Any tech open new possibilities and close others possibilities..

So what?

The important thing is to be conscious of the trade off...

Most people clapping around A.I. dont understand the trade-off this imply at all ...

For the time being and coming we are the tools of A.I.  not the reverse... But we dont see it for reasons i alluded to in my above post ...

Actually, AI opens up possibilities in music we don't even know exists.

I haven't used physical media in a few years and don't miss the clutter one bit.

Thank the clowns that thought Napster was a good idea.

Do you have an opinion on machine learning and AI replacing musicians and actors in the generation of new content? … and its effect on culture.

As said our most celebrated Canadian thinker perhaps with deep understanding the medium is the message which means any understanding of media staying external in his grasp of the media will go nowhere .

 

Any media beginning with writing or more deeper abrupt way the passage from orality directly to a real alphabet with no religious meanings associated with the letters of voyell and consonants as in the Greek case imply a redefinition of the internal ratio of the senses, then a redefinition of "sensis communis" or common sense (which means way more than the trivial popular expression common sense) a redistribution of the perceptive orchestra inside the body (his natural synesthesia state ).

 

Now if we look at the A.I. impact on societies and individuals, it will be catastrophically abrupt, deep, and sudden, and will go deeper than writing or even the alphabet impact on oral society.

The notion of soul and spirit with the body is a threefold concepts coming to us from the Greeks directly. If today we only have a computing body in the mind of the paid slaves working engineers of corporations (bigger than most nations ) we must see that it is a change never seen in the history of human species..

The stages of this journey go through the lost of two components of the human trinity, i will not explained all this here, it is enough to enumerate the main stages phases: from the Latin church council of 869 to nominalism, to industrialization of capitals and works, to materialism, to techno-cultism which equate man with his body alone but computing..

Rest assure that A.I. is introduced right now in a social fabric completely ill on earth, unable to understand itself trough concepts corresponding to his true workings , on the brink of war.

The effect of A.I. from total control of all flows , money, information and humans will be reduction of the spirit and soul in all arts to esthetically beautifully inhuman discourse which will makes us more robotic than our actual day to day robotic ego. Goethe knew it and see it coming as Shelley, as Rudolf Steiner, as Marshall McLuhan all in their own way and many others As Gunther Anders and even Heidegger and Husserl etc .

 

Music speak to our body about soul and spirit, A.I. speak in bits from the Babel pits where we are going because we dont understand our social fabric at all divided as animals between absurd polarities as left /right generated consciously for the first time by the genius social designer of the hive which main aspects are called today markets, (containing capitalism , communism , fascism in ovo )...

it is the work of Bernard Mandeville whom no one know today even if he created the unconscious concept in 1720. ( his name is not even in the best book about the unconscious history, i know because i bought it in 1976 : Henri Ellenberger "the story of the unconscious" )

Our new generations did not in many case even how to know cursive letters, they types on keyboard.

Many teachers are so idiotic they dont even understand the meaning of writing in the neurological stages development important as walking and even more because this gesture touch the more conscious aspects of the expressing ego in formation .

i will stop here ...

A.I. may be fun but not so much for me.

Technology is not neutral because it has a life of his own , especially a technology related as a cult in North America especially.

I am no luddite and i am delighted by the way to own a computer to read all human thinking and hear alll musics from all places and times...

But techno cultism dominate an ill society unconscious of what it is to live in a threefold multipolar social fabric with no right conceptual understanding of it and his reduction to a machine for mass control...

The metaphor with audio is immediate, people are divided between subjectivist and objectivist without even have a clue about acoustics and psycho-acoustics reduced to the purchase of wall acoustic panels at best after 100 upgrades ...

 

 

 

OP .. "it is impossible to ask for U2?"   AI is doing you a BIG favor!!!

Problem with online is that they replace originals with "remasters". There is no way to get the original recording. So hold on to your media.

Do you have an opinion on machine learning and AI replacing musicians and actors in the generation of new content? … and its effect on culture. 

Well AI is here and will only increase in its presence.  But it’s a mistake to think it will become an either/or scenario.  AI may generate some interesting music, but humans will always continue to make incredible music.  A loose comparison may be drum machines — they are certainly capable of laying down good drum tracks but have in no way supplanted the human drummer.  The computer-generated stuff only goes so far. 

