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Eli - 2006-10-09 12:27:36
That is so depressing. I STILL buy CD's and I buy them at Tower, or did. Crap. So much for holding an actual product. I knew this was coming when CDs came about causing the demise of the album cover art.
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Greg - 2006-10-09 12:28:46
I haven't bought a thing in Tower since they stopped selling vinyl. Still some fond memories. My favorite record store in Manhattan is Rocks In Your Head on Prince Street http://www.rocksinyourhead.com/NEWINDEX.html Wowsville was great too but they're history.
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Greg - 2006-10-09 12:42:39
Okay, something I really miss about the really big record stores, Tower having been one of them, and a couple of the old Sam Goodys--you could go into any department and find someone really knowledgeable, REALLY, about whatever genre of music they sold--real salesmen with such a passion--I would walk in looking for something specific and walk out with 10 albums, all great.
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Eli - 2006-10-09 13:46:53
What I usually found at Tower was the incredible selection. It was huge! I used to find stuff there for my Dad I would never be able to find anywhere. Tower's DVD collection is also tremendous. The problem with internet shopping. is that you need to know what you're looking for and then know where to find it. If you have some music/movie knowledge, you're ok. If you don't, I think you're stuck. Walk into Tower, and it's all in front of you. Walking through the DVD section made me crazy, because I knew I couldn't afford what I would love to buy. Boxed sets you would never knew existed, unless you see it in a box in front of you. The website suggestions just ("people who bought this, also bought this too!") I find to be utterly boring. Just more of the same, no variety, no imagination.
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Greg - 2006-10-09 13:51:14
The DVD section at J&R Music World has a great selection--they do really well musically also. They're also less expensive than Tower, which is nice.
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Paula - 2006-10-09 14:59:34
website suggestions just ("people who bought this, also bought this too!") I find to be utterly boring
And often useless. I know I talk about Emusic so much it sounds like they're payin' me, but I find their suggestions and recommendations pretty decent because they are made by humans and not manufactured from sales data.
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Greg - 2006-10-09 15:36:30
Amazon has lists compiled by customers that I've found pretty interesting, and sometimes reliable. Their marketing data is useless. I was doing business with the folks at Pandora, and their marketing guy was telling me some interesting stuff about how they cross reference music. (Paula, I think you blogged about it a while back). This "people who bought this also" information is called "behavioral marketing" and the people selling the stuff sure find it useful. This pseudo-science is pretty much how all web advertising is pushed.
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anne - 2006-10-09 18:50:44
did you read that Netflix is offering $1 million dollars to anyone who can develop software that improves its recommendation system by 10%? Will be interesting to see what that yields. as much as I love pandora.com and appreciate amazon, I find their assessments of my "preferences" to be really off.
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Paula - 2006-10-09 21:23:53
Yeah, Wombat was telling me about Netflix's offer...I think N-flix does a decent enough job w/recommendations, but I usually only choose films to rent when I already know what I want. Same with shopping online for anything.
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Pete - 2006-10-10 12:18:40
My favorite Orbit is Lemon Lime.
It reminds me of a cross between Gatoraide gum, and Fruity Stripes.
And it's got good bubble blowin' consistency.
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LG - 2006-10-10 12:32:12
You have excellent taste in favorite colors!
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2fs - 2006-10-10 23:22:37
(1) Big chain CD stores suck and deserve to die: support yr local independent CD store. I can't believe some of you folks haven't bought a CD at a store! Yeesh - what are ye, hermits? (2) Vinyl sucks. Get over it. ;-) No, really: unless you love pops and scratches, I simply do not hear the supposed "warmth" people blather about. As I suggested elsewhere recently, if you really really love the big large artwork, take the CD cover, scan it at 1200dpi, resample to 300dpi to blow it up, and print it out 12x12. Voila: instant "LP" cover. Hrmph. (3) I am cranky today. Buy me candy.
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Paula - 2006-10-11 01:28:09
My favorite Orbit is Lemon Lime
Pete, I like that stuff, too.
Big chain CD stores suck and deserve to die
What about all the people who work for Tower who are now out of jobs? I don't feel happy for them.
Vinyl sucks
I gotta say, whatever sentimental attachment I may have towards my old vinyl albums is matched or exceeded by the joy of downloading music, being able to upload my own music to the web, sharing info easily and quickly, etc.
I know the fidelity isn't the same, but that kinda thing is usually lost on me, I'm not an audiophile. I never took care of my vinyl, anyway, so it never sounded that good.
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Greg - 2006-10-11 06:01:41
The old "vinyl sounds better" argument has been mostly rendered moot but it was valid for a long time. The problem wasn't in the medium of delivery but in the skills of the engineers in regards to the technology. You add to that, that most CD players were manufactured with really crappy output devices, so you rarely got to hear huge portions of the already degraded digital information (it never made it out of the CD player)--compound that with the fact that most people don't own playback systems where you can hear the differences anyway... and so on. The main difference between the two media, to my ears, was most evident on rather sparse acoustic recordings... not so much a lack of "warmth" but for example, the way a cymbal crash decays into space (on CDs you still get a flattened 'shhhhhh,' that is very unlike how it really sounds). Same for a plucked guitar or harp string. And of course a large number of CD re-releases are still mastered/equalized for vinyl, so you can't blame the medium... blah blah blah. When purchasing it comes down to the fact that you can't stuff 12" of vinyl into the Discman for a train ride.
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