The Great Music Glut

I get regular emails from Juno but I find it incredibly tedious going through them.

Anything worth buying I usually hear about from forums, tracklists of mixes that I've downloaded, myspace, or through talking to people in (gulp) the real world.

A good thing about the net is that records don't dissappear any more - thanks to Discogs and suchlike, they are always around to buy even if you miss them first time out.

I’ve brought an iPod so I can digest more as I move about, listen to mixes and so forth but I’ve deliberately limited what I’ve put on it so far. Just my new CDs and some other bits, a few mixes etc so it’s not too overwhelming.

The glut appreciates records a lot more – I prefer records over any other format and buying LPs is a bit different from download piggery – walking out a shop with more than 4 LPs always seems a bit much. Plus I find 25-35 minutes at a time per side much more digestible than say a 50 tune CD doublepack. Having a physical object means you’ve got some cover art to stare at and something to stack next to your record player and trip over, rather than a never-ending accumulation of weightless, contextless MP3s.

I think the main thing is just accepting you *can’t* hear it all and appreciating the abundance. Stopping doing that thing of staying permanently plugged in downloading more and more stuff “cos you might miss it” or whatever.

What gets me more is how the internet actually makes me feel guilty sometimes. Because it makes everything so easy the amount you can find or learn about any subject, not just music, is limited only by how much you can be bothered. So I perpetually feel really uninformed because this stuff makes it easy to expect yourself to know everything about everything, but I can't really be fucked most of the time.

Listen constantly - 8/9 hours a day, and figure out how to filter things properly.

Approaching it from a DJs point of view is actually an advantage for this as you tend to rate things according to utility rather than anything else. Only problem there is when you start DJng multiple genres, but it does mean you can make your decisions pretty quickly.

Basically you have to develop a strategy or criteria to manage things. These days, if something doesn't blow my mind of suck me in pretty quickly I just go on to the next tune. You can miss stuff, but its better than just wallowing around...

^ I'd end up hating music (and myself probably) pretty quickly if I did that.. I prefer having a strategy for ignoring things more than filtering them.

DannyL said:

I’ve brought an iPod so I can digest more as I move about

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this is key, my iPod broke recently and my available listening time has gone through the floor, i hate it

UFO over easy said:

What gets me more is how the internet actually makes me feel guilty sometimes. Because it makes everything so easy the only limit to how much you can find or learn about any subject, not just music, is limited only by how much you can be bothered. So I perpetually feel really uninformed because this stuff makes it easy to expect yourself to know everything about everything, but I can't really be fucked most of the time.

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this is very true

UFO over easy said:

^ I'd end up hating music (and myself probably) pretty quickly if I did that.. I prefer having a strategy for ignoring things more than filtering them.

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Well its kinda the same thing. I wouldn't listen to 8 hours of techno or hipster rock that I have no interest in the hope of hearing something good - but i would listen to mixes all day and mentally note tunes, artists and labels, that i liked the sound of, and mentally bin those I don't, so I know to ignore them next time.

It goes without saying that recommendations from trusted sources is another good way to choose.

my ipod broke ages ago and i don't miss it - i can listen to five great singles in a week and really enjoy them nowdays or just get into one form of music for a while, i do find myself buying about 60 - 40 new stuff. i listen to new music all day at work and alot of it is stuff people put on the stereo, new releases mainly indie and i just switch off to that stuff nowdays, you've got to have a personal relationship with music else it's just background noise or you're just fielding downloads.

DJ PIMP said:

Also stuff is popping off so fast now its like perpetual genre epilepsy.

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records are produced in such small quantities nowdays, if they're produced at all

UFO over easy said:

What gets me more is how the internet actually makes me feel guilty sometimes. Because it makes everything so easy the only limit to how much you can find or learn about any subject, not just music, is limited only by how much you can be bothered. So I perpetually feel really uninformed because this stuff makes it easy to expect yourself to know everything about everything, but I can't really be fucked most of the time.

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For us relative youngers growing up with the internet think of how good our knowledge is going to be when we are 40!

Anyone else feel totally lost on an hour long train journey without an iPod or similar? Kinda alarming somehow...

viktorvaughn said:

For us relative youngers growing up with the internet think of how good our knowledge is going to be when we are 40!

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I dunno, I think it's a quantity/quality thing. A generation of armchair critics with very little to say about a huge variety of different subjects Like walking bitezise wikipedia chunks.

I'm also completely addicted to listening to music constantly on my ipod, but going off it quite quickly. It disconnects me just enough to feel alone in a busy environment, but not enough to really digest the music properly. So I feel like a zombie but I'm not benefitting from it. Crap earbuds are partly to blame I suspect, but I'm thinking of starting to only take the ipod with me on long journeys.

dont you think its a bit of a non problem that theres too much good music? or is your problem the same as mine in that that you arent able to name drop records people havent heard of? nerd cred crisis. ive tried to stop thinking about this when i realised i was shitting myself evert time there was some new worldmusic dance genre cos my mates would be into it and id look the big man. ive sacked that off and am currently enjoying lonely horrible music on my own.

Also a good way to combat the ipod ADD factor is to use your girlfriends old mettalic pink one, then you'll not even think about taking that shit out of your pocket until the music stops

straight said:

dont you think its a bit of a non problem that theres too much good music?

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this is entirely too sensible

UFO over easy said:

this is entirely too sensible

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how can you think im sensible with this wacky pink ipod?

ideally what this will/should do is motivate more artists to make music isnt just GOOD but is er VERY good and hopefully even better than that to rise about the glut of just seemingly good if not all that memorable music (or perhaps it is memorable, its just hard to memorise it when you have 48953 other songs vying for your attention). worst case scenario is it will lowest-com-dom things more cos people will go for the easiest angle to get your attention over everything else.

Good topic, 'Pimp' - I wrote about the same subject once for a website - so much 'Stuff' generally as we travel dazed by choice down the supermarket aisles, through online pages, on TV (all those stations!) - words, sounds, images - the information overload conundrum of what's 'valid' and what's not - celeb froth, Wiki knowledge, 'realityVision', horrorshow news - enough to trip anyone's switch and cause a shutdown.

My gen remembers buying one album a week and treasuring the thing - now some of us live in iPods and download whilst others (like myself) have resisted following every sign of the times to full 'modernisation' without being total Luddites. A 'youngster' here (VV) mentioned 'knowing' so much by the time he's 40 but is it really knowledge or just experience overload? My music collection isn't fully 'known' and it's small compared to the iPod possibilities. Like sprinting through the National Gallery you take in a lot of paintings and know none of them. Perhaps it's better to stand for 30mins in front of one masterpiece? Which raises the question of the calibre of music you're consuming, of course (one worm wriggles out of the High/Lowbrow culture can before I slam it shut).

Pop overload is possible by sheer number despite the content being easily digestible - whereas the almost infinite subtleties of a great symphony or, I would say, Dave Brubeck quartet recording, can take the average listener a lifetime to appreciate.

Less really is more sometimes...a cliche I know...or a truism...

UFO over easy said:

I dunno, I think it's a quantity/quality thing. A generation of armchair critics with very little to say about a huge variety of different subjects Like walking bitezise wikipedia chunks.

I'm also completely addicted to listening to music constantly on my ipod, but going off it quite quickly. It disconnects me just enough to feel alone in a busy environment, but not enough to really digest the music properly. So I feel like a zombie but I'm not benefitting from it. Crap earbuds are partly to blame I suspect, but I'm thinking of starting to only take the ipod with me on long journeys.

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having a strong knowledge of music is fairly useless, really, i'm only 32 btw - so i'm a relative younger