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."

Comments

Tidal?

[SeaFox]

Tidal streams losslessly. What his excuse for not putting his music on there?

Re:Tidal?

[Dutch Gun]

Most studio microphone frequency charts typically drop off before or near 20kHz anyhow, so it's unlikely it would even be captured in the first place.

Pfft. Not that I care if people want to blow their money on formats or equipment that's over-engineered by several factors beyond what they could possibly hear. And if they feel a bit more special believing that, unlike most other humans, they alone have "golden ears" that can hear the difference... well, that's fine with me too. Just don't try to shovel that shit in my direction. Prove it to me with a blind A/B test, and then I'll take your claims seriously.

It's pretty telling when you actually hear what Neil Young thinks about compressed audio file formats:

“We’re in the 21st century and we have the worst sound that we’ve ever had. It’s worse than a 78 [rpm record]. What happened?

        “The MP3 only has 5 percent of the data present in the original recording The convenience of the digital age has forced people to choose between quality and convenience, but they shouldn’t have to make that choice.”

        “If you’re an artist and you created something and you knew the master was 100 percent great, but the consumer got 5 percent, would you be feeling good? “

It's clear he doesn't really understand the technology, and thinks that compressing a song to 1/20th of the original size means that it's only 5% of the value of the original. Yes, you can overcompress audio until it sounds like crap, and MP3 is getting a bit long in the tooth. That's why most people have switched to 256kbps AAC (Apple music streams at this quality, btw), and the overwhelming majority of people in A/B tests can't tell the difference between compressed and non-compressed audio, nor between 16-bit/44.1kHz vs high resolution audio.

Stop the false headlines

[riskkeyesq]

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.

Worst? Heh

[taustin]

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.

Re:Worst? Heh

[Lunix Nutcase]

Where's the results of the ABX test you took to prove your claims? Numerous ABX tests over decades have backed up what the GP says.

Re:Worst? Heh

[Mr D from 63]

What are you claiming, that under certain conditions you can have a compressed music file sound like and uncompressed one? That I would agree with, but unless ABX tests show detailed audio results of compressed music across the board, at low bitrates as well as high, compared with master copies, I'd say you totally missed my points.

I agree there are ridiculous audiophile claims out there, and a lot of psychology at play, but to broadly claim that lossy compression cannot degrade quality is just is ridiculous.

Re:Worst? Heh

[ttucker]

To be perfectly fair, nobody is talking about bit rates that would be considered low in any universe.

Most streaming services use at least 256kbps, and some use much more. Most streaming services use vastly superior codecs to MP3, such as Vorbis or AAC, that fully eliminate any rational complaint about lossy compression, even at low bitrates (which is irrelevant still, because we are literally only talking about extremely high bitrates).

Nobody has made the claim that lossy compression never perceptively degrades quality. You argument is a straw man.

Re:Worst? Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

You are confusing sample rate and bit depth. Increasing sample rate doesn't lower the noise floor, raising bit depth does by increasing the dynamic range of a recording. Increasing the sample rate permits one to capture and reproduce higher frequencies, however this in practice has a collateral affect of RAISING the noise floor. This happens because although there is practically nothing musically interesting happening in the ultrasonic range, you do end up picking up electrical noise from your equipment, thereby raising the noise floor above what it would be at a lower sample rate.

I've worked with a very wide range of formats, sample rates, bit depths and dithering in a professional environment, and I can tell you many simple truths:

1. Sound quality is always second to music quality. A quality song will come through in a crap recording, and a crap song will always be bad no matter how polished it is. This is why people will happily sit around in a circle listening and singing along to classic hits with Spotify through their iPhone speaker.
2. As a final format to the consumer, there is nothing superior to 16-bit / 44.1 kHz (48k for video) WAV (AIFF is the same with reversed byte order). This has been repeatedly shown in double blind ABX tests. The overwhelming majority of people, myself included, cannot discern between a high bitrate mp3 and CD-quality audio.
3. Even private mastering houses don't have the money to spend on double blind ABX testing. Setting up a truly scientific test of audio quality is extremely difficult, and time (and therefore money) consuming. In ours we would do shootouts to decide which ADs to standardize, but we would only do 5 or 10 tests among 8 people. That would take all day, and mean a day of lost billing, and we didn't hire a neutral party to administer the test. So the results would be prone to multiple biases (limited sample size, not double-blind, no randomization to unskew first-choice bias, confirmation bias, etc).
4. Your instruments aren't making any interesting noises in the ultrasonic range. Neither are your microphones picking them up, nor are the majority of EQs built to do anything with them (has anyone ever rolled off 30kHz?), nor are most most amplifiers reproducing them, and if they are, the monitors almost certainly are not.

Re: Who?

[Y2K is bogus]

Hmm, are you trying to sound like you AREN'T dissing Neil Young, but really are?

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

I'd say that makes him famous to anyone who's heard classic rock.

