Post by Sysop3 on Nov 7, 2017 1:28:05 GMT -5
Henry Rollins on the Importance of Vinyl for Listening to and Understanding Music
The Sound of Vinyl Web Site
thesoundofvinyl.us/?redirectFrom=UK
Henry Rollins
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Rollins
A new era of vinyl
Of Rollins' many achievements, when I first became aware of his new initiative, The Sound Of Vinyl, I was particularly interested to learn more from him about it.
The idea is simple. You can visit the The Sound Of Vinyl website, share your music tastes, and you will be notified when there is vinyl available that you might be interested in. Buying the vinyl is as simple as responding to a text.
The Sound Of Vinyl model at it's core, is somewhat familiar. Netflix started out life in a similar way: you could browse a range of movies, TV shows, and recommendations based on your interests, and a few days later a DVD would arrive.
While you may think that vinyl is a blast from the past from long lost days of listening to records on your parent's turntable, vinyl has actually grown consistently for the last 10 years, and recently outsold digital sales for the first time. There is clearly a growing appetite for vinyl, especially for ardent music fans who want something more than a digital download.
Rollins is a core part of this new endeavor, and while he is passionate about the value of vinyl, he also considers the value of discovering new music as a key part of being a music fan.
Many of you will be familiar with the role of the local record store, replete with owners with a seemingly vast knowledge of what music you should listen to next. Rollins sees this as a vital piece of the The Sound Of Vinyl puzzle, not merely the distribution itself.
With those kind of wizened, old Woody Herman experts who would kind of scold you as you bought a record, like, 'You’re buying that one but he sold out on that record,' where I’d go, 'Okay, well tell me the Stan Kenton record I really need'. Then, they’d come running out and throw a record into your hand and grab you by the ear and drag you back to the counter and lecture you for another 20 minutes. We’re trying to do that with the The Sound Of Vinyl website", he says.
Rollins' vision for this content piece is expansive. "You’re gonna see on-camera interviews of me extracting information from fascinating people from every aspect of the industry from engineers, record-company owners, journalists, record collectors, and music fans, about everything from how they remastered the Blue Note catalog to the first record they ever bought, to their preferred analog playback environment. You’ll see really well-known and somewhat obscure people wax forth about the vinyl experience and you’ll have access to an insane amount of vinyl. You’ll see Top 10 lists that I’ve written in Starbucks all over Southern California on a weekend because I have no life."
Jono Bacon
The Sound Of Vinyl
Rollins' vision of a hub of information and vinyl is powerful and given the clearly consistent interest in vinyl, it is likely sustainable. It does though tap into a much deeper relationship between the consumer and the medium, of which vinyl is far more unique.
Unlike the world of digital video or optical discs which are merely delivery devices for content, with vinyl the medium itself is part of the charm. Netflix moved naturally from DVD distribution to streaming video because the latter offers greater convenience, but also because the former was utilitarian and frankly, boring. Optical discs simply lack the romanticism and fondness that vinyl fans share with their medium.
In our conversation, I too shared this romanticism with Rollins. It isn't just the content of vinyl, but the packaging, the liner notes and lyrics. It is the feel, and even the smell when you open the record up for the first time.
"Of all of the things that you said, the fact that vinyl has a physical place in the world in that you hold it in your hand, if you drop it, you could hurt it, this gives it more value. I think digital music has devalued the currency of music in that you can run over a CD with a car, and it still plays, which is fine. You can stream it but all of a sudden it is then music-in-the-background. Well, what does the album cover look like? I don’t know."
The Sound of Vinyl Web Site
thesoundofvinyl.us/?redirectFrom=UK
Henry Rollins
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Rollins
A new era of vinyl
Of Rollins' many achievements, when I first became aware of his new initiative, The Sound Of Vinyl, I was particularly interested to learn more from him about it.
The idea is simple. You can visit the The Sound Of Vinyl website, share your music tastes, and you will be notified when there is vinyl available that you might be interested in. Buying the vinyl is as simple as responding to a text.
The Sound Of Vinyl model at it's core, is somewhat familiar. Netflix started out life in a similar way: you could browse a range of movies, TV shows, and recommendations based on your interests, and a few days later a DVD would arrive.
While you may think that vinyl is a blast from the past from long lost days of listening to records on your parent's turntable, vinyl has actually grown consistently for the last 10 years, and recently outsold digital sales for the first time. There is clearly a growing appetite for vinyl, especially for ardent music fans who want something more than a digital download.
Rollins is a core part of this new endeavor, and while he is passionate about the value of vinyl, he also considers the value of discovering new music as a key part of being a music fan.
Many of you will be familiar with the role of the local record store, replete with owners with a seemingly vast knowledge of what music you should listen to next. Rollins sees this as a vital piece of the The Sound Of Vinyl puzzle, not merely the distribution itself.
With those kind of wizened, old Woody Herman experts who would kind of scold you as you bought a record, like, 'You’re buying that one but he sold out on that record,' where I’d go, 'Okay, well tell me the Stan Kenton record I really need'. Then, they’d come running out and throw a record into your hand and grab you by the ear and drag you back to the counter and lecture you for another 20 minutes. We’re trying to do that with the The Sound Of Vinyl website", he says.
Rollins' vision for this content piece is expansive. "You’re gonna see on-camera interviews of me extracting information from fascinating people from every aspect of the industry from engineers, record-company owners, journalists, record collectors, and music fans, about everything from how they remastered the Blue Note catalog to the first record they ever bought, to their preferred analog playback environment. You’ll see really well-known and somewhat obscure people wax forth about the vinyl experience and you’ll have access to an insane amount of vinyl. You’ll see Top 10 lists that I’ve written in Starbucks all over Southern California on a weekend because I have no life."
Jono Bacon
The Sound Of Vinyl
Rollins' vision of a hub of information and vinyl is powerful and given the clearly consistent interest in vinyl, it is likely sustainable. It does though tap into a much deeper relationship between the consumer and the medium, of which vinyl is far more unique.
Unlike the world of digital video or optical discs which are merely delivery devices for content, with vinyl the medium itself is part of the charm. Netflix moved naturally from DVD distribution to streaming video because the latter offers greater convenience, but also because the former was utilitarian and frankly, boring. Optical discs simply lack the romanticism and fondness that vinyl fans share with their medium.
In our conversation, I too shared this romanticism with Rollins. It isn't just the content of vinyl, but the packaging, the liner notes and lyrics. It is the feel, and even the smell when you open the record up for the first time.
"Of all of the things that you said, the fact that vinyl has a physical place in the world in that you hold it in your hand, if you drop it, you could hurt it, this gives it more value. I think digital music has devalued the currency of music in that you can run over a CD with a car, and it still plays, which is fine. You can stream it but all of a sudden it is then music-in-the-background. Well, what does the album cover look like? I don’t know."