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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."
Who?
there. i said it.
Tidal streams losslessly. What his excuse for not putting his music on there?
Which is why Pono's DRM only allows you to play back through Neil-Approved headphones.
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.
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.
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.
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
Nonsense. I have one. It sounds awesome, comparable to a Lavry DA10 at several times the price that can't play all the digital audio the Pono can.
Everybody I know who has one or has heard one, who actually know what they're doing audio-wise, think it sounds great.
If you get used to tone like that then it becomes more understandable why Neil would respond with a 'nuuuuu! go 'way!' to compressed streaming audio. Is it up to him to decide whether the experience of sonic presence and tone color is all that matters? When there are things like notes, lyrics, stuff not related to how good the sound is? I don't know. Not like you can't get everything he's done by mp3 anyway.
The real reason to bail on streaming services is, it's a con and ripping off the artists even worse than the original music business did. Everybody in the business knows rates are a sick joke, meaningless. You don't have to care about that but any musician has a right to 'nope' out of there, at least unless or until the tech industry sets up mandatory licensing so musicians can't even opt out of streaming if they wanted.
It's pretty classless to curse out Neil Young for doing this. He doesn't have a right to go and make his own tech if he doesn't like what the computer industry's done with his medium? As if CDs weren't bad enough. You can say "fine, shut up and go make your own music tech!" and I'd have thought that would be a real mic drop line right there.
And he DID. I own a Pono, thing sounds extremely awesome, ridiculously good for $400 (I have numerous digital converters worth more than that, it's my day job). He DID go make his own, and you're still bitchin'?
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);
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 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
Everybody I know who has one or has heard one, who actually know what they're doing audio-wise, think it sounds great.
No true Scotsman, huh? What's that, you heard the Pono and don't think it sounds great? Hmm, you must not know what you're doing audio-wise.
Whatever, if Neil Young doesn't want me to listen to his music on a streaming site because it's the worst quality ever, fine, I'll just request and then record his songs on local FM radio the way he intended them to be heard.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
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
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
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!
I think you'll find most people making arguments against the thing have not heard it. I'm thinking of a variety of sound engineer and musician friends not associated with Young. One guy was a mastering engineer, one's a modern-day musician who does interesting stuff with sampling and sound layering, including sounds like a dog bowl whirring on concrete.
It'd be pretty dumb to say 'the Pono doesn't sound great' when it blatantly does (it's battery life that sucks! :) ). What some people are saying is that everything, all the streaming and earbuds and detritus of the 2015 audio life, also sounds great, wonderful, perfect.
errrrrr no.
It sounds fine if you use Monster HDMI cable
I'll just request and then record his songs on local FM radio the way he intended them to be heard
Quite. With the tape recorder sitting in front of the radio. So you can capture the sound of A/C, the whiny fridge, the clock ticking, and the neighbor beating his wife, allowing you to recreate the whole experience later when you listen to this music on your yellow walkman.
lucm, indeed.
Streaming isn't the same as a live performance. You may hear the difference on a CD or Vinal if you have a good set of speakers.
But let's face it. Most of us myself included (with a minor in music from a prestigious music school) really doesn't put the attention to listen to these finer points in music of a song we heard hundreds of times before. Unless you are more then a casual fan.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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
Yep. PONO is an expensive "solution" to a non-existent problem.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
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'
No true Scotsman, huh? What's that, you heard the Pono and don't think it sounds great? Hmm,
you must not know what you're doing audio-wise.
^^^ THIS times one billion. If there's a more gullible group of people than self-described "audiophiles", I've never met 'em. Now if you'll excuse me, I gotta go buy some $400 wooden knobs for my amplifier (cuz, you know, they really help bring out the crossover tones, whatever the hell those are).
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
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.
oh, bollocks. Uncompressed .wav and a set of closed-back, wide response headphones for the win.
Speaking for myself, and I don't intend to shill here - this is just what works for me, I have a Logik MP410 8GB media player which boasts a twenty hour battery life for playback, ten hours recording, and a pair of Angle & Curve cans I got free with a mobile phone.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
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.