Then there's those little songs "Old Man" and "Rockin' in The Free World", to name a couple.

Re:I'm sure this isn't about Young vs Trump, right

[MightyYar]

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.

Re:Suck it, Neil

[Chris Johnson]

Ah, another vintage slashdotter! We're coming out of the woodwork here.

The crappiness of your Macbook isn't Neil's fault, and he didn't make you buy it. Nice burn on the FLAC file, we both know that's lossless and there will be no difference (unlike anything where data's truncated or lossy-compressed). And you can still get tons of music which isn't all 'loudness war', across the entire range of recorded history in fact. If people aren't making good recordings anymore, listen to something else, over headphones that block some of the distracting noise.

If you don't want Neil or his music, he's done you no injury. If you are mad at him continually suggesting that the digital formats we're using are inadequate, or that your playback stuff is plebian and lame, you should tell him to go make his own. Oh, wait, he did! And put it up for sale at a price that strikingly undercuts most of the 'audiophile' world. And nobody is making you buy that, though it's markedly cheaper than your MacBook. I'm given to understand there are computers running Windows and Linux that will also play your Miley Cyrus.

"Keep on rockin' in the FREE world..." apk

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Suck it, Neil

[Chris Johnson]

Yeah, but I like stuff like Tangerine Dream, or obscure psytrance bands from Sweden, where there IS no 'lyrics' and the sound is literally the only thing. It's OK if Neil is being insulting to you, you don't have to care. He's brought out some playback gear that's really, really good at playing the music _I_ like, a lot cheaper than that stuff usually runs.

I prefer fancypants 192K (or 96K: same to me, frankly) 24 bit, to vinyl. Unhesitatingly (though there are times when the vinyl mastering helped the sound of the record, and just taking the master tape wouldn't give you as good of a mix).

But I prefer both to CD quality, except when the vinyl's real noisy. Assuming I can pay attention, because if I'm doing something else none of it matters. But if I'm doing something else I'm NOT listening to music at all.

And I prefer CD quality to any form of lossy compression: and have told them apart in ABX testing, up to and including a 320K mp3 example. It was a castanet sound, and if it had been some other instrument (such as a flute, or an 808 kick sample) I would never have been able to tell. The attack of the castanet sound had less personality as 320K mp3, and I ABXed it successfully that time (it's a challenging test!)

I am not obliged to listen to crap just because, if the crap was playing a 300 hz sine, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference. I can use something that's equal to any listening/content situation I can throw at it. Or, I can get something that's happily overkill and know there's no way I'll ever have issues with it. To me, 96K is already overkill, probably 64K would suffice, but 44.1K is a little chintzy.

I have a car that'll drive way faster than 90 mph, too, even though I stick to around 65 most of the time. Is that immoral? Am I obliged to only drive something that struggles to get to 70, that being faster than I'll generally use?

Re: Who?

[budgenator]

(also - the Wailin' Jennys' version of "Old Man" is far superior to Neil Young's own...)

That's because Waylon Jennings can sing in key, in time and his voice doesn't sound like a tomcat being gang-raped; his complaints about the lack of sound quality on streaming services is likely self-delusion. Most of the air play he still gets is due to CanCon regulations.

Re:To paraphrase Lynyrd Skynyrd

[Rockets84]

Well I heard mister Young sing about her
Well, I heard ole Neil put her down
Well, I hope Neil Young will remember
A Southern man don't need him around anyhow

Sweet home Alabama...

Re: Who?

[Demonoid-Penguin]

So? He's done a shitload since and is still less of a self-promoter than many others who have done far less. His song "piece of crap" sums up a lot of things, including the quality of streaming audio.

Listening to "Revolution Blues" and then discovering it's about Charles Manson is like looking at Van Gogh's "Wheatfield with Crows" and then hearing it was his last painting (it wasn't). Maybe compared to the genius of Lady Gaga (I thought "he" was a porn star) Neil Young ain't much.

"Needle and the Damage Done", "Turnstiles", "Broken Arrow", "I am a Child", "Mr Soul", "Cinnamon Girl", "Homegrown", "Down by the River", "Cortez the Killer", "Powderfinger", "Cowgirl In the Sand", "Ohio". that song he did for BP "Vampire Blues", the one he wrote for Donald Trump's Presidential campaign "Keep on Rockin in the Free World" - yep, no doubt that he was never as good as, um, Justin Beiber. But he did turn out the occasional song worth humming to in 45 years. None ever were more than foot-tapping mood music - I can't claim they promoted or inspired change, like, um, what's that band with the lead singer that went out with Brittany Spears? And I very much doubt he would have ever been sued for "not being himself" (such a self promoter him).

He's also a promoter of many other bands - but I must of missed the years when he shamelessly promoted himself.

As for "streaming is crap".... I seem to recall he had something to do with Pono. I hate it when people just criticise - without providing a better suggestion. Neil Young has even less staying power than he has integrity and musical ability.