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> Enjoyment of music linked to a specific physical item seems incredibly shallow to me. To a certain extent, but across the arts there's always artists that wa

> Enjoyment of music linked to a specific physical item seems incredibly shallow to me. To a certain extent, but across the arts there's always artists that want to play with the format, so a changing of format can result in something being re-contextualised. For example, you can have [multisided vinyl][1] with hidden tracks, or loop a track onto itself so the record plays forever (like Sergeant Pepper). Neither are really possible with MP3 (there's a Brian Eno record that does both (the track bifurcates and loops at them end), so you get a random sample looping at the end of the LP). I am not saying this means the enjoyment of the music is lessened when you listen to it digitally - just that plenty of artists have written and produced pieces with the physical format at the front of their minds. [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multisided_record https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multisided_record

sqlacid 4y ago
I'll never forget discovering the third track of Monty Python's Matching Tie and Handkerchief, thought I'd lost my mind. As an Eno fan I'm not familiar with the mentioned album. King Crimson would put hidden messages printed in the vinyl inner track, I remember seeing "The next step is Discipline", which was their next album. I also miss the thriving bootleg community, picture discs.
alexvoda 4y ago
I see no reason why all of that could not be done in software. Same as DVD menus. For the record, VLC supports DVD menus and the Matroska container format (mkv, mka, mks, and the basis for webm) supports all of the features imagined so far. I believe the demand for the content far outweighed the demand for the presentation layer. All of these forms of interactivity however didn't prove popular in the digital world. Think of DVD's again. How often would you have ripped a DVD into a 4 or 8 GiB ISO in order to preserve the full experience and how often would you have rather ripped just the video file ~400 MiB, reencoded using a modern codec. Netflix optimises for the latter. If you allow for programability, all features of music albums and more can be recreated. What people want is no fuss instant access to the popular music of the moment therefore we have streaming services with good enough quality for most people and vast enough but incomplete collections of music. All while navigating the maze of licensing internationally. How many listeners do you believe would rather open Spotify/iTunes/WinAmp and press play to hear music and how many would rather navigate a album specific experience. If experience is so important, it can still be done in the streaming focused world of today (without standardised formats like Matroska). Just package it as an app (native or web), publish it on the app stores and let the app store take a 30% cut. Apps do not appear to be a popular format for music albums or for movies, even though they were attempted.

sqlacid 4y ago

I'll never forget discovering the third track of Monty Python's Matching Tie and Handkerchief, thought I'd lost my mind. As an Eno fan I'm not familiar with the mentioned album. King Crimson would put hidden messages printed in the vinyl inner track, I remember seeing "The next step is Discipline", which was their next album. I also miss the thriving bootleg community, picture discs.

alexvoda 4y ago

I see no reason why all of that could not be done in software. Same as DVD menus. For the record, VLC supports DVD menus and the Matroska container format (mkv, mka, mks, and the basis for webm) supports all of the features imagined so far. I believe the demand for the content far outweighed the demand for the presentation layer. All of these forms of interactivity however didn't prove popular in the digital world. Think of DVD's again. How often would you have ripped a DVD into a 4 or 8 GiB ISO in order to preserve the full experience and how often would you have rather ripped just the video file ~400 MiB, reencoded using a modern codec. Netflix optimises for the latter. If you allow for programability, all features of music albums and more can be recreated. What people want is no fuss instant access to the popular music of the moment therefore we have streaming services with good enough quality for most people and vast enough but incomplete collections of music. All while navigating the maze of licensing internationally. How many listeners do you believe would rather open Spotify/iTunes/WinAmp and press play to hear music and how many would rather navigate a album specific experience. If experience is so important, it can still be done in the streaming focused world of today (without standardised formats like Matroska). Just package it as an app (native or web), publish it on the app stores and let the app store take a 30% cut. Apps do not appear to be a popular format for music albums or for movies, even though they were attempted.