Streaming For New Music

[richidoo]

Hey  Guys!

Is it really true that Pandora and other streaming music services are good places to discover new music? Is it a boon or a bane to the audiophile? Read on...

Pandora started out with the novel approach of offering an app that allows you to like or hate each song you hear, which teaches Pandora about your musical taste, or lack thereof.   Pandora can then find new music for you that matches your taste. The bait for audiophiles is that we discover new music that we can then purchase in full resolution to enjoy on our audio system, getting the best of both worlds, great new music in hifi.

Sure the streaming services are great for background music. Easier than choosing individual tracks or albums from our own library when all we need is "background." But, as music lovers of the Nth degree, willing to spend thousands of dollars and a lifetime of learning and experimenting to achieve music listening bliss, is there ever a time when "all we need is background music?" Wouldn't we rather, as sophisticated music lovers of distinguished taste (ehem,) always use "foreground quality" music with our extreme audio systems? Does the big Pandora brain in the cloud really succeed at distilling our likes and hates to a fine brew of new and desirable music?

Then, once we've heard it on Pandora at 128kbps, are we content to just move onto the next Pandora offering, getting more and more addicted to the random rewards? Or, do we make a real effort with real money to buy the music we discovered in a form that is usable by our overachieving stereo systems?

Are we choosing to buy high resolution versions of the new music we discover? Is Pandora making us into mere music consumers who prefer random musical rewards over sound quality? Does that reprogramming and reprioritizing of our musical preferences spill into our audiophile lives?

The great recession took out a lot of fair weather audiophiles. Hyper-stimulating sound was just not worth the investment anymore. Extreme music lovers continue to hang on because they already have the gear, and love music so they have to listen and seek new music for survival anyway. But are we using the effortless, spoon-feeding music streaming services to get our music discovery fix without taking the next step, to enjoy that music on the BIG RIG?

Are we getting strung out on Pandora? Mog, Spotify, name your poison...

Is Pandora destroying the audiophile sport by lazifying, spoiling, musically intoxicating the remaining audiophiles/music lovers? Do we really want a computer, programmed by the masses choosing what we listen to some/most/all of the time?

Music streaming services have become very popular now. Many of us listen to them a lot. Of course they sound better on the rig if there's a net player, so the stream oozes into the house and gets played. What happens to the LPs, the CDs, the NAS? Damn, choosing music for myself is so cumbersome and tedious! Let the cloud rain music down on me. It's so easy, and the songs are so good!

OK, now it's your turn.

Have you ever discovered new music on a streaming music service that you loved enough to purchase for your own record collection?

Show us what you bought!

And let's hear your thoughtful comments about how music streaming has affected your hifi listening habits.
TIA

[richidoo]

Heard both of these on Pandora Bebop Shared station today. That station makes no rating of songs possible. Some DJ picks the music, it's always very good. There are some other shared (DJ) stations on Pandora.

Kenny Drew "Undercurrents." This has been in my shopping cart for years. I love Kenny Drew and the other musicians, but never owned it on vinyl, and never heard it on the radio over all those bebop years. Finally heard it on Pandora, wow, super nice Freddie.


Heard this for the first time on Pandora today. Fantastic Trane solos at his bebop peak.
Kenny Burrell John Coltrane

[mdconnelly]

I grew up in a northern New Jersey household where the radio was on all the time.  For most of my youth, the radio was turned on when my Dad got up in the morning and off when he went to bed.  Pretty sure it was WNEW AM -- it was definitely oldies (his generation) at the time.  It was rarely the music I wanted to hear (e.g. no Beatles, Stones, etc...) so I didn't appreciated it then nearly as much as I do in hindsight.  

The problem today is that I live in NC now and there are few over-the-air stations worth listening to (NPR as the clear exception).  So,  yes, I do often use one of the free streaming services.  

To be honest, I don't generally pay that much attention to background music.  Sure, if I hear something I like, I'll whip out my iPhone Shazaam app to find out what it is.  But mostly I just like the background music sets.

I will kick my own collection into random play of a particular genre now and again, but just having to think about that is often more of an investment than I care for.  I think most of my music "finds" come from reading the trade rags or via the Internet or, most fun, perusing my local CD/vinyl store.

Now, when it comes to critical or immersion listening, it is always my own collection - via Squeezebox, CD or better, vinyl - generally late in the evening.  That is something my Dad did not do and something I can't imagine living without.

[tmazz]

Rich, it's great to see you "back in the saddle." Welcome home! 


I think Mike is right, we have always had access to free streaming, back in the day it was just called radio. What the new Internet streaming services offer us is just the ability to more fine tune what we hear beyond what we used to be able to do by just tuning into a different station. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

I find that what streaming has done is to make casual listening much easier and therefor more frequent. (and to some extent the portability of the iPod does this as well.) Because of these technologies I find myself listening to more music than I did in the past. When I was younger I did a lot of casual listening to via radio, but as time passed I found it tougher and tougher to find radio stations that played music I enjoyed and my radio time started to shift to news and talk radio. But now with Pandora I can just pick a "station" that fits whatever mood I am in and just let it play. I enjoy having music playing in the background while I an doing other things, but at many times it is just too much bother and interuption to pick out and swap discs on my own. With Pandora I just pick what I want and let it rip. No fuss, no muss. And when I am in another room listening over the noise of hammers or saw etc., the lower SQ is not really an issue. Quite often, streaming like Pandora is simply the right tool for the right time.

