attention fellow producers..... rampant piracy

[kans]

who's?

[theclockstrucktwelve]

who's?

is there someone's sh!t you'll actually eat?

[kans]

I was just seeing if you would admit to ever shitting... since you're so full of it all the time.

[Zoiberg]

And, speaking about music, I think there's no quality, just taste.

You're wrong about this one. As with any art, music has qualitative properties that can be observed, articulated and discussed without any dependence on an individual's personal taste. Individual taste comes into play beside all of this. For instance: I hate trance. That's a taste thing. But I can spot the difference between a solid production and something thrown together in five minutes by a producer of limited experience.

Music, also like any art, isn't 100% art - there are sciences involved. And hence have quantitative elements that can be measured as well. The most obvious example of this is the technical components to a production... ie - someone who doesn't know how to mix* can completely destroy what might have been a good track.

So yes, there is "quality".

So quality for you just means conforming to a standard, one that we could call "well produced track".
Which is something, again, that is subjective, and that changes with time.

What about punk? Is it a genre that focuses on production quality?
No, but in the past it meant a lot for many people.

So I think that there can be great music that moves people and makes them fell emotions, without it having to be perfectly mastered for commercial purposes.

[theclockstrucktwelve]

So quality for you just means conforming to a standard, one that we could call "well produced track".
Which is something, again, that is subjective, and that changes with time.

Wow, where'd you pull that out of?

That's bullshit.

I didn't say any such thing. There's basic / base level items in music that simply exist and can be seen/heard/whatever regardless of one's opinion.

There is nowhere in anything I said to suggest that my definition of quality has anything to do with conforming to a standard. That's a completely different tangent that could be discussed. But without saying anything more about that, yeah - there are certain standards that are expected to be adhered to when releasing commercial music, no matter how underground it is. But this isn't at all what I was talking about.

What about punk? Is it a genre that focuses on production quality?
No, but in the past it meant a lot for many people.

I'm not a fan of punk but I bet there's a lot of rich producers of bands that would tear you a new one if you asked them that question. Sure, there's an underground punk thing that goes on where recordings are little more than cassette tape recordings via recording boombox.... and some love collecting lofi recordings and things. Nothing wrong with that but the people that are recording and making music for a career most often do real studio recordings and full production. More importantly, assuming you're talking about the noiser, grungier side of punk... just because it's noisey and out of control and sh!t, it doesn't mean there is no focus on production quality. That's just their "sound"... to you and me it might sound like noise.... but there's still a difference between a skilled band and a sucky punk band, and between a bad producer and a good one. It's not opinion, it's fact and I can't believe one would question that. I'll assume you're attempting to play devil's advocate or something I guess.

So I think that there can be great music that moves people and makes them fell emotions, without it having to be perfectly mastered for commercial purposes.

...so?
I know this to be true and it has no bearing. Mastering is one small, small piece of the pie and my mentioning of that side of things (I didn't actually, I used mixing as an example) was purely an example of one way in which one can distinguish quality between recordings. There are dozens of things that could have been said. And one last thing - we all enjoy something somewhere that if we were truly honest, we'd admit isn't really that good. I have some guilty pleasures in music as well as tv for example. Just because I enjoy them, it doesn't make them "good".

[Zoiberg]

Yes, I'm a bit of a devil's advocate :twisted:

About punk, I was thinking of the Sex Pistols and true punk bands, not the rip offs that MTV is pushing nowadays.

You say:

there are certain standards that are expected to be adhered to when releasing commercial music, no matter how underground it is.

And maybe that's the whole point, the fact that commercial exploitation of music imposed some restrictions and requisites, and that such impositions are now gone with netlabels and free music. Good and bad consequences follow.

[theclockstrucktwelve]

there are certain standards that are expected to be adhered to when releasing commercial music, no matter how underground it is.

And maybe that's the whole point, the fact that commercial exploitation of music imposed some restrictions and requisites, and that such impositions are now gone with netlabels and free music. Good and bad consequences follow.

If this is a live versus recorded music debate, then that's a crazy monster that we shouldn't get into here.

Also, it's not what people want and MTV and commercial accessibility of music i'm talking about, in case there was any confusion.. i'm talking about things like technical requirements in the above that you quoted, IE - there are some standards that have to be adhered to in order to even press a record. There are some things that just don't work for technical reasons... I think *maybe* this was what you were talking about in your bit about commercial exploitation bit though...

DJs and folks like that though depend on there being some degree of a standard... you don't want a bunch of records recorded at 1/4 volume, another one clipping and a bunch at nominal levels. You can say all you want about what commercialization of music has done, but the DJ and dance culture, etc, is it's own catagory and is something people enjoy very much and it has it's own set of expectations that it places on producers/artists and releasers of records

[idealstandard]

Everyone is trying to copy basic channel, but cant get it right. The exceptions are wonderful and imo worth the hunt, including much of unfoundsound.

Years ago everybody used to rip off BC's releases but hardly managed to get'em right. These days, all i'm hearing is actually unfoundsound's sounding releases, which ain't my thing at all (sorry bout that guys, it's just a matter of taste).

To me the biggest part of the netlabels scenes feels the good old days of amiga demo groups, almost everybody seem to be trying to get the vector cube rotating a bit faster or with more colours or whatever, leaving me sometimes with the feeling that the music i'm hearing is, indeed, not good enuff to spend some money on it.

There are still many gems released but they hardly get any credits since everybody seems to be concentrating on big names.