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
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.
That's a good analogy. How much over 30fps is unnecessary for a twitch game? Presumably 60fps is too many?
How about 1920x1080? No video games should be allowed to run better than 30fps 1080p, including on home PCs?
That's not serious, by the way, I love me some 60fps youtube videos even (much less directly using a computer)
But it's analogous. Also, modern music is MORE likely to exploit the high sample rates Neil likes. Very few sounds he ever made besides cymbals really used that range, but something like noisia? Wow. If they're not working in 96 or 192K, they should, they've got a LOT of stuff going on waaaaay up there, and it's amazing.
No, wrong, not.
The publishers are no prize, we know that (different artists have had very different experiences with 'em: ask John Fogerty)
Streaming is WAY worse. If you even knew any working musicians you'd have heard this. Even midlevel acts are getting checks like a couple bucks, or in the pennies. Neil has always been pretty decent at the business side and with CSN was aligned with Geffen back when you could get a pretty good deal if you were sharp, and he took advantage of that, and it's other people who got ripped off by the biz, not so much Neil.
He's not calling you a thief, he literally said quote "Copy my songs if you want to. That's free. Your choice" unquote.
I think it is possible you still have stuff to learn about the industry, about the current state of affairs, and about streaming. Fact is, musicians in general are way more hosed in the world of streaming, and they're being killed off slightly faster than the actual industry execs you hate, which are also being killed off (while they frantically try to cut streaming deals).
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.
I somehow doubt that is his motive. Really. He has scads of money - I have given him a lot. Well, not personally... Anyhow, he really is an idealist of sorts. Also, I think he is insane. That is not a bad thing I suppose. But, money is probably not his goal.
"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? You seem to miss the point that he is specifically talking about selling or renting the music he created.
Just grab a copy off a torrent site. He probably will not even mind but I do not dare speak for him. Really - go ahead, he won't give a shit.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
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.
If the playback hardware is accurate, and it's moving plenty of air through good drivers, the only sound quality limitation is the source material.
Pono can't fix the crap recordings, bad mastering, or over-compression that seems to prevail in 2015 audio life, and that's why it's a hard sell.
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*
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.
But you took the time to comment and read the article. Dice Holdings wins again. Also, you thought you had a valid opinion or that your not caring was somehow important? That is like going to the Windows 10 RTM link and saying, "I do not use Windows, I use FreeBSD. I don't care." In other words, it is moronic. Also, you should use LinuxMint - it is 'Linux for Retards' which is why I like it so much.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
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.
...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?
This isn't some run of the mill musician and he's battle against quality has started long before this announcements. The jury is still out whether he's an audiophile nut or actually has some magic form of hearing but this is a man who amongst other things:
- Was one of the first people to have his music remastered to SACD / DVDAudio formats.
- Is a vocal opponent of the loudness war and music compression.
- Is a vocal opponent of the MP3 format.
- Attempted to start his own music distribution service complete with a high quality portable music player, and a streaming / download service offering 192kHz / 24bit audio, Pono.
Oh and he's got some $65m in the bank so I doubt he's a struggling artist not happy with his kickbacks.
Yet another thing we agree on. He is an artist of the highest quality for his genre(s). He is a legend and his music is legendary. As he is actively encouraging people to make a copy of his music (to pirate it) he is most likely not doing this for the money.
Anyhow, I had not seen you around for a while. It is good to see you are still kicking. I forgot your email address - I have a suggestion for your application and would prefer the conversation to be private.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
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.
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....
Well if he isn't he can (as usual) blame the record companies, who take 5x as much for themselves as they give to songwriters or performers, and nearly double what the streaming services get for actually hosting the infrastructure and handling the billing.
"Old man yells at cloud"?
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
Wow. If they're not working in 96 or 192K, they should, they've got a LOT of stuff going on waaaaay up there
...that no-one can hear.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
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.
It is not a comparative thing. I am not sure why you even mention it unless you are trying to prove some sort of strange point. Regardless of what other people have - he still has a buttload of money. What others have is irrelevant.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
He is hawking audio snakeoil and perceives streaming as a rival to his own service. That's the only reason for a boycott.