Now, that said, would I consider Pandora a replacement for other sources in a sit down formal serious listening session... Hell NO! But I think it is useful within its place. I have also found that it does enhance my serious listening time in two ways. First off it has lead me to discover new artists and/or music that I was not familiar with, and yes, I have purchased quite a few LPs and CDs after hearing musical pieces I liked on Pandora (and on the flip side saved me a good amount of money by allowing me to preview new music I ended up not liking that I would have most likely bought based on the previous works a particular artist.)

It has also made my serious listening time more efficient in that I no longer have to burn tube hours on the big rig to explore and preview new releases and I can get an idea of what I think would be worthy of "audiophile time." In recent years as life has become more complicated, the amount of time that I am able to set aside to do nothing but sit down and focus on nothing other than listening to music haws become less and less, so being able to put that time to good use is of increasing importance to me. And while I may be spending less time in serious listening session, I have lately been spending more time enjoying music in general, even if it is just in the background. And having that extra music time in general has somewhat taken the sting out of not being able to sit and seriously listen as much as I used to.

So while they are not audiophile grade devices in and of thenselves, I find that streaming services and the iPod have in there own way helped to enhance my audiophile experience.

[richidoo]

Thanks gents, for the interesting and intelligent responses.

I am seeing a lot, actually most of my audiophile friends doing a lot more Pandora listening nowadays than 5 years ago. It seems to me that they are getting their musical itch scratched more easily and efficiently than by full hifi immersion. There is a lot less hifi listening happening, and a lot less hifi hobby activity in general. I think we are still getting our music fix on the side.

Of course it is still fun to get the sonic stimulation along with the musical stimulation, but in the end, music lovers can get by with just the music, and can listen around the marginal sound quality.

As baby boomers and Gen V'ers continue to finally learn to use decade old technology, we too tend to dive in for the convenience, freedom and discovery it affords.

I wonder what will happen to the hobby in another decade when the baby booming audiophiles that sustain the audio business financially get hooked on streaming and recalculate their music listening hobby values.

AN is pretty hard core committed hifi'ers, but there are a lot of  "hobbyist" type listeners who are not as commited, they just like the music. 10 years ago, the coolest thing in music technology was Squeezebox. Now we have a smart squeezebox with us all the time. 10 years from now?

[Bob in St. Louis]

Great thread Rich. I have some thoughts, as I see pros and cons on both sides of the fence.
But alas....It's late, and bed time calls (why didn't I notice this thread earlier?).

I'll sleep on it and letcha know.
Interesting thought, and I'd love to hear everybody's feelings.

Where did you get the inspiration?

Bob

[satfrat]

Thanks gents, for the interesting and intelligent responses.

I am seeing a lot, actually most of my audiophile friends doing a lot more Pandora listening nowadays than 5 years ago. It seems to me that they are getting their musical itch scratched more easily and efficiently than by full hifi immersion. There is a lot less hifi listening happening, and a lot less hifi hobby activity in general. I think we are still getting our music fix on the side.

Could be that Pandora is just more readily available than other more higher quality sources like Spotify. 

Fact is Pandora is now a standard "extra" on DirecTv receivers. That's why I dropped my subscription even before they changed their payment options from yearly to monthly. Because I have Pandora on DirecTv, I don't even need to fire up a computer for their random music selections. And better yet, there is no having to make repeated "like" selections for fear of Pandora shutting down their player,,,, something I really really hate as when I'm usually listening to Pandora, it's basically background music while I'm doing something besides being painted to a computer monitor. Pandora never shuts now on DirecTv. 

Cheers,
Robin

[richidoo]

Where did you get the inspiration?

"All things through Christ..." and a 3 month sabatical  


Hi Robin! I have DirecTV but I didn't know they had Pandora on there. I have a Sonos, which gives me free Pandora subscription. The SQ is surprisingly good, especially compared to Pandora through my TMobile phone. Maybe the Pandora on Sonos is the premium feed with 192kbps? The tmobile pandora is really bad, like 96kbps. I can't imagine TMobile being the cause, as they would have to DSP every individual stream.  But I do know that Pandora has several different "servers," to feed different client classes. Pandora knows what device is playing the stream and they deliver different ads (and I assume SQ) accordingly. At one time, the Geiko Gecko was pretending to be looking into my living room, through the stereo, pretending to see my house, commenting on how nice the curtains looked (I don't have curtains.) That was a bit creepy, but it was definitely targeting homeowners who get Pandora through AC powered clients like SB, Sonos, etc.

They probably have the bitrate of the mobile device streams turned down by request of phone companies. TMobile now offers truly unlimited data for any music streaming service - it music count toward the monthly data allowance.

