I buy cassettes exclusively now because of limited finances, but the majority of my listening is digital media, as I like to do a lot of my deep listening on walks with the dog. To me, it doesn't matter how you ingest music, but whether you develop a relationship with the release and find the music itself valuable regardless of its medium.

something i think about probably far more than one should (often waking up in a cold sweat) is what format to release my "music" on.

My "galaxy brain" hot take is that one day, you will die and then nothing will matter, so allegiances to specific mediums or worrying about how to release your music isn't worth your mental energy. I think Worth said something similar on the WCN podcast interview - something about hoping his CD-R releases degrade and become unplayable because nothing is meant to last forever. So it isn't worth sweating the idea of how to release music too much, only that you should be creating as much as possible but releasing only your very best work.

[-NRRRRK-]

So it isn't worth sweating the idea of how to release music too much, only that you should be creating as much as possible but releasing only your very best work.

Well, as we all die anyway and nothing matters in the end, why not release everything? Or even better: why bother to create anything at all?

[junkyardshaman]

I think Worth said something similar on the WCN podcast interview - something about hoping his CD-R releases degrade and become unplayable because nothing is meant to last forever.

This is exactly why I like it, and tapes even better because when you use recycled tapes to begin with, they degrade even faster with listening. My work has very largely been about here and now, sharing this frame of reference in this perceptual reality as a phenomenon we share, and how it degrades and fades with time. I think CD-R's and tapes are therefore the best format for the music too. The artwork too is made in a way that will probably fall apart faster if you don't handle it with care.

[Remi]

As a listener: I listen to most of my music on digital format mostly for convenience. I spend most of my day outside at work or commuting, and when I'm home, there are lots of things I don't want to subject my girlfriend to, and that includes brutal music. I therefore use my headphones a lot, and for practical reasons we also have a Deezer subscription which is quite satisfying (just today I listened to Pink Floyd, Arckanum and Eleh through it.) I can't bring myself to buy digital music though. I still love records and tapes, which I keep buying and listening to when I'm home alone, although I buy them more wisely with time because they take up a lot of space I don't have anymore and I've been disgusted by record flippers, collectors and the Discogs crowd many years ago. I also have to say, I used to be a CD snob, except for those early/mid 90's punk or black metal CDs which have some special anesthetics and appeal to me because I remember them fondly from my teenagehood. I do love the CD come back in the noise scene though, so many cool records with nice art and rad digipacks are coming out, it's great. CD jewel cases now are a big no for me though.

As an artist: 90% of my music is written and thought-out in sides, so it's pretty much only been tape or vinyl sides now. I know what I record for beforehand and adapt to that. For noise, it's rather easy to make recordings fit sides. If I record a long track made out of several tracks and it lasts 20 minutes I'll try to make something similar of the same length in order have a full release done. For my hardcore band, there won't be any CD release ever (unless someone wants to put out a discography of our music maybe.) We write songs, then we think about whether we'd like to put out a tape or a record, and then we practice so that we can play the songs we decided to put on each side of the tape or the record back to back in one single block without any break. We do the same with live gigs actually. Anyway, if you look at each side of our 7" or our 12", there's only a single, long track by side, and there's hardly any filler nor silence between songs.

I was asked to record for a CD last year and it was a very different but also extremely interesting and challenging experience for me. The way I record things had to change because of the higher fidelity of the digital format, I had to write proper tracks because you don't listen to a CD like you do with a tape or a record (you don't skip tracls for instance), etc. The CD has yet to come out but it was great to do it and I hope I'll have the opportunity to record more of them.

[Brian O'Blivion]

So it isn't worth sweating the idea of how to release music too much, only that you should be creating as much as possible but releasing only your very best work.

Well, as we all die anyway and nothing matters in the end, why not release everything? Or even better: why bother to create anything at all?

Release everything if you want, but in my opinion, it’s bad for your art. I think this is especially true if you’re a lifer who is concerned with the trajectory of your writing and have a macro-view of your music as a larger body of work than just individual releases.

Not all of your ideas are good ones. Most of them are probably bad. That’s certainly the case for me for as long as I’ve been writing music. I’m constantly trashing recordings and ideas in an effort to refine my writing. When you take time to produce only your best work, your audience will respect and appreciate it much more than having to wade through a larger discography of varying quality.

