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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."
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?
From the facebook page "It's bad for my music". Face it a music geek with his head up his ass, lives in the delusion that people must worship them and their creations. Most people buy music to bring the emotions back associated with memories when they first heard that music and does not have that much to do with the music itself.
For me all dead music is shite compared to a drunken sing along with a happy crowd, that's real music. Being a nothing passive consumer of main stream media marketing about what you have to listen to, what makes you lame if you do not listen and how laughably you protest the oldies by conforming to marketing and buying the currently most marketed music.
You do realise by far the majority of marketing shite associated with performance industry, is just that, marketing shite targeted at minors because they are readily manipulatable and then they are either stuck with it as they grow older or realise they have been scammed by professional con artists. You really want the best music, then create it with others don't passively listen to it thinking you are achieving something because modern hugely manipulative marketing has convinced you that you must or you are a uncool loser.
Would the world be a lessor place if non of that now not good enough for streaming music never existing, no, not in the least. Would the world be a lessor place if lessor no quality drunken sing alongs never existed, of course it would, those a real moments of shared creativity and happiness.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Or AM/FM radio transmission. I wish they would at least be honest and say "I'm not making enough money on streaming".
I'm 66 and I *definitely* can hear the difference between a bad MP3 and a decent lossless recording. But I'm fortunate to have mostly kept my hearing this far.
But the discussion raises a question. Are people satisfied with poorer sound than they once were? I see people listening all the time on cheap earbuds. I've done reviews on Amazon of dozens of earbuds and headphones, and I know what those things sound like. (I also ran a small recording studio and location recording business for quite a few years, so I've done professional audio work.)
Listening to earbuds connected to your phone, playing an MP3, is hardly the same experience as listening in a living room to carefully placed Bose (or similar) speakers driven by a decent set of adequately powered amplifiers, if you see my point.
Some streaming that I've listened to is indeed terrible, and although some is pretty good, it's still at least something of a degraded experience most of the time.
Does that mean Neil Young's music is so good that some loss of fidelity ruins the listening experience? I can't answer that from an artistic standpoint, but quality trends do seem to be in a downward rather than upward direction.
Is he more popular with the 50-60 crowd I take it?
Nah, he's just not very good. Let's take the Rolling Stones as an example. Everybody has heard of them and most people have at least heard a few of their songs, regardless of their age. They are timeless.
Neil Young never had more than a small following and was quickly forgotten by time.
I Think you got that backwards. Rolling Stones get constant airplay on Classic Rock, but they are very forgettable musically. Neil Young is a far, far better musician than any or all of the Rolling Stones. Songs like "Old Man" and "Cinnamon Girl" are timeless. Then there is the harmonies he lent to the compositions of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
I'm sure he sits well with the 50-60 crowd, but I'm only 45, and there are plenty in my age group who like him.
I love the irony of people saying "who is Neil Young" because they are listening to some pop star who in 1 year will be getting less airplay than Neil Young will be getting.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
45 years old = Neil WHO? High school years were not spent listening to music like this, they were Def Leppard, Quiet Riot, and Rick Astley years. This is music for old codgers, although probably better creatively than the formulaic top 40 stuff now.
I've noticed that classic rock stations have got in tune with actual listener demos because we're getting older. When I was a kid, oldies stations would play Chuck Berry and Elvis, music that only senior citizens would have heard new. Now I turn on the classic rock station, and they are playing Nirvana, REM, and Collective Soul alongside less Stones and Pink Floyd. Won't be long before classic rock would need to play late 90s, years where there was no more rock music.
The main change this article addresses is that people are starting to no longer buy or even download music, it's good enough to just put on internet radio, since it can narrowcast exactly what you want to hear. Radio and streaming, what was one a promotion tool for record companies, has become something out of their control that IS the end product for most people.