Day 8 of Hijacking the Holidays is a special piece of content brought to you by the fine folks that make up the Atlanta Music Roundtable, of which Hijacking Music has participated in this year.

Each participant will be ‘hosting’ one of the questions on their site, the schedule is as follows:

Monday: Most Underrated (Davy), Mediums and Formats (Bret)
Tuesday: Break Out in 2012 (Max), Best and Worst (Moe)
Wednesday: Best Shows (Emily), Visuals (Adam)
Thursday: Best EPs/Songs (Christina), Best Places to Buy and Hear (Rube)
Friday: Best Local Albums (Denton), Best Non-Local Albums (Tim)

The topic we were given to host for the roundtable is Mediums and Formats. For this discussion, we wanted to cover the different ways we now have access to music.

We talked about the advantages and disadvantages of various formats, such as vinyl, CDs, cassettes, and digital only releases.

As well the discussion is open to new ways of listening to, sharing, and organizing music, like Spotify, Turntable.fm, Ex.fm, Bandcamp, etc.
 

Denton – http://littleadvances.com:

When was the last time any of you bought a CD? Serious question. I don’t think I’ve bought one for myself one in over 3 years. Pretty sure it was a used 400 Blows album I saw in the $0.99 rack at a liquidation sale.

I can sort of see why bands still want a cheap, physical format to sell at the merch booth, but it’s just not a format that holds any interest for me any longer. Once I rip it to my hard drive, it just sits on the shelf. CDs are the first things to go when the moving boxes come out.

Christina – http://promisingchord.com:

Great question. I bought a CD last week. Buying CD’s is something that I have always done and will continue to do as long as they don’t become obsolete.

There is something about physically holding a cd, reading the liner notes, and admiring the art work that is so special to me. I have roughly 20 cds in my car that I rotate through at the moment and don’t own a fancy MP3 player.

I know it’s a dying format and saddens me to see it go. This year however, I have been buying more vinyl than cd’s depending on the artist or style of music.

Emily – http://whollyroller.com:

The only reason I use CDs anymore is because my car doesn’t have the fancy pants aux jacks. So, I buy an album on vinyl, put it on my computer and then burn a CD to play in the car. I think by doing that I’ve stepped back 7 years, but oh well, that’s what I’m working with. Vinyl and cassettes are my formats of choice, maybe it’s hipster culture or nostalgia or whatever, they are the best formats. I just have to have something to hold in my hand, you know, I feel like I’m part of something – and not just supporting the band, but supporting a whole music community.

As much as I love vinyl and cassettes, I’m also a huge fan of the various online listening goodness.

I think Spotify is the greatest thing since sliced bread. ExFM is the hippest way to share music within the blogosphere. Turntable.fm was cool for five minutes, but it was a glorious five minutes.

Turnable.fm highlights were listening to unreleased tracks by Miniature Tigers and Teen Daze and hearing the entire Nerves Junior LP with the band and fellow bloggers in the “room.”
Bandcamp is amazing and honestly, it’s hard for me to want to listen to a band that doesn’t have one. It’s just the easiest way to share and distribute whole albums and EPs online.
I love Soundcloud the same way I love Bandcamp.

Soundcloud is the best way to share single tracks, and it’s one up on Bandcamp is that you can “follow” bands and artists.

Lastly, Daytrotter’s site is the best place to hear new music. I’m a huge Daytrotter supporter, they are good people that do good work.

I think the thing I love about all of these mediums, minus Turntable.fm, is that they are all completely mobile. Spotify is the coolest, I have my music library and some on my phone, computer, iPad, etc. And the same goes for Soundcloud, Bandcamp (you can either listen on the web browser or if you have an iPhone, I’d recommend Bandcamper.), Daytrotter and ExFM. Technology is cool!

Adam – http://beatlanta.com:

I think physical formats should start to make their way off the merchandise table for upcoming bands. Replace it with a business card sized flier with a link to a download. Its cheap and easier to distribute and promote. I haven’t bought a CD by choice in a couple years. I don’t own a cassette player. When I do get or have to buy a CD I generally put the music on my computer and the CD is put on a shelf or lost. MP3 players aren’t fancy; they’re pretty common place, and album art has gone digital. I think most music fans are not in a band or involved in a music blog and usually stick to the newest, cheapest and most convenient formats of buying and listening to music. If someone needs a CD for their car or something like that then they will just burn it…blank cd’s are cheap.

