RE: spotify

Someone has actually done the maths: you can pirate six albums by your favourite artist and listen to them 50 times each then post them $20, which is exactly what they would have earned from streams on Spotify

this reminds me of a story that a particular music youtuber i watch has told, i think he mentions it at least once in this video. dissatisfied with streaming payouts, he released one of his albums on several pirating websites instead, including a small read me along side it that had a link to his paypal. and, as he tells it, he made more money off of that album than any other release before it

- source

part of why I dislike spotify is that these platforms can get away with stuff because they form monopolies. Resisting them in this way is better for artists immediately (they get paid better via bandcamp or even paypal or collectables) but also intangibly - it loosens that grip where artists must be on spotify to get ahead, & consequently must acquiece to whatever policies the platform prefers.

& the third factor in my dislike is the loss of a human touch. I associate piracy with being in my teens in the 00s, and how much music I encountered because people were running their own radio and curated download blogs - you lose all of that, and it's important because what value is access to all of recorded sound history without a psychopomp?

One stressful part of my life right now is, apparently you can't trust low end record players not to actually damage your records over time, & I'm freaked out because I adore my collection, so I guess I'm in the market for an Actual Record Player now, but the r/budgetaudiophile defines 'budget' sound equipment as 'under $1000 per component', which is terrifying, so I guess my records will just be...lovingly displayed for a little while until I can sort that problem out

Record Want List

The big problem with posting anti-buying-spotify-pro-buying-vinyl is that it always prompts me to just have a sneaky lil look at the artists I'm tracking and, invariably, I find something,

but guys guys guys guys the one artist I actually Collect collect Collect because he has my whole heart is the Caretaker, and there are TWO vinyl reissues out now. One something I only had on CD, and the other one...and I feel guilty about this but not too guilty...was the first record I ever bought, I woke up at 5am and walked to the library to be first in line on the release date, & I chose to get the limited edition purple one and have regretted it ever since. Like, every time I get it out of the packet, my heart sinks. And that record meant so much to me, & I made a bad on the spot decision. Part of my decision to get An Empty Bliss Beyond This World wasn't just being a collector bro, its because it is Supposed to be on vinyl, it sounds vinylesque, and I wanted the sensory experience of seeing it spin as if it was an old record. And coloured vinyl is worse quality, and you bet I love that album intimately enough to know where the scrapes and pops and crackles that are damage are.

I'm astonished that Chanctonbury Rings is still available on vinyl, like proper gobsmacked. It's easily my favourite of the Ghost Box releases (the other one I want to collect is Seance at Hobs Lane by Mount Vernon Arts Lab and maybe a Belbury Poly release, probably The Willows). The paper quality isn't great, but that tends to be true of modern records generally - they aren't designed to fold correctly, and they feel like cereal packet not watercolour paper. Still, as Ghost Box sell an aesthetic as much as they do music, these releases really deserve the tactile quality of something older and forgotten.

Another one I pounced right on - only to find it never went out of stock - is On Vanishing Land, which like Chanctonbury, I feel is a proper sleeper classic, at least for the sorts of things I do.

And a third - which I want and still haven't got, but it's sat right there - well, I will not tell you its name. Perhaps next month.

But one of the greatest pleasures in collecting is collecting stuff that's not all that collectable; I don't like competition or boasting, & rarity stresses me out. I like the delights of Owning Nice Things - without the pressures - and I've got quite good at identifying the unhappiness of FOMO, an unhappiness that wreathes a thing at every stage - if I get it, if I don't, if I missed my chance, if it's there on my shelf, that emotion never leaves it, it's tight and sticky. I don't like owning expensive things, merely lovely ones, and I'm at my happiest when I encounter something both wonderful and worthless.

& tbh that might be the emotion of misgiving I have about my purple Empty Bliss - I made a decision influnenced by status(?)/rarity(?) of the limited edition rather than being more aware of what I wanted. There's only one Caretaker release I chose not to get when it was there, and as I said, there's that feeling of unhappy ambivalence strikes me whenever I think about it, but I know I would be no less unhappy if it was sitting expensively on my shelf.

Thinking about this has prompted me to make an actual Want List & I'm tempted to like...knock off the other handful of cheap ones now. But one very very very exciting thing is I found the other Bombadeal album which was proving [not rare as in collectable, rare as in forgotten] difficult as a free download. I am so obsessed with Bombadeal's Songs From The Wood - folk-hip-hop-mashup is such a stupid concept, and yet it's so perfect for Tom. The rap works - book-Bombadil can't resist speaking in rhyme and wordplay - the interweaving of modern cannabis culture and Bombadil's anti-work dreaminess works - and the daftness works, something in the silliness triggers just the right mood to think about what Bombadil represents, an unabashed joyfulness. The standout track is Water Love

( Read more... )

shopping watch list

One really good thing that's happened in my life is, we've had a stroke of economic good fortune - & when you're in the sort of life situation I'm in, one never really stops being precarious (but is anyone, really, ever more than one run of bad luck away from that? Some people are just more aware of it than others) - I'm frightened by an impending visit by my landlord, because he could make various decisions which swallow the fortune hole.

Still, yeah it's kinda nice to look at consumerist culture like "oh wow, I get to be involved in this now?". And like, a sigh of relief, that maybe I don't need to make all my decisions from a place of terror. I still think most shopping is like. a profound moral outrage. but the sense of alienation that comes from living outside of consumerism is really intolerable - it's a good position politically and spiritually, but emotionally and interpersonally not so much. A lot of the time, it's just constraint, and I spend so much time in a cold panic about that I can't make good use of its beneficial opportunities. Like, I can think about ways I want to expand.

( thoughts about some priorities )

Tarot hack

Getting out all three decks, drawing one card from each, & asking them which one would like to weigh in on this matter