Slashdot Mirror
Neil Young Says His Music Is Too Good For Streaming Services
An anonymous reader writes: After years of complaining about modern music formats Neil Young today announced that he's pulling his music from all streaming services. He made the announcement on his official Facebook page saying: "Streaming has ended for me. I hope this is ok for my fans. It's not because of the money, although my share (like all the other artists) was dramatically reduced by bad deals made without my consent. It's about sound quality. I don't need my music to be devalued by the worst quality in the history of broadcasting or any other form of distribution. I don't feel right allowing this to be sold to my fans. It's bad for my music. For me, It's about making and distributing music people can really hear and feel. I stand for that. When the quality is back, I'll give it another look. Never say never."
Who?
there. i said it.
Let's face it, many people will have their sound quality affected a lot by headphones too.
Tidal streams losslessly. What his excuse for not putting his music on there?
In no way did Neil say he music was too good for streaming. Read your own darn summary. The false headline is beneath even the Dice crowd.
>AM radio? FM radio?
What a pompous ass. He's just angry because the ponoplayer was given bad reviews and a huge flop.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/02/pono-player-review-a-tall-refreshing-drink-of-snake-oil/
I wonder why he never pulled his stuff of the radio. Worst quality of any streaming service.
I'll bet a steak dinner that he couldn't tell the difference between any of the streaming services and a CD, or any other commercially produced medium, in double blind test. Most sound engineers can't tell the difference between $11,000 speaker cables and wire coat hanger.
The reason most music sounds like shit is because the sound engineers compress the hell out of it, and balance it to make it sound louder. The streaming services can only stream what they're given.
I'm sure I heard Neil Young on AM radio.
For me, It's about making and distributing music people can really hear and feel. I stand for that. When the quality is back, I'll give it another look. Never say never.
Being as Neil Young recently called out Donald Trump on using his music without permission in a rally (and went on to say he would never support Trump for president) the awful misquoting in this summary suggests sour grapes. Being as "failure machine" Samzenpus has an established history of posting pro-conservative gibberish to the front page of slashdot, it wouldn't surprise me if this was done for that reason.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
We don't need him around anyhow....
AM quality is horrendous, and FM isn't as good as the average MP3 file. So, Neil, you gonna make radio quit playing your songs?
My ears are too good for Neil Young's singing. That guy couldn't carry a tune in a bucket.
The worst ever? There's no objective or subjective measurement by which the stuff coming out of Apple Music / Spotify / Google Music / Rdio, even in their "low quality" modes, is worse than AM radio. And their "high quality" modes are almost certainly superior to FM, and possibly XM/Sirius/etc.
Hey, I'm a big fan and own a bunch of his CDs, but really now. When someone goes out of their way to say its not about the money, there is one thing you can be pretty sure of.
It's okay for radio to play it but not stream it? Stupid and ignorant. ... he sounds good by the way...
I already have everything he has done. for a long time. I will listen to it how I want to listen to it when I want to listen to it.
On my phone, tablet, radio, 8-track tape, via my cat
I better buy new speakers. If he hears mine, he'll have me arrested..
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
A 256Kbps AAC is objectively equal to CD sound quality, as confirmed by double-blind test after test. Furthermore, a huge portion of listeners will be hearing your angel's choir over cheap-ass ear buds or crap laptop speakers. Maybe you have a golden ear and can tell the difference between a CD and a FLAC file (are those good enough for you, or do they lack the sharp ones and smooth zeros of the digital masters?). Maybe you're not actually a delusional once-great who has lousy hearing and permanent tinnitus after years of playing rock concerts, and, well, being almost 70. Maybe your home hi-fi (do you still call it that?) was hand-wired by a wizened master of recording engineering fame. Maybe you have your own private anechoic chamber so you're not exposed to anything but the pure and sweet sounds of your own singing. But the rest of us listen to normal-person music with a dynamic range that's been shot to hell in the loudness wars, via normal-person audio formats, through normal-person digital-to-analog converters, into normal-person speakers, in a normal-person environment with kids playing and horns honking and dogs barking and coworkers chattering.
Your music, pristine to the heavens though it may be, sounds no better than Miley Cyrus when piping out of my MacBook. You've become a crotchety old curmudgeon trying to remain relevant to those kids who won't stay off your lawn, and maybe it's time to sit down with a hot cup of keep your yap shut and enjoy a nice book.
Good day, sir.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
No, Neil Young is not being misrepresented. Straight from his Facebook page:
I was there.
AM radio kicked streaming's ass.
Analog Cassettes and 8 tracks also kicked streaming's ass,
and absolutely rocked compared to streaming.
Streaming sucks. Streaming is the worst audio in history.
If you want it, you got it. It's here to stay.
Your choice.
Copy my songs if you want to. That's free.
Your choice.
All my music, my life's work, is what I am preserving the way I want it to be.
It's already started. My music is being removed from all streaming services. It's not good enough to sell or rent.
Make streaming sound good and I will be back.