However, that’s not to say I am against a somewhat established band (maybe one that makes a little bit of money or has a hometown following through their music) releasing a vinyl for the pleasure, and later nostalgia, of their fans. I like many music lovers still dig collecting records and I think vinyl will always serve a purpose in American music, I’m not so sure about cassettes though. If a band does put out a CD then I think the album art should be something awesome and unique that will draw a fan to want to buy it partly due to the album art.

No matter the physical format used, I think the music should always be available digitally and online as well.

Tim – http://imabearetc.com:

The only physical media I still purchase is vinyl. That statement is not pretentious because listening to vinyl is an experience to hold on to. Vinyl is making a resurgence because a lot of music just sounds great in that format and most labels will give you a bonus digital download for purchasing. I love to absorb album art and liner notes and keep a collection, so I’ll still be buying vinyl for the forseeable future. Most albums will leak on the internet prior to release, but for a select few records, I’ll hold off for a first listen til it’s release on vinyl. It’s a treasure to hold out on records like St. Vincent’s Strange Mercy on vinyl and experience it that way.

As far as digital media goes, Spotify won my heart this year. I’d been looking forward to it for some time, and it doesn’t disappoint. It may be a model that favors labels over artists, but it’s convenient and allows for me to consume more music. Spotify adding apps and radio late in this year means it’ll move into the music discovery and Pandora territory and appeal to a lot more folks. They’ll be resistance, but I still favor my iTunes collection and purchase digitally. If you love the music enough, you’re still going to spring to buy it in some format (Unless its Lana Del Ray). iTunes Match was a late bloomer this year but it’s another cloud solution for an online music locker.

If you’re a band out there and you still have a MySpace, this is the year you finally became irrelevant. You’d ask music bloggers in the past about MySpace music and everyone would nod and smile and reluctantly proclaim you need a MySpace. Now we’ve got replacements and my favorite is Bandcamp. Bandcamp allows you to pay what you want for a lot artists (which I more than happy to do) and listen on a mobile device (which allowed me to absorb New Animal on every device and friend’s computer I came in contact with). Going into 2012, the landscape has changed to where you can create a great fanbase with having a Tumblr, Bandcamp and a Twitter page (and to an extent, Facebook).

Turntable.fm was a great fad wasn’t it? I’m not saying it wont last through 2012, but it has a lot of hurdles, and that includes making it mobile. Album premieres through Turntable became cool and felt new. I remember catching a first stream of Class Actress’ Reproacher as tons of kids fought in the chat rooms. It reminded me of the early days of AOL chatrooms. I was just waiting for folks to start saying “A/S/L?”.

Also; if anyone is still making physical CDs for their merch table at shows, you should probably put kisses on it like Cousin Dan. And provide tote bags to buy because Emily Hogan loves those.

Moe – http://latestdisgrace.com:

Out of a sense of nostalgia, I still enjoy getting CDs in the mail. I take it out, look at the cover, read though the liner notes, rip the music onto my computer and then promptly throw the CD away. Like it or not, they’re wasteful and useless, although that fleeting moment when you’re tearing through the plastic is still pretty cool. Vinyl with the digital download cards should really be the only physical format a band turns to. It sounds better, it looks better and it’s something more fans are apt to keep. It’s the only physical format whose sales are on the upswing. What other reasoning do you want? Vinyl rules. Period.

I’d really love to get a musician’s perspective on this, but as a blogger and music consumer, I turn to Bandcamp more than any other resource. I love everything about it — the clean design, the multi-tiered pricing structure, the wide range of embedding options and its mobile accessibility. I enjoy Soundcloud as well, but it’s extremely limited in terms of what it can do and, let’s face it, the free interface is just plain ugly.

Spotify has been a minor revelation. I still turn primarily to my iPod and iTunes because of the sound quality, but as bandwidth increases I could see myself making the switch permanently. Being able to stream new releases and old favorites whenever I want? What could possible be the downside? I’m always going to go out and buy the music that I really love and Spotify has exposed me to a lot of great music. I managed to score a free six-month subscription for their premium service when it first launched here in the States and it’s phenomenal. Having all that music available on my phone whenever I want has been liberating. I’m probably listening to more music now that I ever have before.

