Music Industry set to embrace Studio Master

[giladt Linn Staff]

http://blogs.linn.co.uk/giladt/2011/05/m...master.php

As always, love to get feedback and hear what everyone thinks.

Regards,

Gilad

[Linncredible]

Agree to this 110%, good thinking, excellent strategy, well put - go for it!

[moog_man]

Now the stones are beginning to roll...

I look forward to tracking the shift in public perception re: consumer take-up of a new medium.
And, of course, all this will fast track the digital strategies of both music labels and hi-fi companies.

We're in for a fascinating journey

[glenbourne]

(2011-05-20 16:46)giladt Wrote:  http://blogs.linn.co.uk/giladt/2011/05/m...master.php

As always, love to get feedback and hear what everyone thinks.

Regards,

Gilad

"Our cries have finally been heard. In 2012, when the music industry puts its marketing clout behind high quality digital Studio Masters"

Marketing clout? for sure! Will give them (MI) another golden opportunity to remaster and regurgitate their vast amounts of back catalogue. Another sure-fire means to extract even more money for the same old stuff. IMHO, 24bit HD may be a godsend to the music industry, maybe not for the sake of quality but for the sake of money. HD or CD, no doubt, they will still try to make it all sound as loud as possible. Time will tell.

[phobic]

I think it will be a good result all round, more quality content available for us audiophiles, more people buying quality systems.

however....to make a real impact this needs mass market appeal, the mass market demand low prices, not something you associate with quality, there a danger therefore that this will dilute the quality in one way or another for us.

Ultimately I think it's more about lowering the barrier to entry for the audiophile club - If Linn are to fully capitalise on this not only should you look to selling more of the current portfolio but also look at expanding the range to include a new Linn entry level DS and speakers (Can you ignore brand image because you'll sell more units and make more money?)

something seems odd about LG selling a FLAC 24/96 capable mobile handset

[thedevilsbuilder]

I think it would be a great idea for hi res to become the norm, but for most modern (mainstream) recordings it may be too late.
In the days of analogue recordings there was always a producer/engineer combination doing the recordings. Both had their own distinct (very different)jobs to do. With digital recordings, and especially now that computers can 'fix' anything in the studio, producers now seem to think they are engineers.
Producers push for a performance from the artist, sound quality doesn't register too highly on the radar.

You can't polish a turd. No hi res file will rescue a poor recording.

Maybe things will come full circle, and hi res will expose the producer's lack of engineering skill (and ear), and then we can see the return of the dedicated engineer.

Cheers
Paul

[bez]

Apart from anything else, thanks for gathering together some great archive footage

[PeterCee]

Everyone reading this forum wants to see an increase in availability of studio masters - right across the board irrespective of genre.

The onus is on everybody to spread the word and publicise the benefits of high quality audio and remind Joe public that it exists.

At the risk of sounding like a hifi bore I never miss an opportunity to try and explain things to those who are ignorant of the existence of studo master quality audio weather this is face to face or on the Internet.

Information spreads now faster than ever before and so I think that forum members can make a difference if they bother to spread the word.

Let's hope that the record companies act swiftly as they might not be around much longer unless they adapt.

Some big Stars endorsing it would help - Come on you Linn owning Megastars - do your bit !

[ilduro]

(2011-05-20 16:46)giladt Wrote:  http://blogs.linn.co.uk/giladt/2011/05/m...master.php

As always, love to get feedback and hear what everyone thinks.

Regards,

Gilad

Umm, I understand the retrospective of the blog and cannot possibly compliment Linn enough for having taken a pioneering role, but how is the music industry embracing hi rez? There are surprisingly few websites offering CD resolution or higher downloads, and worse: if you are not living in the US of A, your choices are highly limited because record companies are not capable of agreeing on a uniform international fee structure. I WISH it was all going to be different in 2012 but what can we really expect from an industry that has been so good at ignoring its customer base? After all, it has taken a computer company to show us the way.

I am a willing and reasonably affluent customer but more often than not, I am prevented from purchasing the music I want. Go figure...

[Warren]

Best blog so far. The most engaging, well written and interesting to read. I also liked the use of links.

The whole "rebuy your old collection in the new format" thing is interesting. Not everyone will rebuy everything. Also once you've got the studio master, there is no point in rebuying again. Unless SMs become available at 300kHz/32bit and the difference is huge.

I don't have a clear picture of what is going on. The media doesn't give us a clear picture, just marketing. Not everyone is buying mp3s from iTunes to play on their iPhone. People have said in previous discussions here that kids aren't actually paying for mp3s, though I think that is an over-generalisation. Equally one could say kids aren't interested in quality, only mp3s of the latest X-Factor RnB rap pop hit they are fed, however I see children at classical concerts, and a hard-core Heavy Metal friend has an 8 year old daughter who likes Green Day, Metallica and Norah Jones.

>Today, our customers are spending more with us on downloads than on physical media.

Not that many LPs are available from LR.

From a CD point of view I would think it just comes down to the decision of do you want the physical booklet printed for you.

Apparently, when all other things (such as quality) are equal, people go for sooner rather than later (thus convenience), easier rather than harder (if I download it I don't have to rip it) and cheaper rather than expensive (downloading CD quality also saves on postage).

When CD came out I was in my mid-teens. In the last couple of decades I've learned some stuff about market forces. Companies can push for what they want, and on the whole can be very successful. However, the marketplace, people, can also push for what they want by voting with their feet. In 1995 when I bought my LP12 I didn't think I would be able to buy any turntable for much longer.

Interestingly over the past few decades mass-market audio quality has gone down, yet mass-market audio/video quality has gone up. The mass-market will buy quality audio as well if packaged right, and as this blog post points out, they did, for many people spending a hundred on an early CD player was better than the lousy turntable that they had ended up with because of quality's usual corporate enemy, years of cost-cutting.