Neil Young
I hope for his sake that he is really just trying to push his magic sound machine and doesn't believe any of this.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
That quote is essentially a restatement (or is it a prestatement) of what I thought I read when I read TFS. He's concerned about sound quality, and wants his listeners to hear it at what he perceives to be a better quality than "streaming".
Personally, I find that hard to believe. Does he allow his music to be sold as non-streaming MP3s? Does he allow it to be played on FM radio? What about AM radio?
But, be that as it may, I thought TFS got the gist fine. Or maybe there's something I'm missing I'm not seeing in the full quote either?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
If he's concerned about sound quality does he prohibit people who are hard of hearing from listening to his music as well?
/. story from several years ago about research that found young people who grew up with digital music prefer the compressed versions of songs. The people who grew up listening to Young's music probably prefer listening to his music on old vinyl albums. Are those still okay? Apparently so because he's still selling those on his store or at least the store he links to from his website, which I presume he owns.
Joking aside, I'll admit I'm a Neil Young fan and I enjoy a lot of his music, but this is just silly. The quality difference between a lossless and compressed stream isn't going to be noticeable at all to most people because of the low quality earbuds or headphones that they're wearing.
What makes it even funnier is a previous
Eh? Worse than mono AM radio? Worse than cassette tape? Yeah, we believe you Neil...
Log in or piss off.
... I can definitively and objectively say...
That claim is not true.
In fact, I said "When the quality is back, I'll give it another look." just the other day... about Neil Young's music.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
who cares?
I'm somewhat amazed that a 69 year old man, with a long history of exposure to hazardously loud sound(to the point of tinnitus), has managed to remain true to the belief that limited bitrates are killing music; between his own aural limitations and the well known fact that most DACs, amplifiers, and speakers and headphones are...value oriented...at best.
It's his catalog, he can do whatever amuses him; but I have to wonder if he could actually tell which is which in a suitably blinded test.
Neil Young and Taylor Swift sitting in a tree...
"Everybody's naked underneath" -- The Doctor
Lots of people listen in the car, on crappy earbuds, in a crappy room..etc
VERY FEW people listen in a treated room with excellent, calibrated monitors
Yes, trained, critical listeners, in a great room, with great equipment and great ears can tell the difference
No..it doesn't matter for most people
I can honestly say I really don't care what he does.
To make sure the consumer is getting 100% of his product. He's was endorsing a digital player earlier this year. He's pissed that the consumer has NO IDEA what the compression is doing to the art.
http://nypost.com/2015/01/11/d...
He's still got it.. Incredible!!
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
but he isnt exactly the worlds best vocalist. Nor are my ears that good after playing bass in rock and roll bands for 30 years.
For my money, 320kbps Ogg Vorbis is just a *slight touch* better than cassette tapes!
Do you see no difference between "streaming services are not good enough to sell or rent" and "my music is too good for streaming services"? The former is about the quality of the output. The latter is about the quality of the input. See the difference? He said the former, not the latter.
Personally, I find that hard to believe. Does he allow his music to be sold as non-streaming MP3s? Does he allow it to be played on FM radio? What about AM radio?
Yes, he even considers AM radio better, which is provably false... using math!
The whole quote is not on your side here, find it!
Great tune, describes 21st century U.S.A., perfectly -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
* Too bad you're not LETTING it be free to rock to, Mr. Young...
APK
P.S.=> In any event, still a great tune from a great musician... apk
It sounds fine if you use Monster HDMI cable
The number of services that still offer 128kbps MP3 is kind of offensive. It would be nice if artists can specify the minimal quality level for their music. However, it is kind of extreme to claim even 128kbps MP3 is worse than analog radio. Also, how far is he willing to go with this? Will he boycott the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon in the future on the basis of Hulu sound quality? Will he halt use of his music or writing in TV shows on the basis of Netflix and Amazon Prime sound quality?
I personally would like to see better adoption of Opus for music streaming services. And it is great he is bringing more attention to the issue of sound quality. But I don't think he is going about this the right way. It would have made more sense if he gave notice for quality improvement by a specific date rather than just pull it all immediately.
a man of Neil Young's advanced age has significantly worse hearing than a man in his early 20's.
Therefore, his claims about the relative quality of one format versus another is bombast since his personal sonic apparatus is now crap.
Please- no one who listens to Neil Young is going to be pissing their pants because of the fidelity- chances are that due to their age, their hearing is already degraded to the point where a poorly-encoded MP3 will sound the same to them as a high-quality OGG or FLAC or whatever.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Stubborn man
better keep your head
Don't forget
what your pocketbook said
You want excellent resolution for your video game when you're shootin' up polygon's, right? Some of us care about resolution in our music, too.
I don't spend 3 grand on interconnects for my systems, but I do care about the speakers and the room acoustics quite a bit. And classic rock/jazz sounds better on vinyl not because vinyl is better, but because back in the day the recorded/mixed/mastered for AM radio and vinyl.
New stuff recorded/mixed/mastered for digital sounds great and doesn't sound any better released on vinyl (that's mostly just a gimmick).