That's not true, cats can hear sounds up to 64,000Hz. So if you want your cat to enjoy your music, too, you better get speakers or cat-earphones that support the frequency range and a PONO with music sampled in 192kHz. (And make sure it's also recorded with the help of cats.)
Who does not love cats?
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
"Delusional old man is delusional"
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.
The streaming services don't need him around anyhow.
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.
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.
Who does not love cats?
Me. I do not love cats. And that position comes from previously having cats for almost a decade.
I just got tired of finding hair everywhere in everything- my food, my clothes, my laundry, my furniture, books, electronics, carpeting, kitchen, tools, etc etc etc.
And no matter what you may think or what anyone tells you, if you have cats, yes, your house smells. Trust me- anyone who walks into a home with cats knows that there are cats living there.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Thanks. Being an old fart who willingly listens to Neil Young, I like hearing new stuff that's amazing. More relevantly, Noisia USES those frequency ranges actively, which is more than Neil really does (with him it's all just the natural behavior of cymbals, sibilance, violins or what have you).
It blows my mind that the same generation who's composing music that can do ANYTHING with sound, tend to be glued to this dogma and stuck to lossy encoding and aggressive bandlimiting. Seriously guys, it's just as much of a handicap as loudness war is, and I know you don't like that. Bits are cheap, live a little.
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.
If you want to have your cats enjoy it, you're better with the virtual low-pass of quantizing it down to around 20,000Hz. If the engineer can't hear much higher, they can't fix noise or harmonics or distortion in those ranges. So it's much better if you cut them out.
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?...
...
And he DID. I own a Pono, thing sounds extremely awesome, ridiculously good for $400 (I have numerous digital converters worth more than that, it's my day job). He DID go make his own, and you're still bitchin'?
It's awesome that he made his own, it really is. But his argument that streaming 256 AAC sounds worse than AM Radio, cassette tapes and 8 tracks is ridiculous and it makes the whole thing feel a bit disingenuous. Is he pulling all his CDs off the shelves? Is he pulling his music from the iTunes store (which is encoded as 256 kbps AAC?
It's great he's creating a hi-fidelity option. It's marketing BS that he won't let people who don't care enjoy his music however the hell they want.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
One very widespread example of poor quality is enough.
64k is fine for voice but everything else sounds a bit off.
Yes but then there's Pandora etc. Nearby AM radio is better than some.
I've done A-B comparisons with the FLAC samples from Pono's store (including some at 44k1/16 that supposedly come from the CD masters) vs. my own FLACs ripped from CD. It is clear that the music on Pono, like "Gold CDs" and other audiophile snakeoil that has come before it, gets its "better" sound by remastering, not because of the higher bitrate or bit depth. I put better in quotes there, because it really is a matter of opinion, and these types of products tend to aim at the type of audiophile who listens to their equipment, rather than listening to the music, so they tend to have a different opinion of what is a better sound.
I don't know about his hardware player, but I did try a similar snakeoil player from Meridian, and found that compared to a standard DAC on the same files, it was doing some DSP processing to "clean" up the sound, which ended up sounding quite nice on jazz and other sparse "audiophile music", but downright awful on noisy rock that is supposed to have a continuous wall of guitar noise.
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.
I think you'll find most people making arguments against the thing have not heard it.
I've never even heard OF it. I'm not arguing anything, I'm just noticing your rhetorical devices, you make it pretty easy to dismiss anyone who disagrees with you (they must not know what they're doing; you obviously do). That's called No True Scotsman. If someone disagrees with you, then instead of debating their points and possibly conceding your own you just say they don't know what they're doing, they're not a "real audio guy", because a "real audio guy" wouldn't have that opinion. This attitude is all over the "high end audio" world. Just ask the guy who decided that the Pear Anjou cables are "danceable". I think of those kinds of reviews and people whenever I see or hear someone say something like "no one who knows what they're doing would say this doesn't sound good."
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
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.
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.