Is it worth buying (digital) music anymore??

#23

This is definitely my solution as well. Making playlists dosent do it for me, as I make so many and don’t mix with them. Its just the replay of the song over and over and over that drills it into memory, especially when you’re cutting EQs and fading. To me this works for digital as well as vinyl. But I could see how a USB full of 500 songs to put into your CDJ would make it difficult to have this sort of relationship with a song once you start making mixes all the time or playing 3-4+ nights a month.

However for home listening, I have found that creating a weekly playlist of 10 songs and limiting myself to that playlist while I cook dinner does similar things. It’s just really hard to limit myself to that once I have Spotify, my record collection, or a hard drive dull of tracks. Repetition is the only way to remember them. Some may have some spectacular memory or visual associated with the cover or intro but that’s very rare for me.

#24

So I’m curious, could you explain how you go about seeking tunes on Bandcamp or methods for finding those kinds of moments. I mean I know theyre fleeting and difficult to consciously create, and this is probably something I would get if i spent more time on the platform, but just curious if it’s as simple as following artists and labels and reading the emails they send out or if you got other hacks to pass along

Also that Goldie track is hard, when do you think its from? 1995? 1996?

#25

I only try to follow lables/artists for new realeases. Does not work to well, but I’v been looking at what other people have in their collections. Mainly for electro, and found lots of newiSH, but very nice oldschool sounding electro. Guessing its a small group of people liking it so suddenly you find other actual people buying e.x. egyptian lover stuff, and looking at their collection I found lots of new names and lables of solid electro.
When you try youtubing or looking at discogs, the things being suggested is way to narrow. So you end up looking at a closed loop of the same music instead of random other sounds, mostly boring . . . but sometimes

So the only “bandcamp-feature” that helped is peoples collections, but generally just listening to lables to find the few good tunes has been easier on bandcamp then going rounds with redeye records, juno, discogs . . . just to find one or to twelves. Suddenly you can listen to and buy whatever you like from a lable . . . Like planet-mu had backlog all the way back to Vex’d and other early bass stuff.

Must admit i’v had way to much time on my hands, that always helps hehehe

That Goldie remix is from 94. Really made me start loving jungle/dnb . . . but I didnt get my hands on a wider selection before 2003-2004ish I really wished id notice earlier.

#26

Yeah my first intro to him/DnB was Rings of Saturn when I came across it at age 11, but didn’t find anything else similar til i stepped into my first rave 6 years later with Ak1200/Planet of the Drums

Listened to your static crackles and pops mix like 3 times now, much respect man you’re a real one :pray:t3:

#27

Thank YOU Sir!
It was just the intro/start of a full hour of old memories, but health issues came and stopped me finishing. Hoping to get back to mixing a lot, if I only could train up arms/back properly soon . . .

#28

Looking forward to the next ones.

So I don’t buy digital music at all. Big points for it seem to be having a hard copy in super high quality. How many songs / albums are you guys all buying a week? A month? A year?

This sort of circles back to the how much is too much thread but I’m curious also what are decision making factors when you actually do choose to purchase it? I know it’s a very broad question…like do you think of a mix that it will fit into, does it have the WoOoW factor @spiro mentions, or does it just seem like it will age well and be fun to listen to for a long time?

Thinking of taking the dip in but I wanna kno what y’all have regretted in terms of your digital music purchases in the past as well. What did you feel like was a waste of money? Or are there any tracks you loved at the time but hate now?

#29

fuck yeah!!! keep the torch alive and burning.

#30

My “technique” to not buy too much or the wrong tune is to always think “DONT BY MORE MUSIC!”

That way the ones I buy have to be something that I feel I really need . . . usually because the beat/grove/rhythm makes me want to jump around/dance . . . and it doesnt sound too much as something I already have. Pretty vague . . .

I would stay with records til you find too much thats “digital only” or your body refuses to carry around all that old oil derivative. I never decided to start buying digital. I got a DVS integrated mixer and now im loving the digital side. But I told myselves that i didnt need to buy music, i could just rip some of all those records . . . so much for that plan . . .

#31

Haha yeah that’s what I’m telling myself, have a few opportunities to play for people in mellow spaces but am not looking forward to hauling wax technics and a mixer.

So thinking a Pioneer controller and rip but then I’m like how audiophile / much investment do I wanna put into that? Like am I buying a sound card and cleaning it up in Ableton or just saying fuck it and going from the mixer into Audacity?

Just seems easier to get a lil DDJ-SB3 and start amassing hi qual AIFFs…but of course it all comes down to whatever makes me groove and what sorta money I have to drop. I too think “Don’t Buy More Music” and then there’s that one legit banger I just can’t get out of my head for a week and that’s my monthly wax purchase. I guess setting a digital music budget might help…?

#32

I tend to buy in short bursts where I’ll spend a fair amount at once. I previously spent a lot of money on discogs during a manic episode and got into debt which took a while to pay off (that’s one obvious regret), so I try hard to limit myself. I tend to stick to digi, with small vinyl purchases only of stuff that’s not available digitally.

I use the wishlist function on bandcamp a lot, so I don’t feel like I have to buy everything I like at that specific time. I tend to look at a lot of tracks in a single session or two, skipping through them and making a cart which I will then delete from to get down to budget. My tendency in the past would be to buy whole albums or releases, I now only buy the tracks I especially like or will use unless it’s cheaper to buy the whole release.

This partially came from having less money to spend on it, but a lot of it was to do with buying too much stuff off Boomkat over a long period (those famous reviews can be seductive) where I got a lot of gems but also a lot of chaff, and now I can’t remember what anything from that period was called because there was so much of it.

In terms of what makes me want to purchase: sometimes I’ll hear a track and think it’s got the right kind of vibe for a mix I’d like to do or have started collecting tracks for. But more often I just like a given track, or will be craving a particular sound at that time and will look for stuff like that. Once I have it I will see how the it fits together in a mix, and I’ll think of stuff I already have that would fit in with it somehow. Other strategies are quite simple, lots of label discography trawling, looking for things with interesting artwork, etc. I have had some good results from looking at collections of other bandcamp users.

#33

This was me too, was really hard for me to get over the idea that I’m building a library and that just having single tracks was somehow tainting it. The straw that broke the camels back was buying a 21-track compilation for just one track that caught my ear.