But I'm a musician, I probably listen to music differently than most folks here. That's fine.
actually his new album sounds like it could be pretty good based on the allmusic review
http://www.allmusic.com/album/the-monsanto-years-mw0002850731
that said, I did see him willfully drive the crowd away at Outside Lands a few years ago by playing a 20 minute version of a new song that no one had heard (Walk like a Giant I think it was called) that was very noisy and repetitive and kept starting and stopping -wish we could have held out to the encore to hear 'roll another number', but GGP gets pretty cold after the sun goes down...
-I'm just sayin'
That quote is essentially a restatement (or is it a prestatement) of what I thought I read when I read TFS. He's concerned about sound quality, and wants his listeners to hear it at what he perceives to be a better quality than "streaming".
That depends on how you interpret the quote, or more specifically how you interpret the crappy headline here on slashdot. The slashdot headline can be seen as portraying the musician as being snobbish; carrying a holier-than-thou attitude towards streaming technology.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
He literally just said "Copy my songs if you want to. That's free. Your choice."
Considering how much Slashdot likes all forms of DRM and restrictions of information, I would think that was worth something. Of course the reason he's saying it is, he's telling you "your mp3s are worthless! Call that music? shyeah right! Knock yourself out, you're making yourself the sucker!"
Which is more or less true: people toss around multiple gigabytes of data via torrents all the time, and nothing much is stopping you from also copying and exchanging 192K uncompressed files of all Neil's stuff. But no, people are gonna copy around 128K mp3s that sound like a cellphone with delusions of grandeur and think they're sticking it to the Man.
As for FM, traditionally that's more like a remastering with a weird twist on it where you're pre/de-emphasising it heavily in transmission, which also gives it a characteristic sound. AM radio has different characteristics and rather than require really tight stop-bands with no overshoot, it's strongly asymmetrical because you only have to limit one polarity of the signal. So it's loaded with second harmonics like a single-ended triode, a 'warm' sound. Both of them started out analog (do they even do AM radio anymore?)
Neil Young has every right to expect his music to sound as good as he wants it too. But how many people today who buy music give a crap about it? I don't see high quality selling, if that were that case people would be buying CD's and playing them on high dollar players through high dollar systems. This generation prefers spending $200 on Beats headphones because they look cool then how well they sound. The convenience of digital streaming and downloads is the driving factor of music today. No matter if Young thinks it sounds like crap or not. What Neil Young needs to do is convince the listener that they are truly missing out on the nuances of music because of digital. I do remember the day CD's came out and how everyone said they were better and more accurate. Yet today we see to blame digital for it degrading music quality? I don't think people hear quality music as they see high definition video. Some still appreciate accurate music reproduction. But Neil Young should realize that those people are far fewer then a couple decades ago. I wish him luck on his quest for better quality. But I think it will fall on deaf ears.
Streaming services don't need him round anyhow.
No, I don't see the difference. He's not happy how his music (input) sounds coming out of the streaming service (output). I also think you are missing the part where he talks about the format being below the standards he is seeking to "preserve" his life's work.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
There are people who prefer grainy film to digital photos, even going so far as to purposely deface their digital photos to look like film. So why couldn't there also be people who prefer staticky analog broadcasts to digital?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
any excuse will do I guess....
That's all he needs. A couple of those $1000 3 foot power cords too. Maybe an audiophile AC power distribution system. Audiophile underwear - do I have to even mention that?
C'mon Neil - get some proper equipment and it *all* sounds good.
He did the math when he got a check and realized that nobody actually cares about his music anymore.
> Analog Cassettes and 8 tracks also kicked streaming's ass,
This is where he proves to be full of shit.
Have you ever listened to an 8-track? AWFUL SHIT.
Cassette? Perfectly fine - if it was encoded with HX Pro and Dolby C, and you have a deck with Dolby C decoding, AND you've aligned the heads properly, AND demagnetized and cleaned them regularly. In that case it would sound near-CD-quality--- the first few times you play it. Cassettes degrade over time. Streaming already sounds way better than 8-Track (even if highly compressed, low bit rate), and as far as cassettes are concerned... I don't miss them.
Neil Young is obviously deranged from the Damage Done.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Me thinks this fellow needs a hearing aid.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
I typically create a playlist and then create a radio station based on this playlist. If some artists are not part of streaming, the server will just substitute other, similar music and I get to discover new artists that are willing to meet customers where they are now.
Maybe over time a market for higher quality digital music can be created and people can even be trained to hear the difference. But having them move on to other music is not going to sell yours.
doesn't AM radio run about 32kbps equivalent audio bitrate?
I couldn't listen to audio books at that low a bitrate.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
"It's not because of the money, although my share (like all the other artists) was dramatically reduced by bad deals made without my consent"
Actually Neil, these deals were made with your consent. The rights you signed away to the publishers are the ones being abused. The publishers have been proven time and again to have ripped off you and every other artist. That you continue to gulp down the bullshit they keep feeding you in the face of masses of evidence to the contrary is quite disappointing from an artist that has been in the industry for what, almost 50 years now? The streaming sites pay royalties to the publishers who then decide how much you get based on nothing more than their own decision to call a stream a sale or a license, based on their contract obligations with you and which one pays YOU less. The publishers are the ones fucking you Neil, you and every other artist out there, and the audience knows it, and resents it when you call us thieves, when you call our favorite ways of getting to hear your art "bad deals".
