I've always been a diehard vinyl / cassette listener, I grew up on both. About 10 years ago my turntable went kapute and I never replaced it. I'm an iTunes monthly subscription subscriber (though feeling conflicted as a part time musician/songwriter that has songs on iTunes/Spotify, etc due to artist payments) BUT quality and artist payments aside, the amount of music I have access to is far more vast then any music collection I could have as well as the ease and speed to get the music I want. Internet and wifi are everywhere so I'm not too worried about access to music. I guess I've switched with the times

High speed internet and wifi at definitively NOT everywhere in America, in fact 30+% of Americans have NO access to it and in rural areas its around 60% unavailable or unattainable.
I live in LA and my home line (ATT) is practically useless. If I listen to NSSR it often constantly rebuffers, making online listening impossible.
It's a neighborhood-to-neighnorhood thing in topography like ours. But the infrastructure is simply NOT THERE. Comtel companies often enjoy monopolistic dominance in this or that area and the market does not serve to motivate them to improve infrastructure as long as government regulation is lax and does not require minimum performance levels.
Worse, these same companies through advocacy groups like ALEC suppress local mumipalities' efforts to provide Internet to their residents. Th city of Chattanooga attempted to purchase its own network and were sued successfully so they couldn't.
Lack of access to Internet makes small businesses in rural areas uncompetitive with large outfits.
Until Internet service providers begin to respect clients and provide high-quality service for cheap I'll stick to actual physical recordings, thanks!

Squink Out!

AS a diehard vinyl ( and CD...I evolved to that) collector I am not a fan of online music unless I can get a physical medium with it. I have a couple of friends who have liquidated their collections and it's all digital now. they are proud of the space they now have in there homes. It's all stored on a drive or virtually. My answer was " so in effect you own nothing....."
The collect ability and kool part of physical mediums was the gate folds, liner notes, stickers etc... The sheer tacticallity of it.
now downloaded music has opened up the market for a lot of bands and I must admit that there are items out there that I could never find so it does have a good side. I have purchased some rare ones for myself online asan interim measure till I find a real copy.....
THat being said, I have been looking at new vehicles and apparently CD players have been replaced with USB ports.... I think I am in a losing battle.

I am not obsolete, I am RETRO....

One upside is that most of the surf music crowd DOES want the physical medium, whether CD or LP. The Space Cossacks sold nearly a 100 CDs of the live album at our five reunion shows, which is pretty amazing, I was really happy about that. The Madeira has sold 600 CDs (minus the promos) of the Ancient Winds CD in one year, making it probably our fastest selling album yet - not counting the online download sales, which were substantial, too.

It's true that the wider world is leaving people like us behind (I talk to many young people who have never bought a physical music product in their entire lives! Many have also never listened to a full album start to finish, either! That's just incredible to me - and very, very sad.), BUT our whole scene is fairly self-contained as it is, and here's one other way in which we're basically a world unto itself.

Ivan
Lords of Atlantis on Facebook
The Madeira Official Website
The Madeira on Facebook
The Blair-Pongracic Band on Facebook
The Space Cossacks on Facebook
The Madeira Channel on YouTube

We plan on joining Bandcamp soon. Anyway to get our music out to anyone interested is good by us.
I am and do come from the album, full length, LP culture though so figuring out how to do things in this day and age has been a challenge for sure, especially when it's all DIY, no record company helping, like many of us do.
One aspect I have embraced tough is the digital single.
The guys in our band have very busy jobs and families so getting 10 - 14 performances recorded, self mixed and mastered, artwork, duplication can be a challenge whereas we can create a single quickly and get it uploaded in no time at all. I would expect in the future you'll see more singles or double singles (like a 45) from us and this "new", digital model actually fits our lifestyles pretty well when I'm being honest.
I do however, dream of a Crazy Aces LP on Vinyl. It would certainly revive a different, slightly bygone feeling of accomplishment for this, mostly middle aged band.

Cheers,
Jeff

http://www.facebook.com/CrazyAcesMusic
http://www.youtube.com/user/crazyacesrock
http://www.reverbnation.com/crazyacesmusic

JObeast wrote:

Worse, these same companies through advocacy groups like ALEC suppress local mumipalities' efforts to provide Internet to their residents. Th city of Chattanooga attempted to purchase its own network and were sued successfully so they couldn't.

Uh, I think Chattanooga did make its own network. Did they get sued? Yeah. But it didn't shut them down. They're one of the success stories in municipal networks.

I studied up on this a lot because out own local utility is working to do it for us. Some years ago, the school district needed better connections. None of the current players were willing, except one who plainly didn't actually want to do it, as evidenced by their price. So the district asked the public utility to do it, and they did. But it's only a loop between the schools and whoever is near it. Now they want to fiber the town.

And they still have the letters from the other providers saying that they're not interested.

I think my favorite municipal network story comes from western Virginia, where one of the oldest water utilities was trying to put in a network. They got sued by everyone, but didn't lose. The last lawsuit was Verizon complaining that they'd subsidize telephone costs with other revenue, and that was anti-competitive. Before it went to the judge, the utility said, OK, we'll charge the mandated telecom rate for telephone, just like you do.

Except their service was 10$ a month cheaper. Because Verizon was charging $10 more, just because. The utility took out full-page ads showing the difference. They got a lot of business.

IvanP wrote:

CrazyAces wrote:

One aspect I have embraced tough is the digital single.
I would expect in the future you'll see more singles or double singles (like a 45) from us and this "new", digital model actually fits our lifestyles pretty well when I'm being honest.

Jeff, I would sound a note of caution with this: while the young people may operate according to this model, you have to ask yourself how many people like most of us here, that are actually likely to be your customers, do. I personally just don't get excited pretty much at all by a digital single, and rarely pick them up, instead waiting until they're released as part of an album. I suspect many surf music fans are like that, consisting primarily of people over 40. If you're trying to find a new audience, the above may indeed be the right way to go, but keep in mind that it may not do much for your regular audience. Just a thought.

Ivan,
Thanks, all very, very good points.
I don't think we'll ever completely abandon the full length and physical release. It feels like it's taken so long to build any fanbase at all and we certainly don't want to leave anyone out at this point.

We'll get back to work on our collaboration series later this fall and winter and that has always been planned as a full length, CD or who knows, maybe even, finally vinyl since it will be such a neat experience with all the different bands and players on it.

Yes, sir, good points indeed!

Cheers,
Jeff

http://www.facebook.com/CrazyAcesMusic
http://www.youtube.com/user/crazyacesrock
http://www.reverbnation.com/crazyacesmusic

While vinyl may be outselling cd's at brick and mortar record stores, I find it hard to believe that vinyl is outselling streaming services OR that it will ever become a popular medium again (yes it has it's nitch). Don't get me wrong, I still belive in vinyl and cd's - but for independent bands it's important to diversity and do both - isolating yourself to a single medium (eg. cd or vinyl only) is limiting your growth potential (fan base and distribution) - there is still part of the population (though aging) that want vinyl but there's a larger part of the population (under 20 and maybe under 30) that only want digital medium (cd's included).

BTW this is a great conversation and is an important one to all the musicians who sell music and music fans who listen/buy music. I personally don't get caught up in the medium anymore, I just want to HEAR the song. A band / musician should use what every they need to for representing the song the best they can. Heck I don't buy vinyl but still use tube amps and personally think that you can't get better than a 50's strat or tele (we'll the 50's and early 60's gibsons/gretschs/silvertones are great too )