To your second question - just because your existence is inherently meaningless doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to create meaning for yourself. It’s the only way to stop yourself from committing suicide. If writing music for the enjoyment of others creates meaning in your life, you should do that.

[Eighth Pillar]

/

[Exclusionzonedayton]

It doesn’t matter much to me so long as it’s not a download or stream. I always lose download files for some reason and if I’m paying for music, which I do, a lot, it’s going to be something physical unless it’s download only. Not a fan of streaming. I like CDs a lot because I listen to a lot of music in the car. Records are over rated to me. They’re expensive (to make and buy) and most of the stuff I listen to is on tape or CD now. I do buy records but they aren’t special. I do like the big artwork though

[Scream & Writhe]

As time goes on I'm growing to love CDs more and more. It may be my preferred noise format (also does wonders for jazz, classical, etc.). Due to my general day-to-day circumstances I am forced to stream the majority of what I listen to, which then also creates an access limitation due to what's actually streamable vs. what only exists in hard copy. Still, the noise tape is a tried and true easy format that seems tailor-made for the genre and the one that will likely always get the most amount of play.

[-NRRRRK-]

To your second question - just because your existence is inherently meaningless doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to create meaning for yourself. It’s the only way to stop yourself from committing suicide. If writing music for the enjoyment of others creates meaning in your life, you should do that.

Exactly! And this is why I think statements like "you will die and then nothing will matter, so allegiances to specific mediums or worrying about how to release your music isn't worth your mental energy..." are useless, though they are correct. From the perspective of the universe or the "universal self" none of us, as well as anything else, matters. But since this single moment of "now" is the only thing one can experience it is the single most important thing of all. As well as is the "now" of me, of you and so on. I guess one can get my point.

So worrying about specific mediums might me useless, it may lead to nothing and so on, but at the same time it can be the most important thing of all and should not be put down, especially not on a discussion board dealing with "music".

[Brian O'Blivion]

Exactly! And this is why I think statements like "you will die and then nothing will matter, so allegiances to specific mediums or worrying about how to release your music isn't worth your mental energy..." are useless, though they are correct. From the perspective of the universe or the "universal self" none of us, as well as anything else, matters. But since this single moment of "now" is the only thing one can experience it is the single most important thing of all. As well as is the "now" of me, of you and so on. I guess one can get my point.

So worrying about specific mediums might me useless, it may lead to nothing and so on, but at the same time it can be the most important thing of all and should not be put down, especially not on a discussion board dealing with "music".

I never put anyone down. The original poster stated they spend a lot of time stressing about what format to release their music on, and I shared my opinion that it doesn't seem worth waking up in a cold sweat over, as they indicated. It's all gucci, my dude. If you want to start measuring the utility of individual statements, I think that's where I'll bow out of the conversation, but with respect.

[XXX]

its called a joke guys. no one is waking up in cold sweats over chrome cassettes & if they are god help them.

[-NRRRRK-]

its called a joke guys. no one is waking up in cold sweats over chrome cassettes & if they are god help them.

BUT THOSE TYPE II TAPES ARE SO HARD TO GET AROUND HERE!!!

But jokes aside, I did not intend to put anyone down either. It's just a dead end to bring the "all our existence is meaningless so why worry" argument into any discussion. Because yes, in the end this is a correct statement, but it does not free anyone from coping with everyday life and nor does it help to take decisions (as mundane as they may seem from the universal viewpoint).

But it's all good for me, no bad blood or anything.

[chryptusrecords]

seriously though please dont waste chrome tapes by just dubbing copies onto them

[Emil Corbelli]

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[-NRRRRK-]

Out of curiousity: what about releases on R2R? Anybody got any experience with that?

[no_baizuo_allowed]

How did label's coordinate bigger projects with artists back in the day? Was just looking at MSBR's Intensification 10" online, in the galvanised steel box on Praxis Dr. Bearmann. Did the artist give free reign to the label to finish the product? Would there have been little more then a written description and approval of the design concept via correspondence? How could such a big project have been coordinated via post back in those times? How did one choose such an excessive medium/packaging back then?