"It's about sound quality. I don't need my music to be devalued by the worst quality in the history of broadcasting or any other form of distribution."
Adjust your stream quality. That's all you can do because no matter what, technology marches on. The majority of professionally mastered music is adjusted louder and louder and technology has to keep up with that. Its crap, but its the reason. Players have EQ settings for this reason, to make it sound "ok" through earbuds and laptop speakers, to make it sound better through proper speakers. But this also comes back to the contracts, where, like broadcast radio, a certain level of pitch-shifting and static is forcibly introduced... to make the CDs sound so much better by comparison. To keep people from just recording the streams and broadcasts and having "the product." That's all your music is to your publishers Neil, a product. Its not art, its not magic, its not emotion and storytelling. Its product, and they exist solely to move that product at the most profitable pricing they can for themselves.
Your enemy is not your fans, it is not the radio and steaming services. Its the publishers. Pull your music from their catalogs Neil, take it somewhere else, market it yourself, and see how much more money you can make if you cut them out of the loop.
Oh wait you can't. Cause you made a bad deal with them, and fully consented to giving them total control of your art.
captcha: muscled
Ok, I like a lot of Neil Young's songs, but ... in my experience the quality of the streaming service is mostly the device producing the music, not the amount of information in the stream itself. In other words, if you're playing it on the mono iphone speaker, yeah it'll sound crappy. Plug in a set of trendy white buds... yeah still crappy. (Who thought ear buds were a high quality musical experience?) Plug in a decent set of over-ear headphones... and, assuming your bandwidth isn't being extremely "shaped", well that's pretty ok.
Besides, if he's really into music quality, why did he allow his music to be published on commercial CDs at all? The sound quality of a CD is ok, but not stellar.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
AM radio was restricted to 30khz channels even in its best days, which would mean a maximum frequency response of 15khz. Now it is even lower, something like 10khz. Pretty awful compared to the 22khz that can be expressed by modern digital audio stuff.
Beyond that, AM is antique. It is vulnerable to multipath propagation, and the receivers generally have awful noise rejection.
It would feel warmer because of the implicit low pass filter effect, and more natural because of the terrible SNR. It renders voice in a non-annoying way. Super low bitrate MP3 is poppy and twangy.
...mostly from people who've never bought any of Mr. Young's work. I suspect he cares as much about your opinions as you care about his music. Just let it go and move on to the next post.
I'm glad to see a recording artist speak out about he truly abysmal quality of the digital audio on offer these days.
He has creative control over his music on streaming services, to the point where he can actually pull his music.
Try selling that line to a publisher about not liking the quality of his music on their CDs.
128kbps mp3 is better equivalent quality than FM (which runs 96kbps). The math isn't even that complicated. The claim that 128kbps mp3 is worse than FM isn't just extreme, it's blatantly false.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Would you say the same thing about a print artist who didn't want black an white prints of his colour works sold? You seem to miss the point that he is specifically talking about selling or renting the music he created.
Sweet Home Alabama music in the background...... "I hope Neil Young will remember a streaming fan don't need him around any how!"
Guess he doesn't remember AM radio. Or, for that matter, FM. Arguably, 256kbps AAC is much better quality than either of those.
FC Closer
Further up in the thread I posited that one could just download the torrent files and get his music, he would not be likely to mind. Your post, assuming it is accurate, seems to indicate that I was spot on. This is not about the money. It is about how he hears things. That is how Neil has always been. He does make music for his fans but his fans cross so many boundaries that they are not in one genre. So, here, he is going by how he feels and hears I am guessing. I have seen him in shows since before you kids were born and am a pretty big fan with all of his music. I also think he is insane but...
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
IMHO, Neil Young has settled in to the Old Man who's younger self was the same, except as the older man. From all the interviews I've seen, he's hated digital recording (cd's), doesn't like what MP3's do to music, and doesn't like streaming. Even though, as a singer/songwriter streaming will pay him just fine.
Yeah, I'm perfectly capable of listening to his music (stealing, if need be) and tuning his insane ass out. Put his opinions in the same part of my brain as Michael Jackson and Jim Carey.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
We also have to look at what he considers quality. The gritty sound (usually, he is not normally very polished) is his thing. He likes the sound. I can sort of see where he might be going though it conflicts with his device - some PONO thing. His idea of quality does not match what other people think. He may well think a compressed MP3 is better than lossyless FLAC.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
He gave you permission to copy his stuff if you like. He just doesn't feel right selling a music stream to you because he feels it's a rip off. For you. I doubt he needs your money at this point.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
If a print artist sold prints using an analog transfer process for 40 years and then someone came along and started making digital copies that were visually indistinguishable from the former analog copies? That's an almost perfect analogy, and yes, I'd also call that artist bat-shit nuts and completely ignore their opinion.