Colleagues - Please take a deep breath, let it out, and journey through the past. In relative succession ... Studio outtake and live concert underground records are unfair to artists and rob record companies of profits...Cassette recording of LPs will destroy the music industry and deny artists royalties...Vinyl LPs are obsolete and will be no longer manufactured...Technics has ceased production of turntables...Backstock and new recordings will only be available by CDs with long box packaging to provide liner notes...CDs will only be available in shrink wrap packages...CDs will no longer be readily available but coupons are available in legitimately purchased recordings with download codes...music streaming is the only viable method of obtaining the music you love...

Did this make you smile? As for me, my 3500 vinyl LPs and 1500 (SA)CDs are a treasure, and sound (as MGM used to say) great in stereo.

Now I'll put my first pressing Andy Williams Christmas record on my turntable and enjoy my blessings. Have a safe, enjoyable holiday season and new year.

https://forum.audiogon.com/users/mahgister.

Like.

 

This thread has focused on the perceived benefits and risks of the change in the music and movie industry business practice from physical media to digital streaming.   However, in his original post @erik_squires stated “With the advent of machine learning and AI controlling our music listening we are becoming a world without any control at all over our music or movie culture”.  I can take Eric’s statement two ways. First, the statement’s direct meaning is that machine learning controls what we listen to.  I do not see this 1984-esque statement as fact.  Machine learning and AI generates recommended content based on your history and generates revenue for the streaming services by the sale of your history to those interested commercially.  Let’s not debate the ethics of the latter.  I can also take the statement to mean machine learning and AI can and will be used to create content without the musician or actor, having an effect on culture. I responded in my original post as to what I feel are the dangers to the human, artistic nature of music and theater.  To repeat, I feel we will loose the emotion, soul, and spontaneity with deep fakes that use an algorithm to homogenizes input of all past performances.  I feel it is a sad future state of for the human expression of the art.

 @erik_squires What was your meaning of the statement?

Others: Do you have an opinion on machine learning and AI replacing musicians and actors in the generation of new content? … and its effect on culture.  

@bolong ,

I know, that’s why I wrote that. Clever on your part by the way...

I think you had a very good point indeed...

Soon it will be impossible to break the "law"...

We will be slave in a controlled hive...

Ownership illegal or legal will be permitted or not if the TBTP want it ...

 

My point was about the nature of ownership in a digitally controlled world.

 

I understand no one can reach into the NAS in your home office and delete files, at least not practically.

It will be possible very soon...

My point was about the nature of ownership in a digitally controlled world. Say your $80,000 Tesla had an overnight update. When you wake up in the morning, your car is not quite the same car you parked the night before. Yes, updates are usually improvements, so no worries, owners are happy.

Yet you can imagine a Tesla determining that its driver is excessively spirited, so it engages valet mode and automatically throttles speed to the posted limit? For a week? A month? It certainly has all the tech onboard to do just that.

What if, say, you ran a traffic light and your car reported you to the authorities (in addition to limiting your speed to 25 mph and restricting your sound system to NPR)?

What if authorities required Tesla to report you?

After all, it would improve public safety.

After after all, it is your car, as evidenced by the fact that you paid $80,000 for it.

That’s a ways from digital music files to be sure, but the question of the meaning of ownership runs through both.

I understand no one can reach into the NAS in your home office and delete files, at least not practically. On the other hand, local storage is being supplanted by cloud storage, where your music files are totally within reach. Glad I said "conceivably" though :)

Having said that, It is a wonderful new world, no doubt! I totally agree there

I own 30 albums of didgeridoo...

The sound may be haunting indeed and rooted us through our listening body through the earth core...In a way which even the Wagner tuba is not able to because the circular breathing make it more an event of Nature than a discontinuous playing score with an instrument...

 

I know that’s not the whole story. The didgeridoo is at least 1,000 years old and is capable of such a variety of sounds, I cannot imagine how music for it can be written as a score. It is played using "circular breathing" where the mouth breathes out while the nose breathes in, The drone effect is modulated by the player "talking", which can sound percussive. For real percussion, it can be beaten with sticks! Magical

Why invoking the sun God when a simple dwarf spirit as Apophis could be enough ?

Another Carrington event will give this discussion a whole new complexion.

@ararem

"The history of hominids making music goes back well more than 100K years; physical media has only existed for the last 147 of them"

That’s a hell of a gap from, say, Beethoven’s death in 1827. So how do we know what Beethoven wrote? Simple, we have the physical media he wrote his music on, all those years ago.

