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Today Is Record Store Day 2011
An anonymous reader writes "Today marks the 5th annual Record Store Day, a celebration of independent record stores. As a music lover, I think this day is of dire importance." I know Free Comic Book Day (for 2011, that's May 7) has gotten a lot of people into comic stores who otherwise wouldn't — partly because of the many free comics given away — but hadn't heard of the record-store equivalent. It'd be nice for record stories to give away tons of 7" vinyl promos.
It'd be nice for record stories[sic] to give away tons of 7" vinyl promos.
They'd be sued into oblivion if they tried. Can't have them promoting piracy and stealing money from the artists, now can we?
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
I really miss the one shop record stores, even as they transitioned from vinyl to CD. There's just something about flipping through the disks, looking at the covers, checking out all the knicknack crap they'd have, T-Shirts, posters, etc. For bookstores (not the mega stores) it was always awesome to go through their collections, grab a paperback and a magazine, and then go grab a cup of coffee. Borders and B&N commercialized and neutered that experience, and Amazon obliterated it. I guess it's our own fault though; the public's continued demand for speed and convenience seems to always outweigh the experience. Like comparing a nice train ride to a flight. I'm really not that old, honest. ;)
A true geek finds a workaround!
There's more to the matter than immediate audio quality - lossy formats are always a poor choice for archival, since the loss is magnified (and the achievable compression is often reduced) when moving from one to another. Maybe MP3 is stable enough that we needn't worry about that, but I'm not sure I'd bet on it. Once you've got a FLAC file, you can produce any subsequent format from it without any concern about conversion losses. It's the same reason that archiving photos as JPEGs is a bad idea, even if they're high enough quality to appear perfect in normal viewing - once you've lost the data, you can't get it back, and it might turn out that there are interesting and unexpected things to be done with those RAW files further down the line.
independent music is as accessible and creative as it has ever been. check it out.
This story is about vinyl... Is it really an "EP" if it comes as a zip file? Really?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_play
This was on CD when I bought it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Miles_and_Runnin'
It's music biz terminology, and it isn't specific to vinyl.
'The fact is that that with the Internet and big box retailers, there is just no logical reason for them to exist anymore.'
Except the ones that serve as a focal point for an entire music scene, host live gigs, expose you to music you might never have come across online, act as a labour exchange for local bands, and generally don't suck, e.g.:
http://www.spillersrecords.co.uk/
http://www.amoeba.com/
Permanent Records in Chicago was doing just that early this morning.
This is awesome! Thanks. Sounds like Delia Derbyshire at the BBC Radiophonic workshop.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Honestly, the biggest thing to miss is being able to talk to somebody who actually cares about the music. Sure depending upon which store you could end up with comic book guy or the guys from Hi Fidelity telling you that whatever you're looking for sucks, but so much music is found through social means, it's just not the same looking through online listings.
Yeah, I agree. It's kinda like that with musical instrument stores. I'm a guitar player too, so inevitably I find myself browsing the online sites, or going to Guitar Center or whatever. But nothing beats going into a small family-owned shop and talking to some guy who really loves music, loves playing guitars, and doesn't pull the "used car salesman" BS like the big box stores do.
I was just in Target (in PA), today and they had quite a few turntables. I also went to Best Buy and they not only had record players, but *new* records as well including Thriller and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
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I think you were going to the wrong music shops. The place I haunted in my younger days, [url=http://www.flatblackandcircular.com/pages/store.html]Flat Black and Circular[/url], let you listen to any compact disc or phonographic record on a pair of headphones off to the side. If the CD or record was new and the shrink wrap was still on the packaging, you'd just take it to the counter and they'd remove it for you. If you're passionite about music, it's hard to beat face-to-face interactions with other people that share that same passion.