It's OK - great artists seem to be highly correlated with bat shittedness. Young has made some really classic music and his personality quirks do not diminish his prior works of art. Bill Cosby's 70s stand-up is still funny, even if he was a rapist the whole time.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I can confirm that I have AM on my 2013 740Li but I am not at all sure how to engage it. I could probably figure it out. I believe it is in the 2015 model as well but mine is still being built and is not a 740 but a 640Li and I honestly have never asked about it and I doubt I will ever use it. The last time I used AM was on the highway where a sign instructed me to tune to 1640 for highway information. As I was a bit high at the time I figured I should do what General Principle had instructed and I dutifully tuned to that station. I did not crash while doing so but it was a two button combination (that I did not know) to tune from AM to FM. Supposedly I can do this from the steering wheel but I will be damned if I have any idea how to actually do that. The Beemer's have HUDs which tell me what I am doing when mashing the buttons so theoretically I could get AM radio with enough random button selections. The RV does not do that. In a way that is a good thing - one must pay a bit more attention when they are piloting a concrete block down the road.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Would you say the same thing about a print artist who didn't want black an white prints of his colour works sold?
If an artist had always allowed (and still allows) black and white versions of his full color works to be sold, I would question his motives if he then claimed that monochrome versions weren't good enough representations of the same works.
You seem to miss the point that he is specifically talking about selling or renting the music he created.
The same music that he happily allows to be sold on 8-track or cassette or cheap vinyl. Or on AM radio. You do realize, I hope, that when Neil Young was relevant to anything AM radio was monaural only. That means that the precious stereo sound of his recording was totally lost. And I hope you realize that even the precious stereo of FM radio goes through a horrific pre-emphasis/de-emphasis process to try to reduce noise (which modifies his careful equalization) but it is never completely eliminated. And that stereo is a poor representation of live ambiance.
Let's talk about media not being good enough to allow distribution of a precious "life's work", but let's talk about it before it has gone on for forty years, ok? Especially when some of those media have been the equivalent of tin cans and string compared to today's digital systems that are suddenly "not good enough".
Totally orthogonal to the topic at hand but a true story definitely worth relating: while my kid brother was at college, one of his friends was cranking Neil Young loudly in his dorm room... and there came a loud pounding on his door. He yelled "come in" and Neil Young opened the door and yelled "Turn it down!" with a shit-eating grin.
It's about sound quality.
Get a streaming service to push for 24bit 96khz FLAC.
why not just stream it himself in loss less.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Maybe he will pull his music from all formats, including ALL forms of broadcast music, so that we will not have to listen to it any longer. One can also hope
Bob Dylan will do the same (although Dylan can write a decent tune on occasion).
I had to look this person up on Wikipedia. He was born before coloured television in Canada. He had polio as a child and comes from the days when music was recorded in mono on plastic vinyl "gramophone records." He sings like a dying constipated dog trying to shit. He does not have any children he does not have any kind of relationship. He classes himself as a rock singer, country singer / folksinger. Absolute shit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... When I was a little kid my dad got me a cassette player it had a microphone plugged into the side it took large round batteries and it only had one song on it on a cassette and the song was https://www.youtube.com/watch?... When I was a kid I lived in the past when other people were living in modern times I lived in somewhere like nowhere land. But that's a different story.
He might not need my money, but then neither does Bill Gates but they still charge money for Windows. I really have no idea whether this behavior is driven by greed or insanity or a little of both, but it doesn't change all of the classic music he has made.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Sound quality like we used to have on radio? Right... Twiddle your dial a bit.. You might be able to make out a few words.
-Walter
high on top of
Sugar Mountain Farm
(Nothing to do with the song)
(This is Vermont where grow)
(sugar maples in sugar bushes)
and pretty well known. saw him live two years ago in Helsinki. a pretty good concert.
HOWEVER when it comes to his hifi music digital audio player, he's full of shit.
this is just so he can sell/promote PONO. I'm not sure if he believes that the hifisupadupasound of PONO is really better or if he's just a knowing shill. it's just a player that plays lossless files - nothing special there!
besides, streaming services have BETTER sound quality than RADIO and his music is played on radio all the time. streaming is also much better than cassettes.
he says it's not about the money, but sound quality blabla.. IT IS ABOUT THE FUCKING MONEY.
also, is he going to do home calls and check that his music is only played on hifi stereos and never on multimedia speakers?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
and he's full of shit.
it's just about pono, and you can buy his music in mp3.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/ar...
spotify on high quality is way, wayyyyy better than cassette or radio or 8 tracks. but he wants to sell pono-tech. I'm guessing he wants to sell a lossless streaming service.
if it's really just about the quality how come streaming service mp3 is unacceptable and "worse than 8 track" BUT itunes mp3 is acceptable?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Say "so long" to the nut case.
...from a guy with an 8-bit voice.
I'm a bit of a fan of his, but I think this is an awfully silly issue over which to make his music less accessible to everyone. What's he going to do about people who have the temerity to listen to his music while they're driving a car, or getting stoned, or otherwise not dedicating 100% of their attention to its nuances?
Neil,
Streaming's way better than FM, just saying.