Max – http://maxblau.blogspot.com:

I think 2011 was a year where our digital consumption patterns began to change more so than our physical ones. I still listen to a combination of MP3s and CDs, occasionally buying a vinyl record. While I personally enjoy vinyl records, I think their resurgence has been a bit overstated. Even after making a comeback of sorts (i.e. no longer obsolete), vinyl will never become more than a niche product.

But as Moe mentioned, streaming services like Spotify and MOG on my phone have changed the game. There’s power in being able to listen to whatever you want, whenever you want. While these services in their current incarnations are surely innovative (probably the most since Lala), it’ll be interesting to see what kind of developments happen over the next year or two. Likewise, I agree with Emily on Bandcamp and Soundcloud–they’re simpler websites devoted to musicians.

Bret – http://hijackingmusic.com:

Last year I moved, and before doing so I sold off all of my CD’s. The collection was bulky, and I had already ripped everything to my hard drives.

This year, while I’ve listened to a bunch of CD’s in my car, I do not use a CD player in my house for music. My stereo has 91.9 Jazz radio, our Turntable, or a ‘phones’ jack to plug into a computer, phone, ipod, etc.

CD’s are done along with tapes. Digital media and Vinyl seem to be the new way and I am totally behind this.

When I heard about new music, like most people, I want it immediately. I do not want to go to the store and buy it(that takes time and planning), I do not want to order it from a website and wait days to receive it, I want it NOW.

Especially for artists who are starting out and building their fan base, giving away digital media is the way to go. Exchange it for an email address or some other means of collecting your fans data so you can reach out to them in the future, say when you come play a show in their town.

Bringing people to shows means your band is going to get paid, giving them your music beforehand is an easy way to get them to make that decision to actually come see you live.

The other things I would like to touch on here are Soundcloud, Bandcamp, and Topspin.

In my opinion, artists should have their music up on all 3 of these.

To me, Soundcloud has the best player. It looks great and is embeddable anywhere. You can offer up your stuff for download, create playlists, and there is a whole community of people there looking for new music.

Bandcamp is great and is starting to give more options for artists, email for downloads, donation based payment options, selling on Facebook, and physical media and merchandise distribution. Their embeddable music players are pretty ugly though. From an astetic standpoint, Bandcamp embeds are lame. That said, when I am looking for new music or trying to hear stuff from a band I am interested in booking or is contact me, I almost always go to Bandcamp first.

Topspin Media launched this year and is a one stop shop for artists to manage their digital and physical media, all ecommerce including any fulfilment and tickets, and most importantly, tie that in to their Mailing List. Much like Bandcamp you can offer up downloads in exchange for an email address, facebook like, money, etc. Each ‘offer’ is customizable and trackable.

I highly recommend any artists that have not checked out Topspin Media yet, get on that now. It will make your life so much easier and you’ll start to see results as soon as you start using the system.

Davy – http://ohmpark.com:

With CDs, I have the same problem as Emily in that my van only plays CDs so I have to constantly burn CDs to listen to music while I’m driving. Except a lot of the time I listen to college radio when I’m driving. That’s a format worth mentioning, and WRAS 88.5 is still a large part of my music discovery system. Other than that, I mostly listen to music in digital form, and I purchase music mostly in vinyl and tape cassette because I like to have physical items to collect. I also spend a lot of money on band merch like t-shirts, shoes, posters, etc. The more creative the better.

While I understand why everyone is so bonkers over Spotify, I haven’t really taken to it yet. I prefer listening to albums over songs, and a lot of the sorts of artists I like to listen to aren’t featured on there yet. And those commercials kill me. Turntable.fm was a really awesome social music phenomenon that was short lived in terms of everyone’s interest, but a really special part of 2011.

I have to say that Bandcamp is my favourite way to discover new music and I think any artist not using it is doing it wrong. It’s so simple, yet so powerful. Soundcloud isn’t bad, but I find it way less useful and enjoyable. Plus, I don’t like the way the player works because it ruins any surprises in the song with the visualizer thing.1

Thats a wrap!

What are your thoughts? Leave a comment below and tell us how you feel about the current state of Mediums and Formats for music consumption

Don’t forget that Wednesday December 21st the Atlanta Music Roundtable has put together an awesome show.

http://www.atlantamusicroundtable.com/

Tagged as: Atlanta Music Roundtable