Martin

London UK

somebody pay these guys!

I’m still discovering new music, even though I’m in my late 30s and should have become a grumpy old man complaining how ‘all music sounds the same these days’…

It was A Guy Called Gerald’s ‘Voodoo Ray’, in my early teens, which tore me away from listening to ‘Dad’s records’, even though he has a pretty good taste in music, looking retrospectively. Then I discovered The Orb, and continued weaving in and out of ambient, IDM, progressive house, etc. to broaden my musical experience.

This is very easily said – and equally easy to do if one is still a student, or in the music ‘business’. But after leaving university for a full time job, opportunities to discover new artists playing musical styles that I really liked suddenly dried up. Late night clubs don’t generally play ‘listening music’ – as per most ambient, some electronica and IDM – they’re going to play dance music. And whilst I love the old progressive house from the early 90s, even more so than the original late 80s acid, having full-on dance music playing in my earphones on the rail commute scares the other passengers, since I end up spontaneously twitching… I can’t easily contain this natural buzz from the music, heh.

Creative and experimental electronica is much better ‘listening music’ – IMO – and once away from student experimentation, working for City financial firms, the ‘what sort of music do you listen to’ question (and clichéd ice-breaker) never comes up.

So between 2000 and 2005, I was stagnating in my own music library. Finding Sonic Sunset on the web changed all that, and the handy ID3 tag in your MP3 files that shows the playlist makes it so much easier for me to identify the artist and track when I hear something new and I immediately love it.

This is great for the artists, but probably not so good for the record companies. This is not a situation I find uncomfortable

It’s good for artists because if I like a track I’ve just heard, and the artist has composed an album containing that track, I make a point of buying the album – the physical lossless CD version. The artist gets paid for this. I don’t buy music on the internet for download only (except for special cases, such as Sonic Sunset sets and internet radio stations like Soma FM), as long-term safe storage for the music then becomes a problem. A bog-standard pressed CD should last 100 years, by which point I’d hope that ‘cloud storage’ has evolved to the point where it’s impossible to *lose* information and knowledge (though that raises interesting questions in both the realm of physics (thermodynamics – entropy is accepted as going in one direction only, but information that doesn’t decay and is merely added to, as some hyper-advanced civilisation downloads experience and knowledge for general access, would imply an increase in order, not an increase in disorder as predicted by laws of thermodynamics), and philosophy (back to epistemology and ontology – in a major way))

Burning worms results in a nice stack of optical backup media. But writable CDs use a photosensitive dye, which is bleached by the energy of the laser head, to mimic the ‘pits’ and ‘lands’ physically pressed into the metallic layer under the protective coating. And even *physically* cut discs were only expected to last 100 years. Plenty of people have been caught out when trying to retrieve lost data from a 3-year-old CD backup, especially if the dye used turned out to be less photostable than anticipated. Writable optical media is simply NOT a viable long-term data storage solution.

So my approach makes sense – I hear about some new music on a mix set or an internet radio station, and attempt to support the artist by buying the CD (or CDs, if I’ve heard multiple tracks from different albums and they were all great, as in the case of Arovane – thank you Dave). This gives me a *pressed* CD, with a 100 year life. I then extract the music from the original CD into my network storage for compression / storage as I see fit. I then carefully replace the CD, put it in a dark, opaque packing box (along with all my other CDs) and store the packing box in a low humidity, stable temperature area within my house. The CD ought to last well beyond 100 years in this case, but by then I’ll be long dead.

Sorry fellas, got a bit sidetracked there.

Anyway – your mixes are excellent, and they introduce me to new music that I wouldn’t have necessarily heard elsewhere. I try to support the artists concerned by buying their CDs, but how do I support you guys? I don’t see any ‘donations’ tip jar, yet you are the most important part of the chain for me.

If you don’t ask for money because you can’t (perhaps due to broadcasting licence issues or other legal stuff relating to Matt still (IIRC) working for a radio station), fair enough. But I’d happily pay to download your MP3s. They’re still great, even with you both in different cities.

Much good karma for you, methinks.

cheeers