Play Command HQ online
Maybe you and he have different views of what makes quality? He does not want you to have to pay for streaming his music, he feels the sound is inferior. This is actually subjective and not objective. You can say the higher bitrate has a higher quality but you can not say that the sound is better because of that - that is a matter of taste. His taste, and the taste of his fans, are different it seems. As a fan I am not actually one that appreciates all of his music for example. To him a lossy and distorted mix may sound better.
Additionally, he does not want you to pay for streaming his music - as I mentioned. He encourages you to make a copy and states that it is free. So, go pirate it if you want. There are many torrents available. Here is a link to the magnet file for his discography from 1968 until 2010:
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:53f0f9f3105021246afdb016561768c4442ba91e&dn=Neil+Young+-+Studio+Discography+1968+-+2010+%5BFLAC%5D+-+Kitlope&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fopen.demonii.com%3A1337&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.coppersurfer.tk%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fexodus.desync.com%3A6969
I think there are two newer albums than that? I am not entirely sure but I think so. However, that will give you a good start and plenty of his music in high quality. There are alternatives available:
https://thepiratebay.gd/search...
I am currently seeding the first of the two and will leave it on for the duration. Grab a copy if you want.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Seriously? This crap from him again? It's bad enough he's selling the Pono Player snake oil. I've been ABXing my music for the last year, and I can't hear a damn difference between a well encoded m4a/ogg and a standard FLAC, let alone a "hi-res" FLAC.
Spotify is streaming a 320K ogg file. I believe Apple is streaming a 256K AAC. Streaming music quality is very good these days. Maybe he should actually look at the preferences for his app and make sure high quality is on.
OK, as I head into my 60's I'd consider my hearing good, but not great. Last year my old computer speakers died and I upgraded to a pair of Bose speakers. Wow, what a difference. So, given that I enjoy my MP3's and streaming music through my computer speakers, I'm far from an audiophile, but It works for me. I don't think I'd really be able to tell if I was listening to a better quality sound source. Guess I'll say good-bye to Young.
He has it almost backwards. Currently, high fidelity sound gear, hardware and software, and services are almost everywhere and practically free - we would have killed for these capabilities in the 50s and 60s (I was there...). And what do people listen to using it? Rap, which definitely does not require high fidelity reproduction....http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/07/15/2136229/neil-young-says-his-music-is-too-good-for-streaming-services#
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
That's a very faulty premise for a start. Some streaming sites use very lossy files to save on bandwidth and you could tell the difference even if half deaf.
I'd say the same thing to a print artist who demanded that his flat black and white prints "needed" to be physically assembled using a cheap photocopier in Glasgow and then shipped in individual foil wrappers to each customer, rather than being able to print them out on a laser printer at a local print shop in each area because he imagined that the Glasgow photocopier had magical powers that made the prints "look right".
He's an idiot, he doesn't understand anything about audio. And people will leap to defend him because they like his music - imagine if Tolkien had claimed there are only two vowels in English, J and Z and therefore his work can't be spoken out loud except by people named Jeremy. "Oh, but he wrote my favourite novel" so what? No matter how awesome you think LOTR is, that doesn't make J or Z vowels, and most certainly not the only two in the English language, and the claims about people named Jeremy would be nonsense too. So we shouldn't pretend otherwise..
Not streamed at 256Kbps so I really have no idea why you wrote all the irrelevant stuff above. This is about streaming audio and not some download once track for your mp3 player.
Consider how your post looks after such a basic mistake that renders it entirely offtopic. Those insults to the guy who was talking about something else don't look so clever now do they?
It would be on topic if the music was streamed at 256kbps, but since it isn't you are writing about something completely different to the summary.
I think we have different definitions of classic music....
Yea, most of his fans would listen to him from FM broadcast on a cheap transistor radio. Get your head out of your ass Neil!
A southern man don't need him around anyhow.
"Old man yells at cloud"?
... A Southern man don't need him around anyhow.
https://www.youtube.com/result...
Everything is there already, Neil. Just like everyone else... your crap is already on the internet. You can either get paid for it or not. Your choice.
But refusing to participate just means you don't get paid.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Perhaps that's his issue. Now that these services are capable of streaming digital, high quality music, he can't stand listening to himself anymore.
He has some pretty poor vocals and tape/radio compression and some very good engineers have so far saved him. Now that digital services (all of them) are streaming 128kbps or better (192 is not uncommon eg. iTunes/Pandora which have been proven to be indistinguishable from uncompressed), perhaps even from a digital master digitized by younger engineers which most having less analog 'voice warming' technique as their predecessors, his voice sounds as awful as it actually is.
Digital distortion (AutoTune) can make awful singers sing slightly better works for a quick summer hit song if it has a catchy beat but the same singers will no longer maintain a career for very long (see: any hit singer of the last decade). Previously the industry would pump money in an 'artist' and engineers would be able to fix a lot of things by compression and equalizing. In the digital age where we have concert quality sound at all times, the use of compression and other analog tricks (such as running things through a tube amp) sounds, well, compressed and analog.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
He must mean that in general PC/Multimedia speakers are of poor quality, in which case he's right.
Today I learned that the is a musician called Neil young. Maybe I should checkout his music. Oh. Wait. Hmm.