I know that’s not the whole story. The didgeridoo is at least 1,000 years old and is capable of such a variety of sounds, I cannot imagine how music for it can be written as a score. It is played using "circular breathing" where the mouth breathes out while the nose breathes in, The drone effect is modulated by the player "talking", which can sound percussive. For real percussion, it can be beaten with sticks! Magical

A conversation we should be having as a society is the nature of ownership in a changing world. For decades, it was blissfully simple: you purchased a LP or a CD, you owned it, you could play the music on it at will, sell it, give it, whatever. In reality, when we paid $14.95 for a CD that cost less than $1 to manufacture, the value was always in the music, not in the physical support. With streaming, we pay for music untethered from any physical support. That’s fine, but we no longer have full control over the music we paid for. Conceivably, a copyright owner could win a lawsuit and have music you own ordered removed from your library by a court.

@devinplombier You absolutely do have control over it. If you buy a song from, say, Qobuz you can download it to your computer, NAS, etc. and it’s yours and nobody can take it away from you. Moreover, you can just buy the songs you want and aren’t forced to buy the whole CD, which is way more cost effective and efficient. It’s a wonderful new world.

jsalerno277

@cleeds “blissfully simple” was @devinplombier  post, not mine.

Oops! You're correct of course and I'm sorry, @jsalerno277. That's exactly the type of mistake I try to avoid here!

Another Carrington event will give this discussion a whole new complexion.

I'm thinking with the age of most of the responders here, that the end of physical media will not be much of an issue...especially with LP and CD sales not only stabilizing but actually growing slightly in 2024...

We must distinguish legality and legitimacy...

It is impossible to say to ourselves if we are knowledge driven : ok this month i will not bought the 4 science and philosophical books whose price is 400 bucks in toto because i dont have the budget...

I will not download them illegally...No...

I will stay ignorant but in the legal path...

Only rich people and rich country can afford books , damn the poor...

Long life to the law...

The law was designed by an unknown genius : Bernard Mandeville in 1720...

A genius so great that Hayek in a special adress wrote about him : "he is our master to us all".

He did not say that for Adam Smith, nor Marx not Freud who all of them borrow to the master after his death.

Nobody know him today guess why ?

No i did not discovered this in an illegally acquired book but it is another story.

 

In Huxley as in Orwell hive ignorance is the only legal direction ...

 

«The eggs of the laws rarely birth the legitimate chicken»---Groucho Marx

Blake said it better than me using an imaginary Groucho though :

 

 

I apologize for my observation  slightly off-track but useful for further reading by those interested by the link between these thinkers... To understand we must often look off-track anyway...

We lost any physical products for an always increasing dematerialisation of not only our products but ourselves. We went from the Greek soma/psyche-Noûs/pneuma to be only the Bill Gates computing body.

We lost books and vinyl for digitalization and control... We are already under control.

@thecarpathian

"Neigh" - "the cry of a horse, a whinny."

"Nigh" - "near in time, place or relationship."

Just having a little fun.

But maybe the horse is mad about the media situation too.

Thanks for your generous kindness without fail...

I did not have the icon Groucho Marx anymore alas!

 

 

The history of hominids making music goes back well more than 100K years; physical media has only existed for the last 147 of them. I think we're way too close to have any perspective as to whether physical media (containing recorded music) is a great ("permanent") advancement of our species or perhaps an anomalistic blip on the arc of human existence. I'd suggest one not get too attached to any form of physical media... it, too, will pass.

@cleeds “blissfully simple” was @devinplombier  post, not mine.  However, I agree with both of you in part.  The beauty is in the music, regardless of format.  Nothing has changed with regard to the legal right to play the music.  The business model changed. Now, the streaming services pay royalties to the owner of the copyright and you pay the services for the right to play the music at any time on their platform rather than the publisher/manufacturer of physical media paying the royalties and you buying the physical media.  There is no increased chance of the copyright owner preventing you to play the music, unless the service defaults on payment or the contract expires without agreement on a new contract.  What has changed is it is much more convenient to stream with equivalent, or in my case , improved SQ and an improved process for management of your music.  

jsalerno277

it was blissfully simple: you purchased a LP or a CD, you owned it, you could play the music on it at will, sell it, give it, whatever. In reality, when we paid $14.95 for a CD that cost less than $1 to manufacture, the value was always in the music, not in the physical support.

It is still "blissfully simple." Nothing has changed.

With streaming, we pay for music untethered from any physical support. That's fine, but we no longer have full control over the music we paid for. Conceivably, a copyright owner could win a lawsuit and have music you own ordered removed from your library by a court.

A copyright owner can no more have a court order that you return "his" CDs or LPs than he can have the court order that you return audio files that you have purchased.

It is still "blissfully simple." Nothing has changed. Of course, if you never purchase files and only stream them, then you get what you pay for and can lose access at any time.