When I say Pandora, I mean it kinda like saying xerox with a small x. Pandora isn't quite that ubiquitous, yet, but they are aiming to be. Spotify, MOG have bigger libraries, and better SQ available, and you can pick a single artist. But you have to pay. I am mostly content with Pandora which I still get for free through Sonos. Then the account I created through Sonos allows me free Pandora on my phone/web. Audiophiles with more eclectic music tastes might use those other versions, but it still serves the same purpose. Do they have the song filtering intelligence like Pandora to help find new artists and albums?

I remember when I first started with Squeezebox, it had some web streaming radio stations pre-programmed. I listened to a few of those, but none were really the kind of music that I like, all the time. When I finally tried Pandora I was surprised at the variety of bebop, hard bop, west coast cool, NY cool, bebop big band, WW2 big band, Kenton, swing singers, WW2 pop, latin jazz, salsa, all these kinds of jazz can be filtered down (if you know the artists' names.) That impressed me, and entertained me, so now it is the primary source of music in the house.

I'm about to start using JRiver for DSP in my system, but it can't play Pandora directly. So weren't able to patch Pandora into JRiver then I would have to go another route. Fortunately there are a few possibilities, I hope they work!

My music purchasing has been severely curtailed since 2009. I have about 100 CDs in my Amazon wish list and a few hundred in my Arkive Musik wish list. Every now and then I'll cash out a handful for BD or Christmas, but not like 2007 when I would buy $300 of new music every other month. The initial change in my audio spending was the economy tank, but that caused me to adjust to new spending reality in my hobby so that I don't need to or want to spend high roller money just to have pristine sound. I was happy with music before hifi came along, and happy in my post hifi era, but it's still hifi, just DIY. Pandora really helps with that. It helps me avoid buying new music to avoid boredom with my collection.

[Bob in St. Louis]

Where did you get the inspiration?

"All things through Christ..." and a 3 month sabatical 

Amen Brother! 

I use to love perusing the 2TB of music I had (most of it in FLAC), but with repeated frustrations with the system in a constant state of repair from firmware updates and electronic glitches, Pandora was my audio Savior. I can't recall the last time I listened to music from my main systems harddrive. I know it's been over a year since I've paid up my subscription to Pandora. Now that I think about it, I may have done that twice, so it's been more than two years since I've listened to FLAC.

I've recently had the 'bug' to get my various pieces of software, firmware, and hardware back up and running on the main system. I might do something about it, but in the mean time, Pandora and Spotify will keep me company.

It used to be that audio get-to-gethers were my source of new music discoveries (which would cause me to spend money on new music), but Pandora (paid) and Spotify (free) have all but killed my music buying.

[DaveC]

Well, I agree with tmazz, it's a lot like radio, which has waned in popularity as streaming services offer music better tailored to what the user wants. And like radio, it serves to expose the listener to different music that they might actually buy. But with the paid services you can choose exactly what you want to listen to, and it's much less expensive than buying a CD or downloading from something like itunes... so the idea you're actually going to buy music after hearing it on a streaming service isn't likely. I remember when I was a kid with no money recording FM radio onto cassette tape. 

One of the issues is the artist gets paid pretty much next to nothing. Here's a couple of charts that show how much gets paid out, but like the sales of CDs, artists see very little cash.

http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2014/02/21/favoritepays

[Bob in St. Louis]

I remember when I was a kid with no money recording FM radio onto cassette tape. 

I always hated it when the DJ would talk over the song. 

I wonder where Pandora would fall on those charts.
Those are amazing numbers though. Sad.

[DaveC]

Hi Bob, I'm not sure about Pandora but this is kinda big in the news right now, lots of articles on streaming and how it's changing the scene yet again. This one by David Byrne is pretty good:

http://davidbyrne.com/how-will-the-wolf-survive-can-musicians-make-a-living-in-the-streaming-era

I see resolution as a factor keeping streaming for being the only way we listen to music, at least for those who care, but as Rich mentioned for background there's no issue and on some music it's pretty hard to tell anyway.

One plus is that it's becoming easier to just pay a small fee to spotify or wherever rather than pirate, and people also see the fees as fair compared to paying itunes $1/track or $18 for a CD, so more people will participate, but it is cannibalizing legal, paid downloads for sure.

[rpf]

What Tom (tmazz) said. It's exactly the same for me.

Interestingly, I've noticed a lot of CDs on Amazon have dropped significantly in price, even lower in some cases than the same MP3 download.    Not the most popular stuff but some very high quality music nonetheless.

[Bob in St. Louis]

Thanks for the link Dave, I'll check it out.

A couple months ago I spent an hour rummaging through some old unwanted CD's, complied the list, and offered them up to "SecondSpin.com" for sale. None of them fetched more than $0.25. Kinda frustrating to spend an hour to find out they're worthless. So I guess that goes for sale prices as well. It's been so long since I bought a CD, I might have to check again.
Thanks for the heads-up.

Here's a question to ponder....I wonder how long it'll take before CD players are no longer sold in brick and mortar stores.

[James Edward]

This thread makes me sad. Am I the only one?