From Jeff Waye Sent Tue, Mar 2nd 1999, 00:38
From Jeff Waye Sent Tue, Mar 2nd 1999, 00:38
Hey All... rambling, possibly nonsensical rant to follow... He must have forgot to mention that 4th demographic. The 'why would I want some useless little digital music file on my computer when I can have the real thing' demographic. Sorry, maybe I'm old fashioned (even though only 28...scary init'), but I reckon that MP3's are just the cassette for the next millenium. The only reason I ever record anything is either for walkman purpose or to have until I find the 'real thing' (and yes I mean vinyl, and please don't start the 'vinyl vs. CD thing' because it's useless and amounts to nothing more then personal taste). I figure the artists who are going to suffer are the 'big' artists who have those flavour of the minute fans, you know, those people that buy Dance Mix 99 compilations and sell them a month later when there over that Celine Dion club mix. Obviously for those people it's highly convenient to download and then trash. Maybe I'm totally wrong, but as a full on music snob I laugh in the face of such formats. How can you drop a needle on one of these? How can these little files fill up entire rooms of my house? How can I talk to my other snobby friends and gloat that I just downloaded that ultra-rare Art Ensemble of Chicago record when they can just download it also. I would miss the sheer hilarity of seeing Ninja artist trying to psyche each other out on tour on the record whore tip (watching DJ Vadim jumping out of a van while it's still moving so that he can get to a record shop first is fucking funny as hell). Fuck that shit, collector mentality all the way man. Yes, I realise that I'm lame, and no I don't put 'the hunt' above 'the music' in order of importance when it comes to record shopping, but it's just so damn fun (Linus on this list can attest to how pathetically funny the record shopping compitition was when we were roomates). Further, I find the internet completly useless when it comes to shopping. Assuming I have room on a valid credit card at any given time and that I actually ever bother to bring my laptop from the office to home (not to mention keeping on top of all the latest extentions and programs needed to access various downloading sites), I would still rather walk out my door and go buy stuff rather then pay to download. I figure the whole on-line distribution thing will only replace the traditional mailorder (ie. ordering on-line is more effective then say, going to the bank, getting money order, mailing money order, waiting 6 weeks, etc...), I mean hell if someone in Jackon, Mississippi can get our records where they couldn't before, then great. Certainly, at Ninja Tune, it's something we'll pursue as it probably will become a valid percentage of sales over time (plus say, someone like Matt Black would argue with me as to how valid the on-line thing is...but then the fact we agree to dis-agree is what keeps Ninja on its toes and all...) , but I think it's really sad if people don't leave there houses to buy records anymore. Still wondering how 28 makes me old school... Jeff >Ken Wirt - "I think there's two categories of customer - one, the early >adopter type who buys a lot of the new, digital gadgets that come out, >you know, like Palm Pilot when it came out, and Rio. And then there's >another group that is basically music fanatics. They're the people who >have hundreds if not thousands of CDs in their collection, and/or >gigabytes of MP3s in their collection. There's a third group that is >starting to emerge. The first two groups are mostly male, the early >adopters are a little older, and the music maniacs are a little bit >younger but still male. This new group that's starting to emerge are >exercisers, and those tend to be more female."