 

With over ten million albums...it’s not a very restrictive list. Also, Qobuz has over half a million high resolution albums. It is very seldom that I find an album not available.

 

More importantly, when you have access to all that music your focus changes over time to listen to new music instead of the same old stuff. The re-listening to the same stuff had a lot to do with the required investment to have it in your library. Now the entire world of music is available to you. I don’t relisten to old stuff very often any more. The sound quality of my digital rig equaled my analog rig about four or five years ago. My listening habits started to change a little at first and after a couple years changed rapidly leaving old stuff to collect dust most of the time.

Physical media:  It has been over three years since I moved away from physical media.  I have an extensive vinyl collection and a decent playback system, but only listen to vinyl on those rare occasions where an album is not offered on the streaming service I use.  I am contemplating selling my vinyl playback system.   I find my digital playback system equal to and often superior to vinyl playback SQ and much more convenient, not having  to remove from storage and clean the vinyl.  I also have not played silver/gold disks.  I burn disks not offered on streaming services to my server.  I do not have a working CD player.   
AI content:  This is a particular concern of mine.  My son is an actor who has had a number of recurring, small TV parts and cartoon voiceovers.  SAG has protected major actors to a degree but not smaller roles.  There is high probability the bit part roles will be deep fakes impacting the livelihood of actors that depend on these roles for income and a path forward to supporting or major roles.  The music industry is at greater risk.  Actors and musicians have human experience -  connections and interactions with other human beings and a soul.  Their experience and soul is the creativity and expression of emotion is the art of their vision they wish to present to us in the characters they portray or the interpretation of the music they conduct or play.  There is also spontaneity in a human performance.  I feel we will loose the emotion, soul, and spontaneity with deep fakes that use an algorithm to homogenizes input of all past performances.  I feel it is a sad future state of for the human expression of the art.  

Folks, there are a couple of elephants in this room

1. I don't know about you, but if I ever listen to 30-40% of all the audio media I have that's the end of it. Regular rotation, 10% or less. So, 60-70% is dead wood. But, I don't get rid of it because on a regular basis I rediscover a dusty corner of my music, like, Alice Cooper really was a misunderstood genius? In that event, having LPs or CDs around isolates one from the vagaries of streaming services. 

2. A conversation we should be having as a society is the nature of ownership in a changing world. For decades, it was blissfully simple: you purchased a LP or a CD, you owned it, you could play the music on it at will, sell it, give it, whatever. In reality, when we paid $14.95 for a CD that cost less than $1 to manufacture, the value was always in the music, not in the physical support. With streaming, we pay for music untethered from any physical support. That's fine, but we no longer have full control over the music we paid for. Conceivably, a copyright owner could win a lawsuit and have music you own ordered removed from your library by a court.

3. Torrent

 

Thx, will probably start streaming soon.  Keep the favorite and often played discs and sell off the rest.  Would also make a room more friendly rather than looking like Steve G's place.  Don't know how he lives like that.  Going to be one heck of an estate sale!

@agwca  If you’re considering adding streaming my strong advice is to just do it.  I too went into it kinda reluctantly about five years ago and my only regret is that I didn’t do it much sooner.  The freedom to explore worlds of new music, much of it in hi res BTW, has increased my enjoyment of music listening more than anything else in my lifetime by a large margin.  I’ve never had so much enjoyment as an audiophile.  Discovering incredible new music is so much more interesting and rewarding than just playing the same stuff over and over.  That’s fun as far as it goes, but it doesn’t compare in the least to finding tons of awesome new music, and I hardly ever spin a CD anymore.  If you’re on the fence, jump!  Just my $0.02 FWIW.

Not all CDs sound like crap.  Some are really well recorded for the format intended.  But I prefer physical media myself.  But will likely add streaming sometime. Only have so much time in the day to listen. More important things to do in life.

Not in my house.  And I’ve got an oPPo and a 4k video player that’s barely been played, not to mention some 300 films on dvd, Blu Ray, and 4k. 

The day is quickly approaching where the only thing we can physically hold in our hand is when we're standing in front of a white porcelain fixture.

I’m all streaming now but seriously considering the painful cost of adding vinyl. They  cant take that away from me easily.  However my x wife did in fact easily take all my vinyl- so there’s that. 
 

I popped in a CD recently- man do those sound like crap. Sadly I have hundreds of the darn things and can’t bring myself to jettison them.  

