Jump to content

Home

So much music... So many bands...

Arcesious

By Arcesious
in Ahto Spaceport Cantina

Recommended Posts

Arcesious Newbie

Arcesious

Posted
Posted

In the past year, I've been discovering all kinds of bands that I've never heard of before, and the awesome music they've come up with.

 

It all started when I listened to a a bunch of songs by Led Zeppelin, Korn, and a bunch of other bands with my friends about a year ago. I was amazed at how epic and superior this music sounded compared to what my old favorites were, since I was hearing it all for the first time. At the time, they were astonished that I had never heard of said bands and their music before, and I felt very 'left out of the loop'.

 

The thing is, there's so many bands. So much music. Search for a list of orchestral-heavy metal bands and you'll find a list with at least a few hundred names. How in the heck are you supposed to know about it all? I'm forced to look to my more music-savvy friends for advice about some bands to check out, and which ones are the best (since its impossible for one person to sift through millions of songs and find the best ones all on their own), and I have to wonder how they managed to ever find all of these bands to listen to in the first place.

 

It's a kind of situation I bet occurs among music-savvy people too, who've heard thousands upon thousands of songs. Two people could be casually talking about their favorite bands and best songs, each with possibly 50-100 different albums and a couple thousand songs saved on their ipods/computers or whatever, and then suddenly one of them is bound to say, "How could you have never heard of [insert band name] before? They're one of the best ones out there!"

 

So what is a person to do when there's so much great music to sift through? (I'm not asking for band recommendations.) What do you think of the hypothetical situation in the paragraph above?

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Q Newbie

Q

Posted
Posted

This is my first time seeing the words "Korn" and "epic" in the same sentence, and I think that it caused an aneurysm.

 

Not that I don't like Korn, especially when I'm so angry that I'm chewing on my spleen; it's just that "epic" is not a word that I would associate with them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Sabretooth Newbie

Sabretooth

Posted
Posted
So what is a person to do when there's so much great music to sift through? (I'm not asking for band recommendations.) What do you think of the hypothetical situation in the paragraph above?

 

This wonderful post sums up the aftermath of the media-belched mass of music that has been churned out incessantly since the latter half of the 20th Century. With a large mass of musical output, and diverse opinions on it, we are forced to look upon it as a chore, something that must be neatly categorised and considered "great" and "classic". We believe that listening to the better music will make us better people, and that it is important to do this. In an age without religion, we rely on what stimulates our senses to be our spiritual guides, and music is at the forefront of this.

 

And the worst part is, it's all for show only. There's nothing great about much of the great music your friends might tell you. And after all, music is subjective. You could find the drone of a bumblebee good music, and the Moonlight Sonata terribly irritating. And no one can question your taste. But we forget this; more accurately, we ignore it. We try to tell ourselves what music is better and what we should be listening to.

 

You mentioned "sifting" through great music. This is what clicked this post into existence. How do you sift through great music? Listen to a little of it and then move on to other great music? Whatever happened to listening music in its whole and appreciating it the way it was meant to?

 

And perhaps the larger problem here is that we are increasingly relying on text to tell us what music we should listen to, what music is good, what music is liked and should be liked. The words give us little adjectives and ornate descriptions written by pretentious critics, who are bound legally to order music in ranks and rows, like marching soldiers. We are no longer swayed to discover music by the tune and the notes, but by the best promotion art, the best names and lyrics, the best descriptions.

 

In the end, it's not about music at all. It's just show.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Arcesious Newbie

Arcesious

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Interesting... I've heard of all kinds of bands by now, and I doubt I'll ever buy a full album from any band, since I only like about 1 out of every 10 songs that I hear.

 

I've been using last.fm quite a bit already. I love how google has sites such as ilike, lala, pandora', and rhapsody to play music from. It's hard to rely on youtube for music since most of it gets copyright claimed and muted, is low quality in sound, or remixed badly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
adamqd Newbie

adamqd

Posted
Posted

TBH I don't listen to anything that was released in the last 15 years, I have thousands of Songs/albums that I love just from 78-92, and I'm still finding stuff I ain't heard before... Also Its rare that someone will be into only one type of music, one minute I'll be listening to Parliament Funkadelic, then Saxon, then RHCP (Pre Mothers milk), then the Smiths... and so on. Theres no real rulebook, or method of acquiring Musical tastes, If you Like, Listen. :)

 

EDIT: also, Don't buy from itunes unless your gonna back up all your purchases to disk... I found out the hard way when my PC corrupted, I had to re-Buy £100 worth of Audiobooks, And probably more in albums, because they know you paid, but will not Let you re-download/replace purchases

Link to comment
Share on other sites
TiE23 Newbie

TiE23

Posted
Posted

Hello Ahto!

 

Just my two cents (I'm sorry if I sound like I'm being a shill here, but it's just my experience).

 

The Zune software is pretty good with that Zune Pass stuff (actually, Zune is only really good in my opinion because of the Zune Pass). $15 a month and open to three computers and three Zune devices, unlimited song downloads. It's basically like stealing music, legally. (I'd say that Zune has like... 80% of iTune's selection, and around 90% of that is download for free with the Pass).

 

The greatest way to visualize this is that all of the buttons that used to say "Buy for $0.99" turns into simply "Download". It's a buffet of music that doesn't stop. I've been listening to all kinds of unique genres and bands because of it, and I've found some really good stuff.

 

Also, it's pretty funny being able to look at a copy of the iTunes top 100 songs list and being able to download every single one of them without paying a dime.

 

Oh, and you get 10 free songs a month, which is a $10 value. The way I have it at my house is that I split the account between myself, my brother, and my sister. We all have a Zune, and we all milk this service for all it's worth. And split the $15 bill three ways, and then download $10 in music on top of that. On one occasion I spent a day and downloaded around $400 in music without using a penny.

 

Plus, you don't need to be afraid of losing your downloads and having to pay again. It's on your account's history. Zune Pass songs are DRM protected .wma files. But purchased songs are usually Non-DRM 320kbps MP3s... but in uncommon cases when an MP3 is not available, it'll remove the DRM from the .wma when you buy it.

 

Also, it has a Pandora-esqe music finding program that lets you put in a band name and it'll automatically download a set number of songs (that you determine, I think 30 is default). And you can just double click the first one on the list and let it play, if you like it, favorite it, check out the artist or the album, and then download the entire album in 30 seconds. All for free.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...