Speaking of HX Pro and Dolby noise reduction etc., it's amazing how much sound quality was improved over the original specification.
Try and listen to an original spec Type I compact cassette with no tricks, and then compare it to a Type IV metal cassette with HX Pro and Dolby C, the difference is absolutely mindblowing. Some serious engineering went into those systems. Back when I worked at Bang & Olufsen, I chatted with some of the engineers who worked with Jørgen Selmer Jensen (who invented HX Pro), and it's still considered one of the greatest achievements of the company.
Eat the rich.
He is hawking audio snakeoil and perceives streaming as a rival to his own service. That's the only reason for a boycott.
It's not because of the money, although my share (like all the other artists) was dramatically reduced by bad deals made without my consent.
then stop dealing with the big record companies.
It's about sound quality. I don't need my music to be devalued by the worst quality in the history of broadcasting or any other form of distribution. I don't feel right allowing this to be sold to my fans. It's bad for my music. For me, It's about making and distributing music people can really hear and feel. I stand for that. When the quality is back, I'll give it another look. Never say never.
put your music on Magnatune. then it can be heard in the lossless FLAC format. which is actually better than CDs if you use the 48k sample rate.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
he needs to stop this farce of complaining about "sound quality" every two seconds. it's just getting embarrassing.
One thing to note, this doesn't mean "all streaming services".
Both Neil Young and Taylo Swift are available on my Google play music all access pass.
Most people cannot tell the difference between a 128k/16bit mp3 or 44k1/16bit wav file.
"Delusional old man is delusional"
.. stop streaming in RealPlayer?
So were car speakers, especially in the 70s and 80s. Clock radios. Awful 1980s walkman earphones. The man came of age and built his fan base in an era with really crappy audio technology by modern standards. His stance only makes sense when filtered through the "eccentric artist" point of view.
Now it is true that in 1980, one could pipe their cassette deck through a really nice amp and set of speakers. Just like you can do today with Spotify.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Probably. I was born in the 70s, so "oldies" tend to be from the early rock-n-roll era, while "classics" tend to be from the 70s. When it is 2050, I'll probably still be calling 70s rock "classic rock".
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
It's about sound quality. I don't need my music to be devalued by the worst quality in the history of broadcasting or any other form of distribution.
Neil Young complaining about sound quality??? Neil Young, one of the worst-sounding singers on the planet??? Please.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
And AM/FM radio often have static and drop-outs, and low dynamic range. Even at it's best, FM radio is distinguishable from an LP - which itself is generally full of pops and clicks and sounds a bit worse every time you play it. Tape is distinguishable from an LP, and was usually played on a crappy deck. An 8-track is an abomination, with crosstalk where you could actually hear the other tracks.
Sure, Spotify streams are distinguishable from a CD under good listening conditions. But so are all of the other media he lists. The man is completely deluded. Good artists usually are. I don't really care, since the art is what matters and not the opinions of the artist.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Well, in his defence, streaming quality on dial-up is rather poor. Maybe even worse than AM radio.
Log in or piss off.
nothing much is stopping you from also copying and exchanging 192K uncompressed files of all Neil's stuff.
There's a text from xyph.org (and in it a video) that has been mentioned at least a couple of times in this thread that shows why 192 kHz doesn't matter and 44.1 kHz is more than enough. And yet you keep coming up with this stuff. Stop spreading misinformation. You're low UID means you're at least old enough to stop for a minute and think a bit.
The streaming services don't need him around anyhow.
Thought Beemers were bikes, and Bimmers were cars.
" the worst quality in the history of broadcasting "
When he was actually popular didn't most people listen on AM radios. Some neat high fidelity features of AM radio for those that didn't know their cars even can pump that signal out the 4-8 speakers in the average factory radio setup today:
Some more facts that apply universally to every form of reproduction in the era:
Add to this the hiss of cassette tapes or the overbearing continuous POP POP POP of a sterile vinyl record with brand new "needle", not to mention when either of these gets dusty, and yeah, the good old days were fantastic and rightly remembered as the golden age of audio reproduction technology.
Tell me again how it's not about the money.
Heh, yeah, now I have this image of Neil Young listening to a 48kbps MP3 and declaring digital dead.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
See subject: & on the subject - I could care less if the man wants monies for his efforts really, as that's only right really. You *may* be right though, after all, since he's been @ rock-N-roll for SO long, he's probably got a large stash of Ca$h from it (most likely) & probably doesn't need it.
1 part of the tune *REALLY* bugs me (since I've SEEN things like it where I live not TOO far away):
"I've seen a woman in the night, with a baby in her hand (there's an old street light near a garbage can). Now, she puts the kid away & she's gonna get a hit - she HATES HER LIFE & what she's done with it..."
In any event? The answer to my email addy's IN the program's "Read me" (an extended 'help' system really)... not posting it here since my posts "higher rated" than zero (& could be used for spam etc.).
