24/192 Music Downloads …and why they make no sense

29 Sep 2017 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts, Toward Better Sounding Music Tags:

(via xiph.org) 

Articles last month revealed that musician Neil Young and Apple’s Steve Jobs discussed offering digital music downloads of ‘uncompromised studio quality’. Much of the press and user commentary was particularly enthusiastic about the prospect of uncompressed 24 bit 192kHz downloads. 24/192 featured prominently in my own conversations with Mr. Young’s group several months ago.
Unfortunately, there is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format. Its playback fidelity is slightly inferior to 16/44.1 or 16/48, and it takes up 6 times the space.
There are a few real problems with the audio quality and ‘experience’ of digitally distributed music today. 24/192 solves none of them. While everyone fixates on 24/192 as a magic bullet, we’re not going to see any actual improvement…

Read more:

https://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

The Unlikely Return of Cat Stevens

29 Sep 2017 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags: ,

Photograph by Matt Writtle / eyevine / Redux

(via The New Yorker) By

September 15, 2017

n a Cat Stevens, a.k.a. Yusuf Islam, a.k.a. Yusuf/Cat Stevens, concert in Boston a couple of years ago, there was a hushed pause in the room as the then sixty-six-year-old performer waited for a stagehand to bring him a guitar in between songs. “I’m really happy to be here!” the singer suddenly exclaimed. It did not sound like ersatz show-biz banter; it sounded humble, childlike even, as if he himself were surprised by the emotion. It sounded like capitulation. The crowd, in response, rose to its feet en masse, producing a sound that was more than just a cheer. It was an embrace. It was an acknowledgment by artist and audience alike: Cat Stevens, a figure who, for all intents and purposes, had ceased to exist more than three decades ago, had come back…

Read more:

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-unlikely-return-of-cat-stevens

Billy Joel’s 5 Stages of Grief

15 Sep 2017 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags:

by Kevin McElvaney

Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance.

Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross introduced these Five Stages of Grief in her 1969 book, On Death and Dying. And though the theory was never fully embraced by the scientific community, it did take hold in the popular imagination. In the nearly five decades since its conception, the Kübler-Ross model has been applied not just to death, but to loss of all kinds — ultimately becoming a familiar trope in countless movies and TV shows.

Contrary to popular belief, the author herself never claimed that these five stages happen to everyone, nor that each person experiences them in a predictable order. Still, there’s something comforting about the notion that loss can be overcome, if only we’re patient enough to wait for that elusive fifth step.

At the risk of further watering down an already misunderstood concept, here again are the Five Stages of Grief: this time, told through the songs of the “Piano Man” himself, Mr. Billy Joel…

Read more:

http://www.articulateshow.org/articulate/billy-joels-5-stages-of-grief

Two Very Different Rankings of Steely Dan Albums

09 Sep 2017 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags:

In the wake of the death of Walter Becker, we look at two websites who appraised and ranked Steely Dan’s albums, noting that the lists are very different from each other. It’s not surprising, perhaps, given the chameleonic nature of the work of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker. Some of it leans heavily toward jazz and some is more straight-ahead rock. Some lyrics are maddeningly obtuse and some more coherent. These things come down to personal taste sometimes. Which list do you agree with? How would you rank the work of this great band?

http://ultimateclassicrock.com/steely-dan-albums-ranked/

Steely Dan Albums From Worst To Best

Songs You Never Realized Were About Real People

09 Sep 2017 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags:

(via The Chive)

“(Dude) Looks Like a Lady” by Aerosmith

One night Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler went into a bar and saw a lovely woman with long, blond hair…from behind. He was about to go up and hit on her when the woman turned around and revealed her true identity: Vince Neil of Motley Crue.

“Uptown Girl” by Billy Joel

Yes, the video stars supermodel Christie Brinkley, who inexplicably married Billy Joel. But the song itself was inspired by Joel’s previous girlfriend: supermodel Elle MacPherson.

Read more: 

http://thechive.com/2017/08/05/songs-you-never-knew-were-about-real-people-13-photos/

With no more income from album sales, a 69-year-old rock legend has to go back on tour

05 Aug 2017 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags: , , , , ,

(via Quartz) by Amy X. Wang

For musicians, it’s the best of times and it’s the worst of times. Streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify are booming, helping the long-suffering music industry grow for the first time in decades.

But these new services make very little money for artists, with ephemeral streams paying out only a fraction of the revenue of actual album sales and downloads. Beyoncé, the highest-paid artist of last year, made the bulk of her money from a world tour. So did Guns N’ Roses, the second name on that list, and that band hasn’t even released a new album in a decade.

Another sign of the times is Donald Fagen, the 69-year-old cofounder of rock band Steely Dan, who has just announced a new tour in the US and Japan with an entirely new backup band called the Nightflyers. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal (paywall), Fagen’s explanation for the new tour was decisively blunt

Read more: https://qz.com/1041397/steely-dans-donald-fagen-is-back-on-tour-the-result-of-nobody-buying-music-albums-anymore/

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