What are the most recent album or two that we bought and how do we buy music now? Streaming, CDs, download, vinyl? December 3, 2016
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
The other week there was a great outline from people of the first album they bought (by the way just as an aside did people tend to buy one or two albums at a go? I know I did but again that was probably a function of buying them for the most part second hand).
That got me thinking. What are the most recent two or three albums people have bought? And in what format, CD, vinyl, downloads, or is ‘buying’ an album for some now akin to foraging for berries and it’s all streaming? I’ve got to admit to a proprietorial attitude to music – I don’t like corporations ‘owning’ it, I like having my own. In part because I don’t trust corporation but also the thing about music was that it was never just about music. It was about album art, or a knowledge of the groups, or all the interactions with friends listening to music (and how often did we get this line ‘wait, this is the good bit!’?).
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
Picked up a copy of the first album by the Duretti Column yesterday as part of a five vinyl albums for a pound deal in a second hand charity shop in Leeds. Love a good find like this. Its increasingly rare.Everone seems to know the market price of everything nowadays. I dont feel too guilty about this. I once bought a mint condition classical album as part of a similar deal at the same shop but brought it back to them when I found out that it was rare and selling for over £100 on ebay.
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That’s a great find – such a brilliant band/person.
Very true re market prices. A few weeks back I was in Cork and got a Blue In Heaven album that I swear no one on these islands particularly wants bar myself and that purely for nostalgia’s sake (I had it, somehow it went missing). Initially the price asked was 20 quid, went down to 10 which wasn’t bad – but maybe they knew their market!
It’s weird guilt about buying stuff. I bid on eBay once or twice for relatively obscure albums and always felt bad if I got one over someone else – it always struck me they might like the album more than me. Kind of irrational but it put me off. Physical record shops though – completely different! Never lost a moments sleep.
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Last one I picked up was a second-hand Brian Eno CD that I haven’t listened to yet.
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The new live album by pop genius and now filthy Tory, Kate Bush. I buy CDs and vinyl. Downloading is for stuff I can’t get my hands on physically.
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Urghhhh… just saw her comments. That’s an interesting approach Mick – I did a lot of downloading of stuff that hadn’t been released in years in the late 2000s and I’ve shifted over to downloads from emusic and so on since about 2005 anyhow. Rarely buy a CD now. Very very rarely buy vinyl.
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I got some 70s folk LPs on eBay the other week – the Copper Family Song For Every Season box set & a couple each by Shirley Collins and Peter Bellamy. They weren’t cheap, either – I baled out on another couple of Collins LPs from the same seller. No regrets about what I paid, though.
Before that it’d be Radiohead, A Moon-Shaped Pool – double vinyl (but with d/l code). And before that, a CD reissue of an 80s folk LP (Lisa Null & Bill Shute). (A bit of a cottage-industry release, that one – I had a hard time getting it to play, & suspect it may be a CD-R.)
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Sounds great Phil. Particularly the 80s folk. I’m a bit gobsmacked by how many of us are still using vinyl!
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I’ve only had a Spotify account since the beginning of last year but been using it fairly intensively since then; but I’ve read the number-crunching from people like David Byrne about how little artists actually get from streaming, so I’ve bought a batch of the albums I’ve been listening to most on CD. It does feel a bit King Canute at this stage and I know Daniel Avery and Jamie XX aren’t going to be able to pay off their mortgages thanks to me, but I felt like doing it anyway (probably working as a journalist also makes you a bit more sensitive to the argument that an industry can’t be viable if people expect to get everything for free). I like having the albums anyway, and I haven’t embraced the vinyl revival yet, so why not? I know most of my friends would find the idea of buying a CD bizarre though, never mind people younger than us.
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Last CD was a cheap Naxos recording of Messiaen’s et expecto resurrectionem which I picked up because the Haitink version on Phillips vinyl had been blowing me away while at home in Dublin for a few days. This version not anything like as good. Mostly CDs these days, because building a second record collection in UK seems absurd.
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Got Bowie’s farewell album for the sake of symmetry: Aladdin Sane was my first LP purchase, this would be my last. Then I gave in and bought the debut CD by Overhead, The Albatross. I know a couple of the lads and they make a very satisfactory racket. Who said logic had anything to do with buying music?
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they do indeed
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I downloaded the booka brass band album from Google Play a few weeks back. Very very good stuff.
There are at least 2 new orleans style brass bans around dublin these days and both are really good.
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The only reason to buy a CD is to get at the libretto / lyrics if you can’t make them out, as opposed to a reasonably comprehensive streaming service.