APK
P.S.=> Anyhow/anyways - I'm doing my LAST to it THIS month (regarding 2 TLD's that are gone now & more new ones added + some filters vs. false positives (yes, it has a whitelist too vs. blocking antivirus companies etc.)), since it's PRETTY MUCH shown up "bug free & bulletproof" vs. errors/abends to date & works for the purposes of building a better hosts file (for more speed, security, reliability, + even anonymity online)... apk
I actually just found a few songs by him that I'd never heard before... thanks to Google Music. In any case, I've never understood why this guy is always rambling on about sound quality... I'm pretty sure the problem lies in the way the tracks were recorded and mastered. Furthermore, he's constantly cutting away his exposure... I guess it's like he once sang: "It's better to burn out, than to fade away."
"worst quality in the history of broadcasting or any other form of distribution"?! Neil seems to forget that AM radio was the prevalent listening method when his biggest hits were first released.
They'd be big-N Nazis if they were associated with a National Socialist political organization. It's like the difference between libertarianism and Libertarian parties.
Ah, the old analog vs digital discussion.
Jeeze; I don't understand all the negative comments. The dude is an exceptional artist and if he thinks his work sounds like shit when it's streamed then I think you've got to respect that because he's a better judge of how his music is supposed to sound than anybody else.
Perhaps Neil wants his fans to use the $25,000 Galileo cable system too: http://bit.ly/1OgWNnG
Sounds to me like he's an old man wanting people to take a look at his life... There's a lot of people who are 24 and listening to a whole lot more.
I see lots of people attacking Neil Young's music and "conflict of interest" regarding the Pono player (plus lots of the old Slashdot ignorance reflected in pseudo-scientific knowledge about audio). Here's an objective video that explains the actual science of streaming audio encoding.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
One very widespread example of poor quality is enough.
64k is fine for voice but everything else sounds a bit off.
I'm sure he can't even succeed a double blind test (ABX) between a 320kbps mp3 (encoded with LAME) and a real CD.
The real source of poor audio quality is not the formats. It is the engineers that master albums way too loud and destroy the dynamic range of music. Search for Loudness Race on the internet.
Yes but then there's Pandora etc. Nearby AM radio is better than some.
I'm skeptical, but perhaps in an ideal state you could coax AM radio to sound as good as Pandora's free stream at 128kbps. Certainly not in the typical configuration of an AM radio in 1980. It was not stereo, had horrid dynamic range (lower than the telephone!), and it picked up motor noise from your car engine or refrigerator. And again, you were listening through those horrid 1970s factory speakers or possibly a really crappy set of foam headphones.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
So, a rich old asshole says the quality isn't good enough for him, and parties with others to sell an expensive device so you can listen to his shit only... But wait, there's more! 40 years ago he was selling his music on 8 Tracks and Cassettes... so, I guess quality has nothing to do with his new decision, does it?
(for the youngsters out there, 8 tracks and cassettes were not 'lossy', they just sucked. Cassettes had this hiss that was minimized if one bought the metallic versions of the tapes... by about 3 db. But was still present. 8 Tracks? Much worse audio quality than cassette! (I have listened to both back 45 years ago and all the way up until about 1995 when CD was introduced.)
I have to agree with him on this point about his music: It's not good enough to sell or rent.
With respect the "internet radio" via some flash shit that people listen to in my workplace is pretty crap and uses hardly any bandwidth while the AM is broadcast from a small mountain in the middle of the city (within 20km of all the outlying suburbs) is definitely better than the streaming stuff I've heard.
So while some may be good the one I've been exposed to fits Neil Young's description - YMMV. I'd better take a look on Monday and see what the piece of crap is called so that you can see the bandwidth and hear the lack of quality for yourself.
I'm not sure how old you are, but maybe your ears have lost high frequency response? AM has a very low dynamic range - something like 30dB. You can usually tell immediately that the radio is tuned to AM rather than FM. You could also be lucky enough to be listening to AM with a receiver that can handle HD or stereo broadcasts... those should sound better.
I would like the name of that streaming service, to avoid if possible :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Yes I know about that and I suggest you consider how much extra compression there is in terms of dynamic range with low bitrate encoding - a lot more than losing sensitivity with age. Anything with strings is especially obvious.
I'm not saying AM is good, despite listening to it while travelling each day (a 24hr news network) it's obviously not able to carry as much as FM and I'm not arguing anything as silly as that, I'm merely pointing out that some streaming audio is so crappy that it's as bad or worse than AM.
Strings are bad - and cymbals. MP3 at low bitrates is indeed horrible. But those are all high-end that would be completely absent on AM. If you wished you could encode the MP3 with the high end filtered/compressed out and it would sound just like AM. People seem to prefer bad high end to no high end.
In any event, I wouldn't listen to either low-bitrate MP3 or AM except maybe in the car where it doesn't much matter :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
What a cunt - It would've been fairer if he admitted "it's all about the money".
Turns out the crap audio is a compressed to the back of beyond stream as an online version of the broadcast from a local AM radio station - via some sort of incredibly crappy flash thing in a web browser that falls over every time a new flash update is available. It sort of works for voice. I doubt they play Neil Young, he's too recent for the elderly talkback audience and they would probably think he's some sort of Communist.
Haha, that sounds awful! Probably uses something like the SPEEX codec in a 44kbps stream :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Neil is sick!!