This represents the beginning of the end for retail music. Between the pressures of shopping convenience, downloadable music, and the death of the CD, eventually all music not sold by a band at a venue will only be available online.
Tower Records is closing, and as the signs say, everything must go. The whole chain is shutting, not just this thoroughly ravaged store off the Pike in Rockville. A liquidator is peddling the stock left in Tower’s 85 or so remaining stores (five locally), and by Christmas, even Tower’s desiccated carcass will be dust.
All of it is going, of course — not just Tower, but the record store culture that Tower embodied. Anything that can be squeezed down to ones and zeros and moved around at the speed of electrons doesn’t have to be stacked in plastic cases, shoved into bins and splayed over aisles under fluorescent lights anymore. All of it’s going online.
The article does have a point. Just as many lamented the loss of the LP canvas for album art (sure it’s still there, but who really looks at it now?) some will lament the loss of the opportunity of discovery inherent in leafing through a pile of albums looking for the one you wanted and finding something new and unexpected.
What #11 said.
My first go round with King Crimson was because of the cover. I loved what was inside even more. There are a whole bunch of albums in the same category.
Just in time for the holidays
How to Rip LPs to MP3 in 10 Easy Steps.
1) Use an LP player that has an output (high quality the better)
Edit file to split up the tracks and save as different tracks.
2) Download a audio program that records (your choice)
3) Get a cable that will go from your player to a 3.5mm jack (standard small audio jack).
4) Plug cable in to LP player & computer line in
5) Select your recording input as Line In
6) Hit Record
6) Play LP.
7) Save file.
9) Add meta data with your favorite program.
23,
It’s step 8 that makes me procrastinate. I forsee that will take a loooong time for my collection.
It’s step 8 that makes me procrastinate. I forsee that will take a loooong time for my collection.
http://www.enhancedaudio.com/dc_six.htm
That will do it all. But is it worth $169?
I’ve been wondering. Pick up a copy and let me know, would you?
hehe. Listen to their demos, though.
Well, that would translate to less than a buck per album, so I’l try the software and give you guys a report.
I too lived through the headache of record stores (both for LPs and CDs). I guess most of you don’t remember all the horrid music you bought because the cover art “captured your interest.” You seem to have forgotten all the albums you bought that had one decent song and the rest was crap but you still paid $12-$18 for it. You have forgotten the financial dilemmas about whether you should take a chance on an album with the last few dollars in your pocket or wait until one of your friends bought it so you could listen to it first. How much music did you not find out about because it wasn’t “popular” enough to stock on the shelves? How many times did you have to go ferret out imports of songs because the label figured that the European version didn’t “target” the US market? Even with eccentric music stores, finding new music that pushed the boundaries was difficult. Sorry, but I feel no remorse in the demise of Tower. While generally priced better than others, it was still overpriced for what I got.
To be frank, a decent song and cool cover art once upon a time was worth it. I still have my copy of The Vapors’ “New Clear Days”. You kids are spoiled.
I remember when CDs first came out and a bunch of wieners insisted that they had to contain 70 minutes of music or they were being ripped off. You guys just don’t appreciate the spread-spectrum appeciative aspect of music. One person’s fish is another’s poisson.
(I’m Back! I guess the United Arab Emirates thought you guys weren’t so evil after all. More likely, they didn’t want John to write a column about them. They almost NEVER unblock a site once they block it.)
Saving Albums Do you know of anyone making an organized effort to digitize albums and covers to save albums for posterity? If you know of such a group, I’d like to join it.
Leave me a message here, please. I know some guys with SERIOUS album collections that could easily disappear over the decades if someone doesn’t save them.
My two cents worth:
1) TotalRecorderPro is my favorite encoding software (and I have a bunch, including ProTools and Audition). TR has the perfect set of features with ease of use for grabbing audio.
Basically, it replaces the Windows sound card driver with it’s own, so it can record anything you can hear on your speakers. It can also stream rip.
It accepts any codec I’ve ever found, including the only three that really matter: LAME, VoggOrbis and FLAC.
For catching streaming audio, it has the three main features you want: removal of silence; an on-off timer; and the ability to log-into a stream at a certain time and log-off.
For digitizing your albums it has the two main tools you need: track splitting; and auto-off at extended silence.
2) For downloading I’ve become a huge fan of eMusic — which features independent labels and artists. This is not the site to get Madonna or Rolling Stones but it is the site to discover the coolest musicians.
It a subscription of 30 songs a month for $10. So, it’s about a third of iTunes. Gotta like that! And you get plain-old tagged MP3s with no DRM, whatsoever, that can play on anything.. Gotta LOVE that!
Hey, Greg Allen, on behalf of us editors and John, welcome back!
#28 — “poisson”! Tee-hee.
ugh, this story depresses me.
i spent some time where i was REALLY about itunes and downloading my music to save space, but then … then something happened with my itunes account and i couldn’t purchase music and i couldn’t access the music i had purchased and i was PISSED!
it took about 6 months to sort it all out and i was back to buying cds and just importing them to my itunes.
when my account was up and running again, i got all excited about downloading music again, but even then … no one was offering album art anymore, so again, i wasn’t happy.
i want my cds, man. i can rely on them. i get my album art, i get a disk that works and if it doesn’t, i have a store i can take it back to right away and get one that does work.
i love my ipod, i love my podcasts (ohhh, i listen to so many podcasts!), but damn … i love my cds too.
I worked from 1974 to 1980 in a variety of record stores (mostly music plus #5 in Westminster–but also in the legendary Middle Earth records in Downey) and I loved (and continue to love) record stores. Tower has gone away–that’s pretty bad, but if you live in Los Angles there is a much much much better record store and it’s not only doing well, it’s ROCKING!
The name is Amoeba records, and it’s right next to ARCLIGHT cinemas in Hollywood. It’s the largest record store the world has ever seen, with both new and used lp’s, cd’s dvd’s posters, in store dj’s, sometimes even live bands. Sure Tower is gone–the last of the national chains (a series that included Licorice Pizza, Peaches, Wherehouse and more) but that doesn’t mean that all record retailers are gone–every Barnes and Noble store has a record department, and every major city has a Virgin megastore.
Music retailing is alive and well, just Tower bit the dust. It’s a vicious, competitive business. And to be frank–the music just isn’t as important as it once was.
But if you are a music FREAK, and live in LA or SF–go to Amoeba. I actually can’t get out of this store for anything less than about $200. (same with Fry’s) and it’s always a pleasure to shop there.
#27 – – Even with eccentric music stores, finding new music that pushed the boundaries was difficult.
Forgive me, but I lived through that era too… (and refuse to accept the notion that its over just because kids like crappy quality compressed files and the shitastic sound of ear buds and iPods)
But if you think finding that music was hard, well, you must have sucked at writing research papers. I found all the best music despite growing up in a tiny little hick town dominated by country music.
Edirol UA 700 has a phono input, I use Cakewalk to record with but you can use anything, Reaper is free and doesn’t need a Cray mainframe to do it’s thing. Analog to digital means you’ve got to play it all the way through, but if you like it enough to digitize it then that’s not a bad thing.
Procrastination is a family trait and that’s why the two big boxes of LP’s are not yet converted to digital.
#35
> But if you think finding that music was hard…
Never said that finding music was hard. Finding good music on the other hand was difficult. Finding good music from bands that never made it onto the radio was even more difficult.