That’s one thing I hate about said service – first it assumes that you don’t want to hear tracks in order, unless you force it to, and then it doesn’t believe in publishing lyrics / libretto. Grrrr.
Now I’m no fan of the monopolist Google but one thing some generous souls do is post scores synched with the music on Screwtoob. Superb. For example:
Warning – the sound goes a bit wonky at points during that one.
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“This video contains content from Kontor New Media Music, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.!”
😦
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That’s a first – usually the dreaded GEMA in Germany blocks everything before any other country.
So who does the blocking in Ireland, I wonder?
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I fairly much buy only vinyl these days. On a trip to Derry last week I picked up about 10 lps, all in great nick, for 60 quid, including the Roches’ first, Mott ‘The Hoople’ and the Watersons’ first on Topic. Abbazappa Records is the place. I could’ve gone mad on the singles but I had to get to Foyle Books too. I do occasionally buy new stuff I mostly hear on BBC6; Jonny Common’s ‘Trapped in Amber’ came with a note from the man himself and I fairly much buy everything put out by Polytechnic Youth. Discogs I try and fail to avoid. My old Stereolab cds are starting to skip so I’m replacing them on vinyl, an expensive enough process, though the US issues are usually cheaper. As Stan was saying on the other thread Discogs fairly much sets the price all over these days and with the interweb on your phone you can see if you’re getting a bargain. Or not. There’s a place in town (Dublin) where they’re selling a Richard Thompson lp I’d like to get my hands on for a tenner over the nearest Discogs asking price, although I suppose you’ve to factor in postage and the instant gratification factor … Discogs though has mostly stopped me buying Amiga vinyl from the old DDR. Cheap as chips up to a few years ago and now well beyond what I’d pay for it. Rural France is something of an exception where you’ll always pick up something in junk shops or flea markets. This summer I got a copy of the Planxty black album for 10 cents although I had to pay a bit more for some France Gall lps. I never download or Spotify …
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I have a copy of Cobra and Phrases on Vinyl (i think) if you’re interested? be a couple of weeks before I can check.
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Got it thanks Stan!
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Anarchaeologist, if you happen to be in Edinburgh – I was there in October and found a terrific vinyl shop, Record Shak in Clerk St. Absolutely crammed with reasonably priced (£5-£12) LPs that all looked in great nick. I bought an album by a Scottish folk band from 1979, on Topic, never released on CD and not downloadable or streamable. Mint condition and original, £7. I only bought one record because I was flying hand baggage only and was afraid a bag of LPs might be taken from me!
By the way, on one of the other threads, someone mentioned buying an LP for £3.65. That really brought me back – my teenage years can be divided into the £2.85 album period, the £3.65 album, the £4.20 album etc. Before that, it was the single that had just gone out of the charts reduced to 2/= or 10p in Dolphin Discs on Malborough St.
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Well if we’re nominating record shops…. The Diskery in Birmingham. As much for the staff as the stock, though the latter is great. The lads look like they used to roadie for the Steve gibbons Band, will offer you tea and are funny as fuck and no record store attitude at all.
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It’s always great when one finds a place without the attitude. And they offer you tea as well? Jesus. That’s a find.
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When in (north) London Audio Gold near Ally Pally offers tea and a chat along with loads of well-priced vinyl. They mostly sell vintage hifi so you’ve the record section to yourself … I’ve a trip to Edinburgh coming soon, whatever about Birmingham!
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“the Watersons’ first on Topic. ”
Frost and Fire? picked up an ex-library copy for £3 today.
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This is Jonny Common btw: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0EwFAx39zM
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I only buy cds. Been that way for about 15 years I’d say. Don’t do spotify or downloading – don’t know how, don’t want to know how. Don’t do vinyl cos couldn’t be bothered getting the old record player going again.
On timelines, I got married in ’89 and the brother in London said he’d get me a stack(?)system – record player, cassette player, radio stacked on top of each other. He asked me did I want a cd player but I told him no, that was far too modern and bourgeois for me.
So the aversion to ‘new technology’ is hard-wired in me.
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The last CD I bought was a Jinx Lennon album after a gig he did in Dublin a few years ago. I went through a phase of downloading albums and to be honest I’m still working through that backlog. I’m very very slow at that, I tend to listen to a new album hundreds of times until I know every note in advance. Probably a habit from the teenage years. The Fall’s box set took me a couple of years to get through, but being a download I haven’t studied the track listings and lyrics like I would have back in the day, so I don’t actually know what any of the songs are called!
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