I really hate this. Even though I’ve ripped all of my cds and SACDs to a NAS, I’d still have a hard time getting rid of my collection. I’ve thought about it and it makes sense considering the huge amount of space it takes up. Then there’s the Blu-ray’s and dvds. We purged quite a bit a couple of years ago and luckily I’ve haven’t missed any of those but when it comes to my music collection, I just can’t do it, and my albums, they are completely off the table! 

I’ve been trying to decide about buying a Magnetar UDP 900 and therefore Googling reviews, etc.  The LG article cited by Eric popped into my Google feed yesterday and I just thought that I was being fed the usual algorithm feed, but surprised to see it here.

  According to one story I saw the major manufacturers-Sony, LG, Panasonic-haven’t come out with a new BRP since 2018. The new ones have been Magnetar and Reavon.

  I would have thought that the Pandemic, which drove people to reexplore their Audio systems, might have driven some new development, but once the Covid restrictions were lifted I suspect the people that neglected audio went back to their old habits and demand fell.I listen to SACDs, Blu Rays, and my DVD-A collection, as do many here, but we are the dinosaurs 

The end of physical media is making horse noises??

@mahgister ,

"Life is too short to live without the tools necessary to think ..."

Groucho Marx? 😉  What a wonderful statement mon ami!

I bought a CD transport in August because the good ones are few and far between and who knows how long you'll be able to buy them.     

I was at work yesterday and was trying to find a song on Qobuz.   Couldn't find it.  Searched Tidal ...   same thing .   I own the CD.   Doesn't happen often but it's frustrating. 

I read the starting post on here with real dismay. I’ll never forget the day that Oppo announced it was ceasing production of its players. Luckily I signed up in time to win the right to buy my Oppo UDP-205 (whew!)

I retain all the LPs I ever bought from 1956 onward, also the tape cassettes, the VHS Tapes, the Laser Discs,the CDs, the SACDs, the DVDs, the Blu-ray Discs and I still have working media gear for them all.

i now stream 99% of the time. All my CDs are ripped and all the many I still acquire, though most of the time they are used because they only need to play perfectly once and that is to produce a rip. I do subscribe to Tidal but only to preview some music I’d like to buy. High res downloads typically sound fantastic!! But they do cost too much considering there is no physical copy..
 

One of the things that really annoys me is that TVs no longer provide legacy inputs for our vintage players!  One of the things that worries me is if I have a drawer failure on my various players. I don’t need them very often, but I like having them just in case. I do wish I could easily rip my DVDs and BLURAYS. Then I wouldn’t worry about my player going down and a replacement unavailable.

Try to buy a composer of the Franco-Flemish school as Obrecht on vinyl ?

I dont want vinyl... It is useless for world music (india-Persia Africa)

I dont want cd.......

 

 

The same problem exist for books...

The books i want you will not discover them in most University...

Their cost will be very high in many case...

When i bought the handbook of logic 40 years ago i paid it 80 dollars... Imagine the cost with the inflation calculator...

the 25 books of the linguist that interest me cost 40 dollars each book ...

Do you think i will go with my life without these essential books ?

No ...

Then it is like audio : the solution is studying acoustic...

For the books it is knowing internet...

Life is too short to live without the tools necessary to think ...

 

i never had the budget to create my audio system  as i dreamed of...

I discover that a very good hi-fi cost peanuts if we learn how to do it...

We must study not buy...

 

 

In around 2002 I started streaming. I also burnt the songs I purchased on CDs. Eventually the CDs stopped playing. I went back to CDs and vinyl and never looked back/ never missed streaming. (Unless we call watching youtube streaming)

Hogwash. There are and will almost certainly be used cds and stores to sell them. Every time I go to the music store I see plenty of people buying physical media of all sorts. Mostly LPs but cds too. My Oppo UDP-205 player still works great (just used it tonight) and I imagine it will for a lot longer. 

There are a ton of 8 track players for sale on ebay, so CD and blu-ray players should be available for as long as you'll be around.  You probably have more CDs, etc. than you could listen to in your remaining lifetime, why worry?

Yes. A paid download can be stored on your HD and copied, moved, and backed up however you wish. You own the file.

@cleeds  Thanks.  That’s what I would’ve thought but wasn’t sure.  It makes total sense. 

The end isn't near. LG was never selling many players to begin with. Most sales went to Panasonic and Sony. Those are still the top decently priced ones to get and they still sell plenty. I'm surprised LG didn't make this move sooner tbh. 

As a sidebar, @mahgister is so right, neurologically, about reading and writing!

I'm going to hoard all my cd and dvd.i have not lost one to the cloud yet.enjoy the music